How to write an electrician invoice

What goes on a electrician invoice

Six things, in the order they belong on the page. The invoice generator opens a electrician document with the lines already in place, so most of this is checking rather than typing.

1. Bill labor with the hours showing. The count on the line, so the customer sees what was worked rather than one figure.
2. Put certification and testing on its own line. Testing, recording readings and issuing the certificate is work, and it is the part a customer may need for a sale or a landlord check.
3. Name the circuits or the work location. Which board, which circuits, which rooms. It is what makes an invoice checkable months later.
4. Price materials separately. Cable, accessories and the electrical panel itself move independently of your labor.
5. Reference the certificate number. Put it on the invoice. The two documents belong together and customers lose one of them.
6. State the notification or building control position. Where work needs a permit, say who is notifying and whether a fee is included.

The lines a electrician invoice usually carries

These are the lines the generator opens with when you pick Electrician. The figures are a starting point to type over rather than a going rate: this site runs no pricing survey, and the number on your invoice should be the one you charge.

Add, rename, reorder or delete any line, and set tax per line where it applies. Priced as they open, that comes to $1,170 before tax.

A worked electrician invoice, filled in

This is the same job as the table above, written out the way it would leave your phone. Every figure on it is a starting point rather than a going rate, and the tax line is shown at ten per cent purely so the arithmetic is visible: set your own rate, or none, per line.

Subtotal $1,170, tax $117, total $1,287. The parts worth copying are the structure rather than the numbers: the job reference next to the client, every line separately priced with its count showing, the tax on its own line, and terms that name a number of days instead of saying on receipt.

The certificate is the deliverable, so bill it as one

For a lot of electrical work the customer is not really buying the labor, they are buying the certificate at the end of it. A landlord needs it to let, a seller needs it to sell, a business needs it to satisfy an insurer.

Name certification and testing as its own line. It reflects real work: testing every affected circuit, recording readings, and issuing the document. It also stops the certificate being treated as a free attachment to the job.

Put the certificate reference on the invoice too. Customers keep the invoice and lose the certificate, and being able to match them a year later saves you a phone call you are not paid for.

Work that needs a permit, building control and who pays the fee

Some electrical work carries a notification obligation, and the cost of that notification has to sit somewhere. If it is not on your invoice, it is in your margin.

State on the document who is notifying and whether the fee is included or charged at cost. Where a building control submission is being made, that is a disbursement like any other and belongs on its own line.

This also protects you commercially. A customer who later discovers there was a fee, and assumed you had absorbed it, is a customer with a grievance about a number they never actually saw.

Working for a main contractor rather than a homeowner

Subcontracting to a builder or a main contractor changes the invoice completely. The payer works to applications, valuations and payment cycles rather than to a bill.

Reference their site, their order number and the period the work covers. Where you are one of several trades, the reference is what stops your invoice sitting in a pile while somebody works out which job it belongs to.

Agree in advance whether retention applies and what percentage, because discovering it when the payment lands short is the worst time to have that conversation. Terms in days, always.

Hourly, fixed price or per unit: how electricians price the work

Electrical work is priced three ways depending on who is buying. Householders buy jobs, builders buy days, and testing work is priced per unit because the unit is what the certificate counts. The mistake is letting a domestic customer think they bought a day when they bought a job.

Testing and certification deserve their own line whatever model you use, because they are what the customer needs to satisfy a landlord, a buyer or an insurer. An invoice that folds the certificate into the labor figure has hidden the part with the longest life.

Working out what to charge

This guide is about what goes on the document, not what the number should be, and nobody should hand you a rate for your own market. What the site can do is the arithmetic: the freelance rate calculator works back from what you need to earn, the service price calculator prices a service against your costs, and the profit margin calculator checks what is left once the job is done.

Writing it on your phone, in five steps

Most electricians write the invoice standing next to the work rather than at a desk a week later, and the week later version is the one that gets details wrong. The generator is built for the first case.

1. Open it with your trade already chosen. The electrician invoice loads with electrical panel replacement and the rest of the lines already on the page.
2. Put the client and the job reference in first. It is the part you will not remember accurately in three days, and on agent, landlord or contractor work it is the reason the invoice gets paid at all.
3. Edit the lines rather than starting from empty. Change the quantities and the rates, delete what you did not do, add what you did. Keeping the descriptions means the wording stays consistent from one job to the next.
4. Set the terms to 14 days and add a payment link. A due date that is an actual date gets chased. A link and a QR code means it can be settled before you have packed up.
5. Send it before you leave. The clock on your terms starts when the invoice arrives, not when the work finished, so every day it sits unsent is a day added to getting paid.

Getting paid once it is sent

Put a due date and your terms on the document, because an invoice without them is hard to chase. Add a payment link and a QR so settling up is a tap rather than a transfer somebody has to set up. When part of it lands, the receipt maker records it as a part payment and prints the balance still due. If the due date passes, the late fee calculator works out what your own terms allow and writes the chasing letter to go with it.

Five dates decide whether a electrician gets paid on time, and four of them are set before the work starts.

Mistakes that cost electricians money

• Certification given away as an attachment. It is work and often the whole deliverable. Bill it.
• No certificate reference on the invoice. The customer loses one of the two documents and you cannot match them later.
• Notification fees absorbed. A cost the customer never sees is a cost you paid.
• No circuit or location detail. An invoice nobody can check months later is an invoice that gets queried.
• No retention agreed on contractor work. You find out when the payment lands short.

Electrician invoice questions

Free electrician invoice template

The free electrician invoice template opens with the lines above already priced, in any of 200 designs, and exports a print-ready PDF with no signup and nothing saved to a server. If you would rather edit a file offline, there are 72 Word templates, 72 Excel templates with the totals already calculating, and 72 fillable PDFs.

Invoicing guides for related trades

The same billing questions come up next door. These four guides cover the trades closest to electricians, and each one sits alongside its own free template.

Every trade has one: see all 46 invoicing guides, or go straight to the 46 free invoice templates they describe.

Everything on this site, set up for electricians

The whole toolkit, with the reason each one matters to electricians rather than in general. The five marked links open with electrician already selected.

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