Free General Contractor Invoice Generator

No app, and no account for your first two documents — build them, print them, send them, nothing to sign up for. An estimate counts the same as an invoice. Once you've used those two, unlimited documents are $8.99/month and that's when you'd create an account. Your invoice contents never leave your device either way.

Tap “Send as PDF” and your phone's own share sheet opens with the finished invoice attached — pick Messages, Mail, WhatsApp, whatever you use, and the customer is already in your contacts, so there's nothing to type. “Send via SMS” sends it as a picture instead, which previews right inside the message thread. Either way the amount due, your payment instructions and your payment link travel in the message, and the file is built on your phone — it never passes through us.

Put your payment link or handle in “Get paid online” and every invoice gets a scan-to-pay code: your customer points their phone camera at it and their payment app opens, already pointed at you. Three ways in, because customers read invoices in different places — scan the code off a printed copy, tap the code itself in the PDF (a phone can't photograph its own screen, so on a phone the tap is the one that works), or tap the link in the message you sent. The money moves directly between your customer and your own payment account — we are not a payment processor, we never touch it, and we never see whether you were paid.

Your company name and license number, the customer's name and service address, itemized work (for example: Bathroom remodel — demo & rough-in, draw 1 of 3), tax if it applies, any deposit already received, and your warranty terms. Beyond that, general contractor invoices carry a few things the generic list misses: which draw or phase this invoice covers against the contract total, every change order as its own numbered line — never folded into the base price — and allowances reconciled against what was actually spent. Those are the three places a remodel invoice turns into a dispute. Add the substantial completion date, the permit and inspection record, and which trades worked under your contract, because those three decide who a homeowner calls in month eleven.

Ten months after the last walkthrough the phone rings about a crack running off the corner of a new door opening, a door that has started to stick, or grout letting go along the tub. Almost none of that is a defect. It is a house drying out through its first heating season, and the argument is never about the crack itself. It is about when your year started and what sits inside it.

Write the substantial completion date on the final invoice and say the workmanship period runs from that date rather than from the last payment. List which trades worked under your contract and which ones the owner hired directly, because the homeowner calls you either way. Put manufacturer-warranted items on their own lines with make and model, so the windows, the cabinets and the furnace trace back to whoever actually warrants them and not to your callback list.

The heavier version of this call is scope rather than seasoning: the customer remembers something being included that was never in the contract. That memory is usually honest, and it comes from a conversation on site. Every change order needs its own numbered line naming who asked and when, every allowance needs reconciling against what was actually bought, and anything discussed and dropped belongs in writing the week it was dropped.

The hours that disappear are the ones where nothing gets built. Pulling the permit means the application, the trip to the counter, the revision they ask for and the second trip. Meeting an inspector means holding a morning open for a window you do not control, and one cited item means a correction visit and a re-inspection.

Then there is the dumpster that needed a second pull, the load you hauled yourself between pulls, and the zip wall, floor protection and daily cleanup that keep an occupied house livable. Receiving and staging owner-supplied material is work, and so is chasing a long-lead cabinet order every week until it lands. So is the hour spent resequencing three subs because the countertop template slipped four days.

Bid leveling, selection trips and the lender's draw inspection meeting are all time on the job that no line item is currently claiming. So is the paperwork a commercial or insured job brings: certificates of insurance, lien waivers collected from every sub on every draw, and the weekly email that keeps a homeowner calm. Supervision itself is the biggest of these — the day you spend on site making decisions and building nothing is the day the whole job runs on.

Photograph every wall and ceiling while it is open, once before insulation and again before drywall, with something in frame for scale and the room named. Those pictures are how anyone later finds a shutoff, a wire run or the blocking behind a grab bar, and they settle whether a screw you did not drive hit a pipe.

Shoot rot, failed framing and old staining the moment you expose it and before you repair it, because that condition is what you were paid to correct and it no longer exists. Keep the shower pan flood test, the waterproofing before tile went down, header and beam sizes with the engineer's letter, and walkthrough photos of pre-existing damage to the driveway, the lawn and the neighbor's fence.

Log inspection dates, the inspector's name and every signed change order. Keep the selections the owner approved with the date they approved them, since a remodel dispute is usually about a choice rather than about workmanship. A year on, an appraiser, an adjuster or a buyer's inspector asks for exactly these, and so does the next contractor the owner hires — which is the version of this record that earns you the referral.

Start with a different question: is the job taxable at all? In most states, work that improves real property — a new install, a remodel, an addition — makes you the end user of the materials. You paid sales tax at the supply house and you don't add tax to the customer's invoice. Repairs and maintenance are taxable far more often, and some states treat residential and commercial work differently. If tax does apply, the rate is the one at the job's service address: only a handful of states are a single statewide rate, and everywhere else counties and cities add on top of the state share. Tap “Sales tax — is this taxable, and what’s the rate here?” under the tax field, pick your state, and we'll show you the state rate and link you straight to your revenue department's own guidance. And there's no federal sales tax — your federal tax is income and self-employment tax, which you settle with the IRS, not something you collect from a customer. When no tax applies, leave the rate at 0.