Free Carpentry Invoice & Estimate Template (Word, Excel, PDF)

Write it up the way the supplier wrote the order. A slab cut down for an out-of-square opening, a prehung ordered in a width nobody stocks, casing run around an arched opening — none of it goes back on a shelf, so the line carries hand and swing, jamb width, slab thickness, profile and finish rather than the word door. That description is what settles it when the unit that shows up is not the unit that was ordered, and the fastest way to eat the cost of a door is to have written entry door on the only piece of paper anybody kept. If money came up front, show it applied against material ordered rather than against labor, and bill the install on the day the install happens.

No, because a build ties up your days and a load of material before anything looks finished. A pressure-treated deck build is several days of framing and decking, and a built-in bookcase for one wall is a bench day before a single piece goes in the house. What fits most of them is a deposit covering the material, then the balance at completion, each invoice naming what is complete and what is not. Save the mid-job draw for the ones that genuinely run long, and tie it to something the customer can see standing — the frame up, the boxes set and leveled. Keep stairs, railing and skirting on their own lines at every stage: that is the scope most often added mid-job, and the scope customers assume was inside the number.

Name each item the way their list names it, then say what you actually did to it. Carpentry punch items are mostly adjustments rather than replacements: a door that closes but will not catch wants the strike plate and latch aligned, a sagging door wants long screws through the hinge jamb, a bifold that rubs wants its track and pivot reset, a loose newel post wants re-anchoring, and quarter round left off at a corner still gets a line. Mark the items that were never yours — drywall behind a hollow core door hole patch, paint on a wall you did not touch — and the ones the homeowner waved off, because an unmarked line reads as unfinished and holds up the ones beside it. Anything that turned out to be a repair rather than an adjustment gets its own line.

Like a list, not a block of time. A day of small carpentry is a dozen short adjustments sold as one block. Bill the half day or full day, then write every item underneath it: a sticking door planed and rehung, a bypass closet door track adjusted, weatherstripping and a sweep on two doors, cabinet doors and hinges adjusted, an attic ladder set square. Hours with nothing listed under them is the line a customer reads twice and an office sends back. Then say what the block does not cover, so a second half-day next month is not read as the first one billed again.