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

The unit changes as you cross the yard: patio by the square foot, the wall behind it by the face foot, the drain under the lawn by the linear foot, mulch by the cubic yard, rock by the ton. So each line carries the fields its own unit implies. A paver patio names the paver, its color, the laying pattern and the compacted base depth — 6 in. under a patio, 10 to 12 under a driveway — since a repair has to match all four. A retaining wall names the block and cap, the height at the tallest point and the courses sitting below grade. A French drain calls out the pipe, 4 in. perforated, sock or no sock, the washed stone, the trench depth and where the line daylights. Irrigation install goes by the zone, with head count and type per zone, controller stations and static pressure in psi at the point of connection. Landscape lighting goes by the fixture, with transformer wattage and wire gauge.

Work down the page in crew order, which is also the order the customer watched: tree and shrub removal and haul-off, grading and drainage, sleeves and everything else that gets buried, hardscape on top of them, then bed prep and soil amendment, plants, mulch and cleanup. Sleeves go ahead of hardscape on the page as well as in the ground — one remembered after the patio is set turns into a demolition line. A bed switched from mulch to rock changes unit, not just quantity, so replace the line rather than editing the number. Sod install prices by the square foot but arrives by the pallet, so say which you billed. Irrigation repair runs time and material behind a service call, and a landscape design and plan carries a flat fee. Give the mini excavator and the skid steer a mobilization line each, since each is its own trailer trip, and on a build running weeks bill in draws tied to finished stages, not to dates.

First, billing a retaining wall by what shows. Face feet are length times full height, buried courses included, and the course or two below grade does the most work and is slowest to set; count only what stands above grade and you have donated the base of every wall you build. Write the counted face feet and the tallest height on both the estimate and the invoice. Second, blending installation and maintenance on one line. Many states treat work that improves the property differently from a mowing or weeding visit, and a blended line leaves you deciding later which it was. Keep them on separate lines, or separate invoices. Third, taking a change on a handshake. Moving a patio a foot toward the fence adds cuts, base and edge restraint, and unwritten it becomes a favor. Write the change, the date and what it added, and get it signed at the truck.