Free Tree Service Invoice & Estimate Template (Word, Excel, PDF)

Split the work where the policy splits it, on one invoice to the owner. Most homeowner policies pay to get the tree off the insured structure and make the site safe, and treat the rest of the tree as the owner's — usually with a small capped allowance for debris removal, which is why one number for the whole day comes back cut. Price the cut-free-and-clear scope on its own: what was lifted off the structure and how the opening was left. Under it, price the takedown of what is still standing, the stump grinding and the log haul-away as ordinary tree work. Say which tree hit which structure, because a lot with three trees down may hold only one the policy cares about.

The one whose ground the trunk stands on, and if it straddles the line, both of them. Write the trunk's position first — center of the fence row, three feet inside the west line — because it decides who can approve a felling and who can only ask. In most places an owner may prune back to their own line at their own cost and no further, so overhanging limb removal at the property line is its own item, priced apart from the customer's own trees, and the line says the cuts stopped there. If a survey pin or a fence is your only evidence of where the boundary runs, say which one you went by. Where both owners are paying, send two invoices rather than splitting one.

The finish it leaves. Three jobs sell under one word: brush-only land clearing takes the understory and leaves the canopy, ordinary clearing drops everything and cuts it at grade, and grubbing pulls the root balls out so a machine can grade behind you. Lot clearing prices by the acre or the quarter acre, so the acreage and the finish belong on the same line — a customer who bought clearing and walks out onto a field of stumps has an argument. Name what stays: the trees marked to keep, the fence line you worked to, and any protection fencing you set around a root zone. Slash burning carries its permit and the hours somebody stood with the pile; next season's regrowth visit is a booking, not a warranty.

Whether you leave a document behind. A walk that ends in a price is a bid, and bids are free; a tree health assessment answers a question the customer brought you, and it bills. The written arborist report is a second line, because it takes longer to write than the walk took. Say in it how each tree was looked at — from the ground, aerially on rope, or with resistograph decay detection — what you found, and the limit of the opinion: it describes the tree on the day you stood under it. Reference the report by date on the invoice. Decide in writing whether the fee is credited against work booked: an opinion handed over during a bid is a document the next crew prices from.