Painting invoice template

Download the Painting invoice template

The same sample document in two formats. The PDF is what a finished invoice looks like; the spreadsheet has live formulas, so change a quantity or a rate and the totals follow.

No signup, no email, no watermark. Sample figures — edit everything. Opens in Excel, Numbers and Google Sheets.

See this invoice filled in, in the builder — the same sample, editable.

What a Painting invoice needs on it

A painting invoice should record the product, color and sheen per surface. The customer will need it in two years for a touch-up, and being the contractor who wrote it down is a large part of why they call you instead of searching their email.

• Batch numbers for any custom-tinted colour, which a store cannot reproduce without them
• Coats actually applied, where it differed from what was quoted
• Any carpentry or substrate repair performed, priced against what you quoted as an allowance
• Surfaces completed, so the excluded ones are on the record as excluded
• Deposit credited, balance due, and your payment terms

And what every invoice needs

Send it the day the work is finished. Invoices sent within 24 hours get paid materially faster than ones that go out at the end of the month.

• A due date, not just terms — "Net 14" means less to a homeowner than a date
• Any deposit already paid, credited on the page so the balance is unarguable
• Payment instructions the customer can act on without calling you
• The estimate number it came from, so the customer can reconcile the two

Painting line items included in this template

These load into the builder ready to edit. Prices are starting points, not our opinion of what you should charge — set your own and they save to your price book.

Rates are illustrative US figures and vary widely by market. Price your own work.

Questions

What should a painting invoice record about the paint?

Product, colour and sheen, per surface. The customer will need it in two years for a touch-up, and being the contractor who wrote it down is a large part of why they call you instead of searching their email for a receipt they never kept.

How do I invoice prep that turned out to be worse than quoted?

Show the quoted allowance and the actual work beside it. Painting prep is the line that most often grows once the scraping starts, and an invoice that separates "quoted prep" from "additional repair found at fascia" reads as an account rather than a price rise.

Should an invoice list the surfaces that were excluded?

A short line is worth it. Recording what was painted implicitly records what was not, and on a job where closets or ceilings were left out by agreement, that line is what prevents a call three weeks later asking when you are coming back for them.