Can I charge for days lost waiting on the customer's units?

Only if the quote said you would, which is exactly why it should. A kitchen ordered by the customer from a retailer you have no relationship with will sometimes arrive short, and the days you spend waiting are days you turned other work away for. Name a daily rate in the quote and the charge is a term they accepted. Raise it afterwards and it is a row.

Should I invoice a kitchen in stages or all at the end?

In stages, and tie them to things the customer can see rather than to dates: a deposit, a stage when the units are in and level, the balance at handover. A three-week fit billed at the end asks somebody to hand over the whole amount on the day they are most sick of having no kitchen, which is the worst possible moment to be asking.

Do my invoice numbers have to be sequential?

They should be unique and consistent. 001, 002, 003 is the easy convention, and it's what makes 'invoice 032' unambiguous on the phone and at tax time. Don't reuse or duplicate numbers; gaps are fine.

When should I send the invoice?

The day the job finishes, from the van ideally. An invoice sent three weeks late quietly tells the customer that paying it late is fine too, and it's the single most fixable cause of slow payment.

Free kitchen fitter invoice template

A free invoice template for kitchen fitters, visible in full below, downloadable as a PDF, no signup asked. It keeps your labour separate from anything supplied, which matters when the customer bought their own units and needs to see your figure was never the big one, and it has a line for the waiting time nobody ever thinks to bill for.

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Tired of retyping templates? SoloDesks builds and sends invoices from your phone on the free plan, in about 60 seconds per invoice.

INVOICE

Your Business Name

Phone · Email

Address

Invoice no.

Date

Due date

Description	Qty	Price
Rip out existing kitchen & dispose to skip
Fit 14 units, doors and handles aligned
Worktop templated, fitted & jointed
Second fix: sink, waste, appliance connections
Waiting time: 3 days, customer's units delivered short
Add your own lines…

Subtotal

VAT (if registered)

TOTAL

Payment details & terms

What a kitchen fitter's invoice must include

Your business name and contact details (and logo, if you have one)
A unique invoice number, where sequential is fine, gaps are fine, duplicates are not
Invoice date and payment due date
The client's name and the job address
Itemised lines: each piece of work and each material, with its price
The total, and whether VAT (or your local sales tax) is included
How to pay: bank details or a payment link
Payment terms, because "due within 7 days" is a term; silence is a suggestion
Your labour shown separately from anything you supplied, so a customer who bought their own units can see your figure was never the large one

Tips from the trade

Bill waiting time when their delivery arrived short. Three days stood in a stripped kitchen is three days you could not sell to anybody else, and it only feels unreasonable if the quote never mentioned it.
Separate your labour from anything you supplied. A customer who bought their own units needs to see plainly that your figure was never the big number in this project.
Invoice the first stage when the units are in, not when the worktop lands. You do not control the templater's diary and you should not be financing it.
List what the rip-out uncovered as dated lines of its own. "Made good" can cover forty years of bodged pipework and reads like padding; "replaced 3m of rotten waste pipe, found 14 March" does not.

Common questions

Can I charge for days lost waiting on the customer's units?: Only if the quote said you would, which is exactly why it should. A kitchen ordered by the customer from a retailer you have no relationship with will sometimes arrive short, and the days you spend waiting are days you turned other work away for. Name a daily rate in the quote and the charge is a term they accepted. Raise it afterwards and it is a row.
Should I invoice a kitchen in stages or all at the end?: In stages, and tie them to things the customer can see rather than to dates: a deposit, a stage when the units are in and level, the balance at handover. A three-week fit billed at the end asks somebody to hand over the whole amount on the day they are most sick of having no kitchen, which is the worst possible moment to be asking.
Do my invoice numbers have to be sequential?: They should be unique and consistent. 001, 002, 003 is the easy convention, and it's what makes 'invoice 032' unambiguous on the phone and at tax time. Don't reuse or duplicate numbers; gaps are fine.
When should I send the invoice?: The day the job finishes, from the van ideally. An invoice sent three weeks late quietly tells the customer that paying it late is fine too, and it's the single most fixable cause of slow payment.

Quoting the job before you bill it? Kitchen Fitter's quote template is the other half of the same paperwork, written for the same trade. Not a kitchen fitter? The blank UK invoice template works for any trade, in Word, Excel, PDF or Google Docs.

The same invoice for other trades

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