Excel Invoice Template for General Contractors

A general contractor’s invoice is the only one in the trades that is mostly other people’s work. The framer, the electrician, the plumber, the drywall crew, the tile setter — you carry their cost, you add your margin, and you hand the homeowner one number. Which means your invoice is doing something no specialty trade’s invoice has to do: it has to be legible to someone who did not hire any of those people and is trying to understand where forty thousand dollars went.

What a GC invoice needs that a generic template does not

Three kinds of GC work, three different documents

The fixed-price remodel

Kitchen, bathroom, basement finish, addition. Quoted as one number against a defined scope, billed in stages as work completes. The quote is a sales document and often the only thing standing between you and a cheaper bid, so the scope detail matters — what is included, what allowances cover, and what happens when the homeowner picks a tile that costs three times the allowance.

Cost-plus and time and materials

Used where scope cannot be pinned down in advance — older homes, insurance work, jobs that start as one thing and become another. Billing is actual cost plus an agreed fee or percentage, which means every invoice is a substantiation exercise: here is what it cost, here is the markup we agreed, here is the total. These invoices get read line by line, and the cost detail behind them has to be real.

New construction and multi-phase builds

Months of work, a draw schedule tied to completion milestones, and often a lender or inspector between you and payment. Sometimes retention — a percentage held back until final completion — which means the amount billed and the amount collectible are never the same number until the very end. This is where “which of my jobs is actually profitable” becomes genuinely hard to answer without something tracking it.

Line items general contractors actually bill

• Subcontracted trades — demolition, framing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, insulation, drywall, tile, flooring, painting, cabinetry, countertops, roofing
• Self-performed labor — carpenter hours, laborer hours, cleanup, punch list work
• Project management — supervision, scheduling and coordination, general conditions, site protection, temporary facilities
• Permits and fees — building permit, trade permits, plan review, impact and inspection fees, engineering or architectural
• Materials and allowances — lumber and framing package, fixtures and finishes against allowance, appliances, waste and dumpster
• Change orders — added scope, allowance overages, owner-requested substitutions, unforeseen conditions

Most GCs work with the same subs and the same phase structure job after job. Having those saved with your usual pricing means the third kitchen this year is quoted against what the last two actually cost, not against what you hope they will.

What a progress invoice looks like

A kitchen remodel, second of three progress billings, with one approved change order. The four columns on the left are what the homeowner receives. The three on the right stay in your workbook and never print.

Contract #2026-118, kitchen remodel. Progress billing 2 of 3, covering rough-in through cabinet set. Change order CO-002 approved by owner 6/18 for added under-cabinet circuit. Final billing on completion of countertops, tile, and punch list.

The deposit and first progress payment are recorded against this contract, so Amount Paid and Balance Due are current on the document itself rather than worked out separately. Each progress billing updates as money arrives.

The right-hand columns are the whole argument on a job like this. Electrical cleared 25 percent, cabinetry cleared 22, supervision cleared 50 — and supervision is the line nobody thinks of as a profit center. Blended across the phase it is 26.5 percent, which is a number you cannot get to from the customer-facing side of the invoice alone. On a job that runs three months and six subcontractors, knowing that as you go is the difference between finding out you made money and finding out you did not.

Where the template approach breaks down

Every problem on this page compounds with project length, which is why general contracting is the worst fit for a template of any trade.

The contract total lives in one file, the change orders in three more, the progress invoices in a folder, and the payments received in your bank app. Answering “what is still owed on the Henderson job” means opening all of it and doing arithmetic. Answering “did we make money on the last kitchen” means reconstructing sub costs from invoices you paid months ago. And a change order agreed verbally on a Tuesday and never written down is the one that turns into a dispute at final payment.

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