Quoting and invoicing app for painters

What to track on every painting job

On a painting job, labour is usually the biggest cost, and prep is the part of it that is hardest to see from the driveway. Track prep apart from the painting so you can tell which one ran over:

• Prep hours, separately from painting: sanding, filling, patching, masking and protection
• Painting hours: the third coat nobody quoted shows up here
• Paint and sundries: every trade counter run for tape, drop sheets, filler, rollers and the extra tin
• Access: scaffold, planks, ladders, an elevated work platform for the high gable
• Weather days on exteriors, and the time lost setting up again
• Variations: the extra room, the colour change after the first coat, the ceiling that was not in the quote

Your painters log hours per day against the job from their phones, with a short note on what they did, so prep and painting can sit on separate days or separate notes and you can tell them apart at the end.

Pricing painting work: by the square metre, by the room or by the hour

• By the square metre is quick once you have measured, but only if the rate allows for the surface and the prep. Price ceilings, trims, doors and windows as their own lines, because a square metre of skirting takes far longer than a square metre of open wall.
• By the room keeps interiors simple for the client. Write down what a room includes (walls, ceiling, trims, doors, how many coats) so the fifth bedroom with the built-ins does not get the same price as the spare room.
• By the hour suits repairs, touch-ups and jobs where you cannot judge the prep until you start. Set a minimum charge that covers the travel and set-up.

Whichever you use, check the final number against the hours it will take at your true hourly cost, plus materials, access and a real margin. A rate per square metre that looked fine on the last job can be badly short on a house with fifty windows.

Working out the paint

Paint quantity is area x coats / spread rate. The spread rate, in square metres per litre, is on the tin or the manufacturer's data sheet, and it changes with the surface: bare render or new plaster takes more than a wall that has been painted before. For 180 square metres of walls, two coats, at an example spread rate of 14 square metres per litre: 180 x 2 / 14 = 25.7 litres. Round up to the tin sizes you buy, and allow for cutting in and touch-ups.

A worked example: an exterior repaint

Here is a single-storey weatherboard exterior, priced and then tracked. The numbers are illustrative, and the hourly cost is the painter example on the tradie hourly rate calculator: about $74 an hour once wages, super, overheads and the van are counted.

Up close, the weatherboards are in worse shape than they looked from the ground, and prep runs to 32 hours. Because prep is logged on its own, the job card shows it plainly: 12 extra hours, $888 of cost, and the profit down from $1,699 to $811. Costs end at 90% of the price, and the profit-at-risk alert fires before the last coat is finished.

Two fixes for next time. Quote prep as its own line, with the condition you priced it at written into the assumptions (for example 'boards sound, minor filling only'), so worse boards become a variation the client approves, with photos. And take before photos of every elevation on day one. They end the 'you missed a bit' conversation and back up the variation.

How to price a painting job walks through measuring surfaces and working out your own production rates, and how to quote a job as a tradie prices a three-bedroom interior repaint line by line, with a free quote template.

Interiors, exteriors and strata in one place

Each job gets its own card with hours, costs, photos and a checklist, and the calendar shows who is on which job each day. Bigger jobs, such as a strata repaint, can be claimed in stages, each a percentage of the price. New accounts set up for painting start with two quote templates to adjust: a one-room interior repaint of about 4 x 4 metres and a single-storey exterior repaint.

What TrackYaTradie does not do for painters

• No measuring from photos or plans, and no paint quantity calculator in the quote.
• No colour schedules or ordering from paint suppliers.
• No automatic overdue reminders to clients. You send a reminder from the invoice when you choose to.
• Xero only: there is no MYOB or QuickBooks sync.