How to invoice a skip hire
What gets charged, what gets forgotten, and how to track what is still owed.
A skip hire invoice carries the hire itself, meaning delivery, a set hire period and collection for a given size and waste type, then the extras picked up on site: hire days beyond the period, waiting time, tonnage over the limit, contaminated loads, a wasted journey. The amount is shown excluding VAT, with VAT at the applicable rate, then including VAT. The hard part is not producing the invoice, it is remembering to produce it.
What gets charged
The base hire covers the rental itself. Everything else happens during the job and needs writing down as it happens, not when you come to invoice.
The hire
Delivery, the skip on site for the agreed period, collection and disposal. The price comes from your list, crossing the waste type with the size.
Extra hire days
Anything beyond the period included in the price. This is the most commonly forgotten charge, because it only shows up when you compare the delivery date with the collection date.
Tonnage over the limit
When the real weight goes past what the price covers. The weighbridge ticket is the customer's evidence.
Waiting time
A driver held up on a site that is not ready. Note it against the job on the day.
Contaminated loads
A skip booked as rubble that comes back mixed changes stream and changes disposal cost. That difference gets passed on.
A wasted journey
Access blocked, nobody on site, skip unreachable. The lorry went out, so the trip is charged.
Excluding VAT, VAT, including VAT
An invoice shows the total excluding VAT, the VAT at the applicable rate, then the total including VAT. The thing to watch is not the arithmetic, it is consistency over time: if your rate changes, invoices already issued must not move.
In BenneCRM the VAT rate is recorded on the order when it is created, then carried onto the invoice. Changing your default rate later does not affect any document already raised.
Some work is handled as a VAT inclusive amount, typically jobs paid in cash by domestic customers. The order can be marked as such, and no VAT is then added at invoicing.
Decide once whether you quote excluding or including VAT, and keep the same rule on quotes, order forms and invoices. It is the first thing that gets misunderstood with domestic customers.
Remembering to invoice
Completed work that never gets invoiced costs more than a bad price. So you need a list, kept automatically, of finished orders with no invoice against them, and that list needs to empty.
It also prevents the opposite problem, double billing: once an order is attached to an invoice it leaves the list and cannot be billed a second time by mistake.
In practice most firms invoice weekly or fortnightly, taking all of a customer's completed orders at once. Grouping several orders onto one invoice cuts the office work and the number of payments to reconcile.
Tracking what is still owed
Record every payment
With its date and method: cash, transfer or cheque. A payment noted three weeks later is a payment nobody can find.
Show the balance
Plenty of customers pay in two or three parts. The invoice has to show at all times what has been paid and what is still due.
Keep one list of unpaid invoices
One list, with the amount outstanding and how old the invoice is. That is the document to open before making chasing calls.
Group a period's invoices
Customers with several sites often want one document for the month. A statement pulls the period's invoices into a single PDF.
Common questions
- Do you invoice before or after collection?
- After, in the great majority of cases. Before collection you know neither the real hire length, nor the tonnage, nor the extras. A deposit up front is still reasonable for a new customer or a large job, but the final invoice waits for the end of the hire.
- How do you protect yourself against a dispute?
- By getting the order agreed in writing before the work starts. An order form emailed and signed online fixes the skip size, the address, the date and the price. It is timestamped and sealed with the document the customer was shown.
- Can several orders go on one invoice?
- Yes. You pick the completed orders for one customer and they become the lines of a single invoice. You can add free text lines for work that does not match any order.
- Can invoices go out from my own address?
- Yes, by connecting your Gmail account. The invoice then leaves from your address with the PDF attached and your email template, and the customer's reply lands in your usual inbox. Every send is logged.
- Do you support electronic invoicing formats?
- Not today. BenneCRM produces PDF invoices that you email or download. If you need a particular exchange format, tell us about your situation.
- Are invoice numbers generated automatically?
- You enter the number when you create the invoice, which lets you keep the numbering you already use. The software checks that the same number is not used twice within your company.
Read next
Invoicing in BenneCRM
Raise an invoice from completed orders, track payments and unpaid balances.
How to run a skip hire business
The life of an order, the schedule and the price list.
What is skip hire software?
What this kind of tool covers and how to choose one.
Pricing
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