How to write a pressure washing invoice

Bill each surface you washed by the measurement you priced it on, show any minimum or extra as its own line, and collect while the customer is looking at the result.

Pressure washing invoice lines and units

Line	Unit	How it’s counted
House wash	sq ft or job	Siding area, or one price by stories
Driveway, patio or walkway	sq ft	The measured flatwork
Deck or fence	sq ft or linear ft	Deck area, or fence length
Gutter faces	linear ft	Length of gutter washed
Stain treatment	ea	Each oil, rust or gum spot
Wash water recovery	job	Collection and disposal, where done
Minimum charge	job	When the job is under your minimum

Write the surface, the method and the size on each line, such as “Soft wash, vinyl siding, two-story house, 2,400 sq ft”, so the customer can check the number against the house. Before-and-after photos kept with your copy answer most questions about a stain that faded but didn’t vanish.

Minimums, trip fees and small jobs

When a job comes in under your minimum, bill one “Minimum charge” line and name the surfaces it covered in its description, so the customer sees why the price isn’t the square footage times your rate. If you added a trip fee, or a charge for bringing water because there was no working spigot, give each its own line with the reason.

Recurring commercial washes

Storefronts, drive-throughs, dumpster pads and fuel station canopies are often washed on a schedule. Bill each visit, or send one invoice a month that lists every wash with its date and location. For a client with several sites, put each site’s address on its lines, or send one invoice per site if their accounts payable prefers it. Put their PO number on every invoice, and use the payment terms in your service agreement.

Deposits and payment at completion

On a home, walk the customer around the finished surfaces and hand over the invoice then, while the clean driveway is in front of them. Subtract any deposit you took. For illustration, a $1,200 house and deck wash with a $200 deposit shows a $1,200 total, $200 paid and $1,000 due. Give the invoice a due date written as a date, and list the ways the customer can pay.

Sales tax on pressure washing invoices

Whether washing services are taxed depends on the state. If you also supply sealer or stain for a deck, keep those materials on a line of their own, apart from the labor, so each can be taxed as your state requires. Collect tax only where your state tells you to, and see your state’s sales tax guide for how it treats your work.

Wash water: the line and the rules behind it

If you collected the wash water and hauled it away, or sent it to a sanitary sewer with permission, bill that work on its own line. It takes equipment and time, and the line tells the customer why the job costs more than a rinse.

Whether you need a permit depends on where the water goes. EPA says a discharge of pollutants into a municipal storm sewer system may need a permit, depending on what you discharge, and that you should ask the NPDES permitting authority; a discharge into a municipal sanitary sewer needs no NPDES permit, but EPA says to ask the municipality about its own permit requirements (EPA).

Ohio EPA’s fact sheet on mobile power washing, which it marks as policy that is not law, shows how one state agency reads this (Ohio EPA). Its guidance:

• power washing wastewater is industrial wastewater, even when the soap is biodegradable;
• it cannot go into a storm sewer, and letting it run off to collect and evaporate in parking lots, driveways or catch basins is not acceptable;
• the options are to discharge it, with permission, to a publicly owned treatment works through a sanitary sewer at the job site, to collect it and arrange disposal at such a treatment works or an industrial waste disposal facility, or to get a permit to discharge it from the site to a creek, river or other water body.

Outside Ohio, ask the questions EPA names: the NPDES permitting authority about a storm sewer, and the municipality about its sanitary sewer.

Three pressure washing billing mistakes that delay payment

1. Sizes the customer can’t check. “House wash” with one price and no area or stories invites a tape measure and a phone call.
2. Extras done without a yes. Treating rust on a wall or washing a second patio that wasn’t quoted, then billing it, starts an argument. Get approval first, then bill it on its own line.
3. Leaving before collecting. An invoice sent days later competes with the next rain and a customer who has already forgotten how dirty the driveway was.