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T&M billing has two halves and this template keeps them apart: a labor table (date, worker, hours, rate) and a materials table (item, cost, markup) — with the markup math built into the Excel version and a receipts-attached checkbox, because on T&M work the receipts arethe invoice's credibility.
A T&M invoice is only as strong as the agreement behind it. Before any work starts, the client should have in writing: the labor rates by role (lead, helper, sub trades if they pass through you), the materials markup as a stated percent, the billing rhythm (weekly, biweekly, monthly), and what counts as billable time — drive time and supply runs included or not, named either way. Every one of those is a friendly sentence before the job and an argument after the third invoice.
Then the invoice becomes boring, which is the goal: the same rates the agreement named, applied to documented hours and documented receipts, on the promised rhythm. Boring invoices get paid. Surprising ones get meetings. (A cap or not-to-exceed clause is common on bigger T&M work — whether to offer one is a business call, and how to word it is a lawyer call, not a template's.)
Not in the template — in the capture. Fixed-price jobs can eat a missing receipt quietly (your margin pays). On T&M the missing receipt is money you simply never bill: the client owes actual costs, and a cost you cannot show is a cost you eat. Same for the half-hour that never made a timesheet. T&M rewards contractors with airtight capture and quietly taxes everyone else — the general contractor invoice template is the right tool for fixed-price work, but this one only pays off if the inputs are complete.
When to bill which way, in one breath: fixed price when the scope is knowable and you want to be paid for estimating well; T&M when the scope genuinely is not knowable — exploratory demo, water damage, "while you're in there" work — and pretending otherwise would just pad the fixed bid with guess-insurance. Clients accept T&M most readily when the documentation habit above is visible from invoice one: rates they recognized, hours they can picture, receipts they can check.
That is the honest pitch for doing this in an app instead of a spreadsheet eventually: hours land on the job from GPS clock-in, receipts are photographed at the counter, and the T&M invoice assembles itself with the proof attached. Free forever for 3 projects and 50 receipts a month — free on the App Store. The template stays free either way.
An invoice that bills actual labor hours at agreed rates plus actual material costs (usually with a stated markup), instead of one fixed price. It is how T&M and cost-plus arrangements get billed — and it lives or dies on documentation, which is why this template itemizes both halves.
List each purchase with its cost and apply the markup your agreement states — the Excel version does that math per line. Then back it with the receipts. A materials line a client can check against a receipt photo is a materials line nobody argues about.
If your agreement bills materials at cost plus markup, yes — receipts are the proof that "cost" means cost. The template carries a receipts-attached checkbox on purpose. Attaching them turns billing disputes into thirty-second confirmations.
Close cousins. T&M typically bills labor at set rates plus materials; cost-plus bills all actual costs plus a fee or percentage. Both need the same discipline: every hour and every receipt captured and shown. Our cost-plus invoicing page covers that model in full.
Weekly or biweekly on open-ended work, on a rhythm the agreement names up front. T&M invoices age badly — a month of unbilled hours stops being an invoice and becomes a negotiation. Small, regular, well-documented invoices keep the number familiar and the payments moving.
Yes — no email, no signup, use it forever. We build an app that does this automatically (hours from GPS clock-in, receipts photographed to the job, the invoice assembled with proof attached); the template is free whether or not you ever try it.