Excavation Contractor Invoice Template

What This Template Includes

• Job site address and lot or site reference
• Contract, bid or purchase order reference
• Scope: trenching, foundation dig, site grading, clearing or backfill
• Equipment by machine and size, hours or days, and whether an operator is included
• Mobilization and demobilization (equipment transport)
• Hauling: loads or truck hours, and where spoil was taken
• Fill and aggregate: material, tons or cubic yards, delivered rate
• Disposal or dump fees at cost, with ticket numbers
• Compaction and finish grading
• 811 locate ticket number and date
• Trench protection used (sloping, shoring or trench box rental)
• Approved change orders, including unforeseen rock, debris or water
• Permit numbers and fees passed through
• Earlier deposit or progress invoices, and retainage held

How to Create Your Excavation Contractor Invoice

Recommended Payment Terms

Payment terms follow the contract and the client. Work for a general contractor or builder is usually billed after each phase or monthly, often on Net 30, and may have retainage held back until completion; quote the subcontract or purchase order number on every invoice and keep a running total of the contract, change orders, billed to date and retainage in the notes. Small jobs for property owners, such as a single trench or a driveway base, are often billed on completion and due on receipt or within 7 days. Some states limit deposits on residential work: California, for example, caps the down payment on a home improvement contract at $1,000 or 10% of the contract price, whichever is less, and forbids collecting payment ahead of work done or materials delivered. Price unforeseen conditions in the contract (for example an hourly rate for rock breaking) so a change order can be billed without renegotiating the whole job.

Need help writing payment terms? Read our guide to invoice payment terms for best practices and templates.

Tax Information

How excavation is taxed depends on the state and on who the client is. In Washington, construction work for property owners is a retail sale taxed on the whole contract price. In other states the contractor pays sales or use tax when buying materials such as gravel and pipe and does not charge sales tax on the contract, and fill sold and delivered without installation may be treated as a sale of goods. Check your state revenue department's guidance for contractors before adding tax, and keep your material and disposal receipts. InvoiceQuickly applies one tax percentage to the whole invoice and copies your saved tax ID to new invoice PDFs; add your licence number in the notes, and put lines with different tax treatment on separate invoices. This is not tax advice; check with your tax authority or an adviser.

Industry context (2026)

Two official requirements show up on a well-built excavation invoice. Before digging, the Common Ground Alliance's 811 service, the free national before-you-dig service, says anyone who plans to dig should contact 811 a few business days before starting, so utility owners can mark their lines with paint or flags; state one-call laws set the exact notice periods. During the work, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration's excavation standard, 29 CFR 1926.652(a)(1), requires each employee in an excavation to be protected from cave-ins by an adequate protective system unless the excavation is made entirely in stable rock, or is less than 5 feet deep and a competent person finds no indication of a potential cave-in; OSHA's guidance sums this up as slope, shore or shield, with trench boxes as the shield. Recording the 811 ticket and the protection used costs one line in the notes and answers the first questions a general contractor or owner will ask if anything goes wrong. On residential jobs, state contractor rules can also limit what you bill up front, as California's $1,000 or 10% down payment cap on home improvement contracts shows.

Worked example

Common mistakes to avoid

Invoicing Tips

• 1Name each machine by type and size ('35,000 lb excavator with operator') rather than 'equipment'. Clients compare rates by machine class, and the size explains the rate.
• 2Bill mobilization and demobilization as their own line. Folded into hourly rates, transport looks like inflated machine time.
• 3Copy load counts and ticket numbers from haul and dump tickets, and keep the tickets. 'Haul-off, 18 loads, tickets 4411 to 4428' is hard to dispute.
• 4Put the 811 ticket number and the date the marks were confirmed in the notes. It records that utilities were located before you dug.
• 5If you hit rock, debris or groundwater, stop, photograph it, and get a written change order before billing the extra time as its own line.
• 6Show trench protection as a line when it is a real cost, such as a trench box rental at cost, rather than burying it in the hourly rate.

Related Resources

• Contractor invoicing: deposits, progress payments, retainage and change orders
• Construction invoicing guide
• Construction invoice example
• Progress billing guide
• Subcontractor invoicing
• All invoice templates

Frequently Asked Questions