How to Get Paid for Tile Installation Work, Down to the Grout

Short answer: To get paid for tile installation work, bill against things that can be photographed. Take a deposit sized to the tile at square footage plus pattern waste — roughly 7 to 10 percent on a straight lay, 15 to 20 percent on diagonal or herringbone — plus setting materials, membrane, and edge profile by the linear foot. Draw again when the substrate is prepped and the shower has passed its flood test, and collect the balance at grout and silicone.

A tile job is unusual in one way that decides how the money moves: the customer cannot see most of what they are paying for. Waterproofing disappears under the first sheet, mortar coverage disappears under the first tile, and the flatness work that made a large-format floor possible is invisible by the time anyone walks on it. Everything below is about making the buried work billable. What goes on the document itself is in what to include on an invoice.

Why does a tile job stall on the last five percent of the labor?

Because the last five percent is the only part the customer has been waiting to see.

Grout, silicone at the change-of-plane joints, the edge profile at the outside corner, and the haze wipe are a small share of the hours and the entire share of the appearance. A shower that is fully set but ungrouted looks unfinished to everybody except the person who set it, and that gap is exactly where a homeowner decides to hold the balance.

Cure time makes it worse. Mortar needs to set before grout, grout needs to cure before sealing or water, and a shower needs its own cure before it gets used. Three days can pass where nothing visibly happens on a job that is nearly complete. If your payment schedule has no draw between “tile is set” and “everything is done,” you are financing that silence.

What should the tile deposit actually cover?

The material order, itemized. Show it as a list, because a list is arithmetic and a percentage is an opening offer.

Start with the field square footage, then add waste based on the layout, since the offcut from an angled cut is usually not reusable anywhere.

Layout	Typical waste allowance	What drives it
Straight or stack bond	About 7 to 10 percent	Perimeter cuts only
Running bond or offset	Around 10 percent	Perimeter plus the start-of-row cut
Diagonal	About 15 to 20 percent	Every perimeter cut is angled and the offcut is scrap
Herringbone or chevron	About 15 to 20 percent, often more	Angled cuts at both ends, plus a picture-frame border
Mosaic and sheet goods	Sheet-based	Waste follows sheet size rather than square footage

Treat those as starting allowances, not a rule. A room full of jogs, closets, and short runs eats more, and a large open floor with square walls eats less. Order the whole job at once against one dye lot, because a second order weeks later can arrive a shade off and the fix is a re-tile.

Then add what a square-foot number never includes: setting mortar, membrane by the square foot or by the roll, cement board and fasteners, grout, sealer, and edge profile or bullnose by the linear foot. Read the mortar bag’s own coverage chart at the notch size you will actually use, because large-format tile and a half-inch notch consume material at a rate that has nothing to do with a 1/4-inch square notch on mosaic.

Price it from your delivered cost, then set the margin you need rather than reflexively adding a markup. The two are measured against different bases — markup against cost, margin against the price you charge — and a shop that adds 20 percent to material thinking it earned 20 percent is actually keeping about 17.

Who pays for what is under the tile?

The customer does, if the substrate was priced as its own scope before demo instead of appearing as a demand in week two. Substrate is the most-skipped line in tile bidding and the most expensive one to discover.

Break it out on the estimate as separate, named lines:

• Cement board or backer by the sheet, with fasteners and the seam treatment.
• Waterproofing by the square foot for a sheet or liquid membrane, with the corners, curb, and drain flange called out.
• Floor prep for flatness, priced by the square foot of patch and by the bag of self-leveler installed. This is where large-format tile becomes expensive: ANSI A108.02 tolerances tighten from 1/4 inch in 10 feet for tile with all edges under 15 inches down to 1/8 inch in 10 feet once any edge reaches 15 inches, and hitting the tighter number on a wavy slab is bags of material and a day of labor.
• Heat mat by the square foot, plus the thermostat, plus the electrician’s scope if it is not yours.
• Niches, benches, curbs, and shower pans, priced each. None of these belong inside a square-foot number.

Write a stated quantity into the base price for patch and leveler, name the unit price beyond it, and bill the overage with a photo and a measurement. The customer agreed to the arithmetic before the floor came out, so the conversation is a number rather than a fight.

Cutting is a cost line too. Dry-cutting porcelain generates respirable crystalline silica, and OSHA’s silica standard for construction specifies engineering controls such as a saw with continuous water feed. The water setup, the containment, and the cleanup are real hours on a small bathroom.

How should a bathroom or shower be split into draws?

At moments you can photograph, so no payment depends on how the customer feels that morning.

Milestone	What proves it	What it funds
Signing	Tile ordered against one dye lot, membrane and mortar purchased	Material at itemized cost
Demo and disposal complete	Photos of the bare studs or slab	Disposal and the demo day
Substrate set, waterproofing complete, flood test held	Photos of the filled pan with the timestamp, and the release	A share of the labor
Field and walls fully set	Walk the room before grout	The largest labor share
Grout, silicone, profiles, haze wipe, final clean	Signed punch list	Remainder, collected on site

The flood test is the strongest billing milestone in this trade and almost nobody uses it as one. Filling a pan, holding water for the period your inspector or manufacturer requires, and photographing it with the time visible is proof of the one thing the customer will never see again. Invoice against it the same day.

Treat the split as a shape rather than a formula. The right percentages follow your own cash position — how much material you float, what terms your supplier gives you, how many payroll days sit between draws — and several states regulate residential deposits and progress schedules above a dollar threshold, so check your contractor board before printing a number on a form.

Why does a small bathroom cost more per square foot than an open floor?

Because square footage is the unit you price in and cuts are the thing you actually spend the day on, and this is the single explanation that keeps a customer from renegotiating your number.

A 40 square foot bathroom floor has a toilet flange, a vanity toe kick, a door threshold, a curb, and four walls of perimeter cuts. A 400 square foot open living room has almost nothing but full tiles. The bathroom can carry more cuts than the living room in a tenth of the area, and the hourly yield collapses accordingly.

Wall tile runs slower than floor tile because gravity is working against you and every course has to hold its line. Ceilings and shower soffits are slower still. If your bid uses one square-foot rate for floors, walls, and a shower, the shower is being paid for by the floor.

Say all of that at the estimate, not when the invoice is questioned. A customer who understands that they are buying cuts and courses rather than area does not compare your bathroom number to somebody’s living-room number.

Which tile complaints stop a check, and how do I close them in advance?

Each of these is predictable, which means each one can be answered in writing before anyone raises it.

• Grout color. Wet grout and cured grout are different colors, and cured grout in a north-facing bathroom is a third one. Make a sample board, let it cure, get it approved, photograph the approval.
• Lippage. Set an allowable tolerance in the contract by reference to the industry standard for the tile size and joint width, so “it is not flat” has a definition instead of a feeling.
• The caulk line in the corner. Change-of-plane and perimeter joints are supposed to be flexible sealant rather than grout. Customers read that as a shortcut. Say it in the contract and again at the walkthrough.
• A hollow sound underfoot. Standards call for minimum mortar contact — commonly 80 percent in dry areas and 95 percent in wet areas and exteriors — and hitting it is a trowel-size and back-butter question. Quote the requirement so the number is the standard’s, not your opinion.
• Layout. Where the cut row lands, whether the field is centered on the drain or the door, and where the pattern breaks at a threshold are all decisions. Dry-lay it, photograph it, get a text back saying yes.
• Haze and sealing. State when sealer is applied, that a cure period comes first, and whether a second visit is included or billed.

How do I collect on the last day when the grout still has to cure?

By separating the work from the cure in the contract before the job starts.

Write it plainly: the balance is due on completion of grouting and sealant, and the sealer application or the post-cure inspection is a scheduled return visit that does not hold the balance. Otherwise every job has an unpaid tail that is one week long on paper and six weeks long in practice.

Run the final walkthrough as a payment event. Do it with the lights on, at a time of day when the room is lit, with a towel and a sponge in hand so anything minor gets fixed on the spot rather than written down. Write the punch list yourself, date it, get it signed or texted back, and hand over the invoice while you are standing in the room. Take payment by card, tap, or the QR link on the invoice, and issue the receipt the moment it clears — what is a receipt covers what that document has to carry.

What do I do when a tile invoice goes past due?

Run a fixed ladder on a calendar.

Day	Action
0	Final invoice handed over at the walkthrough, payment requested in the room
3	Text with the payment link, the signed punch list, and the layout approval attached
10	Call, offer to take the card immediately
15	Written notice that the workmanship warranty is suspended while the balance is open
20	Preliminary lien notice if your state’s clock is still running
30	Decide: lien filing, small claims, or write-off, and close the file either way

Most tile balances that go past thirty days were already in trouble at the layout stage, not the grout stage. The approval photos are what turn a disagreement back into an invoice. The wording for each step is in how to get clients to pay.

What records keep a tile job collectible?

Six: the signed estimate carrying the waste allowance and the substrate unit prices, the approved cured grout sample, the dry-lay layout photo with the customer’s yes attached, the timestamped flood test, the supplier tickets and dye lot numbers behind the deposit, and a numbered invoice per draw.

Keel keeps that paperwork on the phone and nowhere else — no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. The draw invoice goes out from the bathroom the same hour the flood test passes, with your own numbering, your logo and brand color, and a payment link printed as a QR code. Tile, mortar, membrane, and blade receipts get photographed at the counter and read on device by Apple Intelligence, so the material figure behind a deposit is backed by paper rather than memory, which is the habit described in a contractor receipt organizer. The ledger is append-only and hash-chained, so what was billed and when does not quietly change after a dispute starts. Freeboard shows cash minus the tax reserve, minus committed invoices, minus a buffer — the number that says whether you can float the next material order. Free covers unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How much waste should I add when ordering tile?

Around 7 to 10 percent for a straight lay, and roughly 15 to 20 percent for diagonal, herringbone, or chevron, because angled offcuts rarely get reused. Rooms with jogs, closets, and short runs push it higher, and large open rectangles pull it lower. Order the whole job against one dye lot, since a later top-up order can arrive a shade off and the only fix is re-tiling.

Should the deposit on a tile job include labor?

No. Size it to the material — tile plus waste, mortar, membrane, backer, grout, sealer, and edge profile by the linear foot — and leave labor to be earned. Unperformed labor collected in advance is the customer’s leverage in every later disagreement, and several states cap residential deposits by percentage or dollar amount, so confirm your state’s limit first.

Who pays for floor leveling under large-format tile?

The customer does, when it is priced as a conditional line before demo. Industry tolerances tighten from 1/4 inch in 10 feet to 1/8 inch in 10 feet once a tile has an edge of 15 inches or more, and meeting that on an existing slab takes patch and self-leveler. Name a unit price per square foot and per bag, include a stated quantity, and bill the overage with photos.

When is the final payment due on a shower tile job?

At the completion of grout and sealant, collected at the walkthrough. Write into the contract that any sealer application or post-cure inspection is a scheduled return visit that does not hold the balance, otherwise every job carries a multi-week unpaid tail. Do the walkthrough with the lights on, fix small items on the spot, and hand over the invoice in the room.

What do I do when a customer says the grout is the wrong color?

Point at the cured sample they approved. Wet grout, cured grout, and grout under a different bulb are three different colors, which is why an approved and photographed sample board is worth more than any explanation afterward. Without one, the conversation has no anchor and usually ends in a discount or a regrout you are not paid for.

Why does a small bathroom cost more per square foot than a big open floor?

Because you are paid by the area and you spend the day on cuts. A small bathroom packs a flange, a toe kick, a threshold, a curb, and four walls of perimeter into forty square feet, while an open room is mostly full tiles. Wall tile is slower than floor tile, and shower work slower still, so a single blended rate underprices the small room.

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This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.