How to Invoice After Kitchen Cabinets Painting, Door by Door
Short answer: Invoice after kitchen cabinets painting by the pieces you actually finished, not by wall square feet. A 30-door, 8-drawer kitchen bills as 38 counted faces, plus face frame linear footage and box interiors if those were in scope. Give prep, bonding primer, each finish coat, filled and re-drilled hardware holes, and rehang their own lines. Put the cure window in writing, and collect the day the doors go back on the boxes.
Cabinets are the one painting job where nothing on the invoice comes off a tape measure of the room. The quantities come off a count sheet you built at teardown, and the argument you avoid later is the one about how a kitchen with less surface than a bedroom cost twice as much. The generic field checklist lives in what to include on an invoice; for the opposite measuring problem on the same job site, see how to invoice after ceiling painting. What follows is the cabinet-specific part.
What has to be on the invoice after a cabinet job?
Every line should trace back to something countable that the customer can verify standing in their own kitchen.
| Line | Unit | Where the quantity comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Doors — removed, labeled, sprayed both faces and all edges | per door | teardown count, photographed before anything moved |
| Drawer fronts | per front | same count sheet |
| Drawer boxes | per box | only if the customer bought the inside |
| Face frames, cabinet ends, and toe kicks | linear feet of frame plus per exposed end panel | tape at the frame, not at the wall |
| Box interiors | per opening | priced separately because the customer usually decides mid-job |
| Degrease and deglossing | per door plus linear feet of frame | logged hours, not a guess |
| Fill and re-drill hardware holes | per hole | two holes per pull, counted |
| Bonding primer | per coat over the counted faces | one coat unless the substrate said otherwise |
| Finish coats | per coat | two is standard, three on a color jump |
| Hinge and pull installation | per piece | say who supplied them |
| Masking and containment | per day on site | countertops, backsplash, appliances, floor path |
| Rehang, align, and adjust | per door | soft-close hinges take a second pass |
| Touch-up kit, cleanup, disposal | flat | labeled jar and filter waste |
Two numbers explain that whole invoice: how many pieces you handled, and how many times you handled each one. A customer can walk the run and count the pieces. Nobody can count “cabinet painting.”
Why is this job counted in doors instead of wall square feet?
Because area stops predicting the labor the moment the surface is a cabinet. A 12 by 14 bedroom with 8 ft ceilings gives you a 52 ft perimeter and 416 ft² of gross wall, and one person rolls it. The same house’s kitchen might hold only 200 to 250 ft² of sprayed cabinet surface and eat three times the days.
The reason is edges and handling. A five-piece shaker door has four inside corners on each face, plus four outer edges, and every one of them gets prepped, primed, sanded between coats, and sprayed. Each door is also carried twice, racked, flipped, labeled, and hung back on hinges that need adjusting. Raised panel and beaded profiles hold primer and slow the sanding pass. Grade your count by profile — flat slab, shaker, raised panel — and price the grades differently, because a 30-door slab kitchen and a 30-door raised panel kitchen are not the same job at all.
How do I price the prep and material without guessing?
Start from surface, then correct for how you applied it. Thirty doors averaging 12 in by 30 in is 2.5 ft² a face, so 150 ft² for both sides; add drawer fronts, frames, and ends and you are near 220 ft². At a label spread rate around 350 to 400 ft² per gallon per coat, primer plus two finish coats is a bit over 2 gallons of theoretical material.
Then correct it, because you sprayed. Material lost to overspray, to the rack, and to the inside of the box is real and never shows up on the can. The honest way to find your factor is to look at what you actually bought for your last five kitchens and divide by the faces you counted. That number is yours; the label’s number belongs to a roller on smooth drywall.
Price the rest from your own costs, in this order:
- Labor. Hours from your own timed jobs, multiplied by your loaded hourly cost — wage, payroll taxes, insurance, truck, and shop time, not take-home. On painting work, labor commonly lands around 60 to 70 percent of the price, and cabinets sit at the high end of that because of the handling.
- Material and sundries at your corrected consumption, not at label coverage.
- Overhead as a share of every job — phone, storage, the compressor you are amortizing, insurance.
- Profit, applied as a margin.
Markup and margin are the two numbers people mix up, and it costs money. If your material and sundries came to $310 and you add 40 percent markup, you bill $434 and keep $124, which is a 28.6 percent margin. To actually keep 40 percent you divide by 0.60 and bill $517. Do that arithmetic once on paper and pin it in the van.
Per-door prices get thrown around freely online. Treat them as a sanity check only. They swing with the door profile, oak grain versus MDF, spraying on site versus at a shop, and how busy your market is in the season you are quoting.
What usually changed between the estimate and the invoice?
Cabinet jobs drift in predictable ways, and each drift is a line with a date on it.
| What changed | Why it costs | How it appears |
|---|---|---|
| Doors nobody counted | pantry, broom closet, appliance panels, open shelf ends | added to the door count at the same per-door rate |
| Hardware went from knobs to pulls | old holes filled, hardened, sanded, new pattern drilled | per hole, both operations |
| Oak grain showing after the first coat | grain filling is a separate operation, not a heavier coat | per door, approved in writing |
| Interiors added | boxes get masked, sprayed, and dried on their own schedule | per opening |
| A door delaminated or a face frame was water damaged | repair or replacement, disclosed before you coated it | separate repair line with a photo |
| The countertops and backsplash stayed | more masking, more days of containment | additional containment day |
Approve each one the same way: text the price, wait for the yes, screenshot the thread, and reference the date on the invoice line. The invoice you send and the receipt you hand back after payment are different documents doing different jobs — see invoice vs receipt if a customer asks for “the receipt” before they have paid.
One more line that belongs in the estimate and on the invoice: if the house predates 1978 and you disturbed painted surfaces, the EPA renovation, repair, and painting rules govern how that work is done and documented, and the containment is not free.
What do I hand over on rehang day?
Rehang day is the delivery, so treat it like one.
- The teardown photos and the finished photos, shot from the same two corners. The teardown set is also your count sheet.
- Hardware bags, labeled by cabinet, returned or installed.
- A touch-up jar marked with the brand, product line, sheen, and the color formula sticker off the can.
- Hinges adjusted, doors aligned, bumpers on.
- A short written care note. Cabinet coatings are dry to the touch in hours and take a recoat window of roughly 6 to 16 hours, but block resistance — the property that decides whether a door can sit closed against a frame without sticking — arrives days later. The number that matters is the one on the data sheet for the product you actually sprayed, so quote that, not a rule of thumb.
- A warranty sentence that says what you cover: adhesion and workmanship on the surfaces you prepped. And what you do not: a chipped edge from a cast iron pan, an over-tightened hinge, and any door you documented as already delaminated.
How do I collect before I leave the kitchen?
Cabinets have a visible finish line. The doors go back on, the customer opens and closes a few, and the kitchen reads as new. That is the moment to settle, not next week.
Write the invoice at the counter while they are looking at the doors. Show the deposit that covered material as its own line so the balance reconciles to the number they already agreed to. Take card or transfer through a payment link they scan as a QR code on the spot.
The trap is agreeing to “settle up once it’s cured.” The cure window is exactly when someone notices a nib in the light and holds a four-figure balance over a ten-minute touch-up. Book the touch-up as a scheduled visit with a date, and keep it off the payment terms. If a balance still ages past the due date, run a written sequence rather than a series of hopeful texts — how to get clients to pay has the cadence.
What records keep a cabinet job defensible?
The count sheet, the teardown and finished photo sets, every change-order text with its date, the supply house receipts for primer and enamel, the product data sheet, and the invoice itself. That file answers a chargeback, a warranty question, and your Schedule C, and it is the same file either way — contractor receipt organizer covers how to keep it from becoming a glovebox problem.
Keel does that part on the phone you already carry. The invoice goes out from the kitchen in about a minute with your numbering, logo, and brand color, and a payment link rendered as a QR code the customer scans while the doors are still swinging. The receipt for two gallons of enamel and a box of sanding discs is photographed at the counter and read on the device by Apple Intelligence — no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label that says Data Not Collected. Trips to the paint store log as mileage, Freeboard shows cash minus tax reserve, committed invoices, and buffer, and the year exports as one file for whoever does your return. Free covers unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.
Frequently asked questions
How do painters charge for painting kitchen cabinets?
By the piece, almost always. Doors and drawer fronts are counted, face frames and exposed ends are measured in linear feet, and box interiors are quoted separately because customers add them late. Prep, primer, coat count, and hardware work carry their own lines. Room square footage is not used, because the labor tracks edges and handling rather than area.
Should every door be listed separately on the invoice?
No, but the count has to be. List doors as a quantity with the rate, and group them by profile if slab and raised panel were priced differently. A customer should be able to stand in the kitchen, count 30 doors and 8 fronts, and match your quantities. Individual door numbers belong on the count sheet and the photos, not on the bill.
What if the customer asks for the cabinet interiors after I have started?
Price it as its own line and get written approval before you spray anything inside a box. Interiors mean extra masking, extra dry time, and a schedule that no longer overlaps with the doors on the rack. Quote it per opening, text the number, and put the approval date on the invoice line so the total reconciles against the original estimate.
How soon can the customer use the kitchen normally?
Sooner than the coating is fully hardened, which is why the note matters. The doors are dry to the touch quickly and can usually be rehung on your schedule, but block resistance takes days, so no stacking dishes against door faces and no tape on the finish. Give the customer the actual figures from the product data sheet for what you sprayed.
Do I invoice before or after the doors are rehung?
After. Rehanging is the last thing the customer sees you do, and it is the moment the job reads as finished, so it is the best moment to collect. Write the invoice on site with the deposit shown as a credit line, take payment by card or transfer, and schedule any touch-up separately instead of leaving the balance open for it.
How do I handle a deposit for cabinet materials on the final invoice?
Show it as a negative line under the subtotal with the date it was paid, so the balance due is the only number left to read. Keep the deposit sized to actual material — primer, enamel, hardware, abrasives — rather than a round share of the job. Some states cap what a home improvement contractor may take up front, so check your own rule before setting a policy.
This article is general information, not professional or tax advice.
How do I actually get paid?
The part that gets you paid
An invoice in under a minute, on your iPhone.
Pick a client, add a line, send a clean PDF — or say it in words and confirm the draft. Your own pay-me link goes on as a QR code. Free to start; unlimited invoices and your own branding are Pro.
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