How to Invoice After New Construction Drywall on a GC’s Job

Short answer: How to invoice after new construction drywall, on most jobs, is not really an invoice — it is a progress billing against a schedule of values. Split the contract into stock, hang, tape, coat, sand, and texture; bill percentage complete per phase; and reconcile board quantities against the delivery tickets, where a 4×8 sheet is 32 ft² and a 4×12 is 48 ft². Expect five to ten percent retainage held and a signed lien waiver traded for every check.

Repair work pays the day you sand. New construction does not, and pretending otherwise is how a drywall sub ends up funding a builder’s cash flow with a credit card. You are one line on a superintendent’s schedule, behind the electrician and ahead of the painter, and your money moves when the bank draw moves. The generic field list is in what to include on an invoice. This page is about the parts that only exist when a GC is on the other end.

What does a new construction drywall invoice actually have to be?

Whatever the contract says, and most contracts say something other than a plain invoice. Read the subcontract before the first sheet lands, because the billing format is usually buried in it.

Job size	Billing format	What the GC expects
Small builder, one house	Invoice per phase, or two invoices	Board count, phase complete, PO or lot number
Production builder, multiple lots	Invoice per lot, per phase	Lot number and plan number on every line
Commercial, single prime	Pay application against a schedule of values	Percentage complete, stored materials, retainage line
Larger commercial or public	AIA-style G702 with a G703 continuation	Notarized, with conditional waiver attached

Whichever form you use, these fields decide whether it gets paid this month or sits in a stack:

Field	Why it stops the check without it
Job name and lot or unit number	Production builders route by lot, not by address
Subcontract or PO number	No PO, no match, no payment
Period covered	Pay apps bill a window, not a job
Schedule of values line reference	Accounting matches your line to their budget code
Percentage complete per line	The number the super has to initial
Change orders listed separately, by CO number	An unnumbered extra is an unfunded extra
Retainage held to date	If you do not track it, nobody will
Waiver attached	Many GCs will not cut a check without one

How do I bill by phase instead of by finished job?

Split the contract into the phases you actually complete, put a dollar value on each one, and get that split approved before you start. That document is your schedule of values, and it is the difference between billing something at week three and billing nothing until the punch list clears.

Phase	Roughly what share of the contract it carries	Billed when
Stock and distribute	Small	Board is on site and moved to the floors
Hang	The largest single block	Board is on the walls and ceilings
Tape and first coat	Meaningful	Tape and bed complete
Second and third coat	Meaningful	Coats out
Sand and prep	Smaller	Ready for the finish spec
Texture and final clean	Smaller	Texture on, scrap out
Punch list	The last few percent	After the super walks it

Set your own percentages from your own labor hours per phase rather than copying a table. Time the last three jobs, see what share of crew hours hang actually took versus finishing, and weight the values that way. Front-loading the schedule so hang carries an unrealistic share is a well-known move and experienced GCs price it out of you at the next bid.

Stored materials get their own treatment. If forty thousand feet of board is stocked in the building but not yet hung, many contracts let you bill it as stored material, sometimes with a requirement that it is on site and insured. That single clause is what keeps you from carrying the supply house invoice out of pocket for six weeks.

Where does the board count on the invoice come from?

From the takeoff at bid, reconciled against the delivery ticket, and stated in the same unit both times. Board area, never floor area — every square foot of gypsum on walls plus ceilings, with a waste factor on top.

Item	The unit	How the number is built
Board area	ft² of gypsum	Wall runs × height, plus ceiling planes, plus soffits and returns
Sheets	count	Board ft² ÷ 32 for 4×8, ÷ 48 for 4×12, plus waste
Waste	percent	Typically 10 to 15 percent, higher on cut-up plans
Corner bead	linear feet	Every outside corner, every archway, every bulkhead edge
Screws	pounds	Per thousand square feet, from your own history
Tape	linear feet	Per thousand square feet, from your own history
Compound	boxes or buckets	Per thousand square feet, per coat
Ceilings	ft², separate line	Overhead work is slower than wall work

Two habits keep the reconciliation honest. Bill ceilings on their own line at their own rate — overhead hanging is slower, harder, and takes more bodies than walls, and burying it inside a blended wall rate means every ceiling-heavy plan quietly loses money. And keep the delivery tickets, because when the GC’s estimator questions a sheet count six weeks later, a stack of tickets from the supply house settles it in a minute.

On a cut-up plan, 4×12 sheets are worth the handling: fewer butt joints, and butt joints are the slow, visible seams. That decision belongs in your bid, but it also belongs on the invoice, because “hung 4×12 to minimize butt joints” is the sentence that explains why your finish looks better than the last sub’s.

How do finish level and board type change the number?

More than anything else on the page. The GA-214 levels are the biggest single variable in a drywall price, and they are the one thing owners and builders routinely leave vague.

Spec	What it means	Where it shows up
Level 2	Tape embedded, one coat over fasteners	Garages, above ceilings, behind cabinets
Level 3	Two coats, no field treatment	Heavy texture, or surfaces getting a wall covering
Level 4	Three coats, sanded, field untouched	The standard under flat paint
Level 5	Level 4 plus a skim coat over the entire surface	Gloss or semi-gloss paint, dark colors, critical lighting

Level 5 is not a small upgrade. It is another full pass over every square foot with compound, plus the sanding that follows it, and the finish schedule on the drawings is where it should be stated. When the drawings say Level 4 and the great room has an eighteen-foot window wall that will make every seam visible at four in the afternoon, raise it in writing at bid, not after the painter complains. On the invoice, break Level 5 areas out as their own line with their own square footage so nobody can later claim it was included.

Board type belongs on the invoice for the same reason:

Board	Where it goes	Why the line matters
1/2 in regular	Standard walls	The base rate
5/8 in Type X	Garage separations, corridors, shafts, rated assemblies	Code-driven, heavier, slower, costs more
Mold and moisture resistant	Baths, laundry, behind tile substrates	Priced above regular board
Sag-resistant ceiling board	Ceilings on 24 in centers	Prevents the callback you cannot fix later
Cement or fiber board	Wet areas under tile	Different material, different labor entirely

What are retainage and lien waivers doing to my cash?

Retainage is the slice the GC holds back from every payment until the job closes, commonly around five to ten percent, and capped by statute in a number of states. On a job where your margin is thinner than the retainage percentage, the held money is your entire profit, sitting in someone else’s account until the certificate of occupancy.

Track it on every billing as its own line. Amount earned, retainage held this period, retainage held to date. Subs who do not carry that line forward routinely discover at closeout that they cannot reconstruct what they are owed.

Lien waivers come in four flavors and mixing them up is expensive:

Waiver	You are saying
Conditional progress	I waive rights for this payment, if and when the check clears
Unconditional progress	I waive rights for this payment, paid or not
Conditional final	I waive everything, if and when the final check clears
Unconditional final	I waive everything, period

Sign conditional waivers with a progress billing. Sign an unconditional waiver only against money already in your account. Several states publish statutory waiver forms, and where they do, a GC’s custom form that reaches further than the statutory one is worth a phone call before you sign it.

What changed between the bid and the billing?

New construction changes constantly, and the difference between a profitable job and a bad one is almost never the bid. It is whether the changes got numbered.

Bid assumed	What happened	How it gets billed
8 ft ceilings throughout	Plan revised to 9 ft in the main level	Added board area, priced per ft², signed CO
Level 4 throughout	Owner specified Level 5 in three rooms	Level 5 line with its own square footage
Clean framing	Bowed studs and out-of-plane joists	Furring and shimming, hourly, with photos
Hang after rough-in complete	Plumber cut holes after hang	Patch labor, backcharged to the responsible trade
Dumpster provided	No dumpster on site	Scrap haul-off as a line, with the disposal receipt
Standard board	Rated assembly required 5/8 Type X	Material difference plus the slower hang

Price a change order from its real cost, not by tacking a round number on the material. This is where markup and margin quietly diverge: if the extra costs you $2,000 in labor and board and you add 15 percent, you invoice $2,300 and your margin on that change is 13 percent, not 15. To hold a true 15 percent margin, divide by 0.85 and bill $2,353. On one change order the gap is small. Across thirty lots it is a truck payment.

Get the signature before the work. A superintendent’s text message saying go ahead, with your number in the thread, has settled more disputes than any verbal promise ever will.

How do backcharges end up on my invoice?

They arrive as a deduction you did not authorize, usually at the worst moment. Common ones: site cleanup you were supposed to do, damage to another trade’s work, a missed schedule date that cost the GC a crew, or a shared dumpster you overfilled.

Protect against them the same way every time. Photograph your work area at the end of each phase. Haul your own scrap and keep the disposal ticket. Document damage that was there before you started — a scraped door jamb, a bent corner from the framer — before your crew is standing next to it. When a backcharge appears anyway, ask for the backup: the invoice, the labor ticket, the photo. About half of them do not survive that question.

When do I actually get paid on a new construction job?

Later than you want, and on a calendar that is not yours. Learn the GC’s draw cycle in the first week and build your billing around it.

Question to ask the office	Why it decides your cash flow
What day is the pay app cut-off?	Miss it by one day and you wait a full cycle
Net how many days from approval?	Approval and receipt are different dates
Is there a pay-when-paid clause?	Your money then depends on the owner’s draw, not the GC’s
Who signs off on percentage complete?	Usually the super, and he has to be on site to do it
What waiver form, and does it need a notary?	A missing notary stamp resets you a week
When is retainage released?	Substantial completion, final completion, or CO

Submit the day the phase closes, not the day the cut-off arrives. The pay app that lands first gets reviewed first. If a payment goes past terms, the escalation ladder is the same one described in how to get clients to pay, with one addition specific to construction: your lien rights run on a statutory clock that starts at first furnishing or last furnishing, depending on the state, and it does not pause because the GC keeps saying next week.

What should I keep after the pay application goes in?

Every billing and the schedule of values it references, the signed change orders, the delivery tickets, the waivers you signed and the copies you got back, the disposal receipts, and the phase photos. Keep them by lot, not by month, because that is how a dispute gets argued. At year end the GC issues you a Form 1099-NEC for what they actually paid, and the IRS page on Form 1099-NEC is worth a read before you compare their number to yours — retainage held, backcharges deducted, and a check that landed in January will all make the two figures differ, and you need to know why.

Keel is an iOS app that runs entirely on the device: no account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label that reads Data Not Collected. On a production site that means the phase billing gets built at the truck with your logo and your own numbering, the supply-house ticket gets photographed at the counter and read on the phone by Apple Intelligence, and the runs between lots get logged as mileage. Freeboard shows cash minus tax reserve minus committed invoices minus your buffer, which on a job carrying retainage is the only number that tells you what you can actually spend. Year end exports as one file, or as the Accountant Pack: a CSV plus a one-page summary PDF. The ledger is append-only and hash-chained. Free is $0 with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 lifetime purchase, not a subscription. The small-repair side of the same trade is covered in how to invoice after ceiling repair drywall.

Frequently asked questions

Do drywall subs invoice or submit a pay application?

It depends on the contract. A small builder running one house usually accepts an invoice per phase. Commercial work and larger production builders want a pay application against an approved schedule of values, sometimes on an AIA-style form with a continuation sheet and a notarized signature. Read the subcontract before the first sheet is delivered, because the required format is almost always written into it.

How much retainage is normal on drywall work?

Around five to ten percent of each payment is common, and several states cap the percentage by statute for private or public work. The critical part is tracking it: show amount earned, retainage held this period, and retainage held to date on every billing. Subs who do not carry that running total forward often cannot prove what they are owed at closeout.

Should hang and finish be separate lines on the invoice?

Yes, and ceilings should be separate again. Hanging and finishing are different crews, different rates, and different amounts of time per square foot, and finishing carries the level spec that drives the price. Splitting them lets you bill each phase as it completes instead of waiting for the whole scope, and it makes a Level 5 upgrade visible as its own quantity.

What is the difference between a conditional and unconditional lien waiver?

A conditional waiver takes effect only when the payment actually clears. An unconditional waiver takes effect the moment you sign it, whether you get paid or not. Sign conditional waivers alongside progress billings, and sign an unconditional waiver only after the money is in your account. Several states publish statutory forms, and a custom form that goes further deserves a look before signing.

How do I bill drywall board that is stocked but not hung?

As stored materials, if the contract allows it. Many subcontracts permit billing material delivered to the site and properly stored, sometimes requiring proof of insurance or that the material is segregated. Attach the delivery tickets to that line. Without a stored-materials provision you carry the supply house invoice yourself until the hang phase bills, which on a large job is real money.

What happens if the GC backcharges me for cleanup?

Ask for the backup before you accept the deduction: the invoice, the labor ticket, the dated photo. Haul your own scrap and keep the disposal receipt so you can answer immediately. Photograph your area at the end of every phase. A documented sub beats an undocumented backcharge most of the time, but only if the photos exist before the dispute starts.

---

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