How to Invoice After a Repipe: Plumbing Lines, Permit, Payment

Short answer: How to invoice after a repipe: bill the plumbing by fixture count and pipe footage rather than by the hour. Put the material on the face of the invoice — PEX, copper, or CPVC — then list fixtures connected, feet of hot and cold run, stop valves and hose bibs each, openings cut, patch scope and who owns it, permit and inspection fees, and the pressure test you held. Collect the balance the day the final inspection passes.

A repipe is the job where almost all of your work ends up behind closed walls, which makes the invoice the only lasting description of what the homeowner bought. Write it so a home inspector two years from now can read it and know what is in that house. The generic blocks belong on every bill and are covered in what to include on an invoice; everything below only shows up on a repipe.

What unit does a repipe actually bill in?

Fixtures and feet, with the material named. Hours are how you cost the job internally; they are not how you present it, because nobody buys hours of pipe.

Line	Unit	Why it is its own line
Fixture connections	Each	A lav, a toilet, a tub or shower valve, laundry, dishwasher, ice maker, and each hose bib are separate points of use with separate stub-outs
Hot and cold distribution	Linear foot, by size	The run from the main or manifold is where routing decisions show up
Stop valves	Each	Quarter-turn stops get replaced on a repipe, and the count is what nobody remembers later
Manifold and ports	Each	A home-run PEX layout has a physical port count that matches the fixture count
Main shutoff, PRV, hose bibs	Each	Bought and installed individually, priced individually
Water heater connections	Each	Flexes, unions, and an expansion tank if the system is closed

The material class belongs on the top line, not in a note. PEX-A, PEX-B, Type L copper, and CPVC are different prices, different labor, and different lifespans, and a homeowner who compared three bids chose partly on that word. Write it the way the customer will repeat it: “Repipe hot and cold, 14 fixtures, PEX-A home run from a 16-port manifold, Type L copper stub-outs at the water heater.”

Where do the quantities on the invoice come from?

From a walk of the finished house with a pad, not from the number in the bid.

Count fixtures room by room and say them out loud, including the ones people forget: the hose bib on the far side of the garage, the refrigerator line, the utility sink, the second laundry box. Take footage from what you pulled — coil labels minus what went back on the truck. Count fittings, stops, and escutcheons off the empty boxes before the trash bag leaves, and count openings by size before anything gets closed up.

Then reconcile against the supply house tickets. If the invoice says 260 feet of half-inch and the ticket shows two 100-foot coils opened, one number is wrong, and invoice day is the cheapest day to find out.

Which lines belong on a repipe that a service call never has?

These are the ones that separate a repipe invoice from a leaky-faucet ticket, and leaving them off is how a good week becomes a break-even one.

• Permit and inspection fees. Passed through at cost or with a stated handling fee, with the permit number printed on the invoice.
• Wall, ceiling, and floor openings. By count and size. Every stub-out on an interior wall is a cut.
• Patch scope. Its own line, addressed below, because this is where repipe invoices get argued.
• Old pipe handling. Removed, or abandoned in place and capped. Pulling galvanized out of a crawlspace is real labor; leaving it there is a decision that belongs in writing.
• Access and routing difficulty. Attic runs in July, a belly crawl, a two-story home where the second floor is fed from above, or a slab house re-routed overhead instead of through concrete.
• Dielectric transitions. Wherever copper meets galvanized, so the joint does not become the next service call.
• Pressure regulator and expansion tank. A PRV or a check valve makes the system closed, which is what drives the expansion tank requirement.
• Hammer arrestors at quick-closing valves, by the each.
• Temporary service restoration. If the family stayed in the house and you brought the water back each night, that is labor, not courtesy.
• Floor protection and cleanup. Drywall dust travels through a whole house.
• After-hours or emergency premium. If the repipe followed a failure and you started on a Saturday, it belongs on the invoice, not in your memory.

Who patches the walls, and how do I say so on the invoice?

Say it in one sentence, in the scope section, in words the homeowner already understands. Repipe disputes concentrate here more than anywhere else, because the customer sees the holes long after they stop thinking about the pipe.

Three honest positions, each written differently. Open-and-close means you cut, install, and leave the openings — write “openings left open, drywall repair by others” with the count. Patch to a finished, unpainted surface means someone returns to hang, tape, and sand, so name the finish level and say paint is by others. Full restoration means patch, texture match, and paint, priced as its own line with its own approval, because matching an older texture is a specialty.

Whichever you sold, print the opening count next to it. “Eleven openings cut, patched and textured, paint by others” ends an argument that “patching included” invites.

What changed between the estimate and the invoice?

Something always does on a repipe, because you are pricing what you cannot see until the wall is open.

What you found	What it added to the invoice
A fixture nobody mentioned, like a refrigerator line or a second hose bib	One fixture connection, plus the run to reach it
Shower valve cast into a tiled wall	Valve replacement and tile access, or a documented decision to reuse the existing valve body
Galvanized still feeding one bathroom	Additional demolition and a dielectric transition
Static pressure above the range the local code allows	Pressure regulator, plus an expansion tank because the system is now closed
A slab section that could not be re-routed as planned	Overhead re-route through the attic, in linear feet, plus more openings
Inspector called for something you did not bid	The corrective work, quoted before you did it

Each one gets a dated line with the quantity, who approved it, and how — a text, an email, or a signature at the truck. A change buried inside the fixture rate looks like a price hike; the same change shown as “added hose bib and 22 ft of cold, approved by text 6/12” reads as a record.

Do I bill at rough-in or after the final inspection?

Both, in a sequence a repipe hands you for free. This job has natural stopping points, and each one is a payment point.

A materials draw before the truck is loaded covers tubing, manifold, and fixtures. The rough-in draw comes after the pressure test holds and the rough inspection is signed, which is a verifiable event rather than an opinion and an easy one for a homeowner to say yes to. The balance is due when the final inspection passes and water is back at every fixture. Do not ask for it the afternoon before the inspector arrives; a failed inspection with your money already collected hands the customer leverage. Ask on the day he signs, standing in the kitchen, with the payment link showing as a QR code.

If they pay you on the spot, hand back a receipt rather than a second copy of the invoice; the difference matters more than most trades realize, and invoice vs receipt spells it out. If the job ran through a general contractor or an insurance claim instead, expect their terms, and start the sequence in how to get clients to pay the day it goes past due.

What do I hand over with the last invoice?

Six things, ten minutes to assemble if you collected them as you went.

The permit number and signed inspection card. The pressure test result, written as the pressure held and for how long, matching what the inspector required. Photographs of every open wall before patch with the run visible — the most valuable paperwork on a repipe, because it is the only time anyone will see that pipe. A labeled photo of the manifold showing which port feeds which fixture. The location of the main shutoff and any isolation valves. And a warranty statement separating your labor warranty from the manufacturer’s warranty on tubing and fittings, since those run different lengths.

Add one line on materials. Federal law under the Safe Drinking Water Act limits lead in anything that touches drinking water to a weighted average of 0.25 percent across wetted surfaces, and 0.2 percent for solder and flux, as EPA explains in its guidance on lead free pipes, fittings, fixtures, solder, and flux. Writing “all wetted materials lead free per SDWA” on the invoice takes four seconds and answers a question that gets asked at resale.

How do I set my own per-fixture price instead of copying one?

Build it once, from your own costs, and then a repipe quote takes fifteen minutes forever after.

1. Take one typical fixture apart. Feet of hot and cold to reach it, fittings, stop valves, escutcheon, strap and support, sleeve. That is your material per fixture, and it changes with the material class.
2. Add crew hours per fixture, by access. Open framing on a remodel, a crawlspace, an attic, and a finished two-story with plaster walls are four different numbers. Time them.
3. Multiply by your loaded hourly cost. Wage plus payroll burden, workers comp, liability, the truck, the van stock, and the license and continuing education.
4. Add the job-level lines separately. Permit, inspection, main shutoff, PRV, water heater connections, patch scope, and haul-off do not scale with fixture count and should not be hidden inside it.
5. Add overhead, totaled for the year and divided across the hours you actually sell.
6. Then add profit by dividing. Adding 30 percent to $6,000 of cost gives $7,800 and earns about 23 percent margin. To earn 30 percent, divide by 0.70 and price it at $8,571. Markup multiplies and margin divides, and confusing them is the most common quiet loss in the trade.

Any per-fixture range you read online is a sanity check and nothing more. Material class, house age, access, local permit costs, and season move repipe pricing enormously; the only number that keeps you solvent is the one built from your own hours.

What records make the invoice hold up two years later?

The counted fixture list, the supply tickets, the change-order texts, the wall photos before patch, the pressure test and inspection card, and a numbered invoice that repeats all of it.

Keel is an iOS app that keeps them on the phone, which is where they are created and where they usually get lost. No account, no bank connection, no cloud, no login, and an App Store privacy label reading Data Not Collected. The invoice goes out from the driveway in about a minute with your own numbering, your logo, your brand color, the fixture and footage lines you just counted, and a payment link the homeowner scans as a QR code while the inspector’s card is still on the counter. Supply house receipts for tubing, manifold, stops, and fixtures get photographed at the counter and read on device by Apple Intelligence, so the material behind a disputed line has paper attached — the point of a contractor receipt organizer. Trips to the supply house get logged as mileage. The ledger is append-only and hash-chained, so what you billed and when does not quietly change. At year end it exports as one file, or as an Accountant Pack of CSV plus a one-page summary PDF. Free is $0 with unlimited invoices, receipts, and mileage; Keel Pro is a one-time $249.99 Lifetime purchase, not a subscription.

Frequently asked questions

How do plumbers bill a whole-house repipe?

By fixture count and linear feet of distribution, with the material class named on the face of the invoice, plus job-level lines that do not scale with fixtures: permit and inspection, main shutoff, pressure regulator, water heater connections, openings cut, patch scope, and haul-off. Hours are used to cost the work internally, but a repipe presented as an hourly total invites a line-by-line argument.

Should a repipe invoice include drywall patching?

Only if you sold it, and the invoice has to say which version you sold. Openings left open with repair by others, patched to an unpainted finished surface, or fully patched, textured, and painted are three different prices. Print the number of openings cut next to whichever one you did, because that count is what the customer is looking at when they read the bill.

When should I collect payment on a repipe?

In three parts: a materials draw before the truck is loaded, a rough-in draw once the pressure test holds and the rough inspection is signed, and the balance the day the final inspection passes. Do not collect the balance before the inspector signs. A failed inspection with your money already collected turns a scheduling problem into a dispute.

What does PEX versus copper change on the invoice?

Price, labor, and the line items themselves. A PEX home-run layout adds a manifold with a port count that matches the fixtures and uses more tubing with fewer joints in the walls. Copper uses less footage and more fittings, and takes more skilled hours. Name the type — PEX-A, PEX-B, Type L copper, CPVC — because that word is what the customer compared between bids.

What proof should I give the homeowner after a repipe?

The permit number and signed inspection card, the pressure held and for how long, photographs of every open wall before patch with the run visible, a labeled photo of the manifold ports, the location of the main shutoff, and a warranty statement that separates your labor warranty from the manufacturer’s warranty on tubing and fittings. The wall photos are the most valuable, since nobody will ever see that pipe again.

How do I charge for extra work found during a repipe?

Quantify it in the same units as the original quote, quote it before doing it, and get a dated approval by text, email, or signature. Then show it on the invoice as its own line with the quantity and the approval date rather than folding it into the fixture rate. A hidden increase looks like a price hike, and the same amount shown as a counted addition reads as a record.

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