Subcontractor invoice template for Australia: what a builder needs on every claim

Getting a subcontractor invoice wrong in Australia rarely ends in a penalty. It ends in a payment that sits in the builder's query pile for three weeks. The office cannot match your invoice to a purchase order, or the ABN is missing, or the claim does not reconcile against the contract sum, so it drops out of the payment run and nobody rings to tell you.

The fix is not a prettier template. A subcontractor invoice is an ordinary Australian tax invoice with a handful of extra lines that let a builder's accounts payable match it to a job, a contract and a claim number without picking up the phone. Get those lines right and you move from the query pile into the next run.

This guide covers what goes on the invoice, how to lay out progress claims, variations and retention, what happens when the builder issues the invoice instead of you, and the mistakes that hold up money.

A few terms first. The ATO is the Australian Taxation Office. GST is the goods and services tax, 10% added to most sales by businesses registered for it. An ABN is an Australian Business Number, the 11-digit identifier for your business. A BAS is a Business Activity Statement, the form registered businesses lodge to report GST.

What a subcontractor invoice has to show

The tax side is set out on the ATO pages "Tax invoices" and "Setting up your business invoices", and restated on business.gov.au's "How to invoice". If you are registered for GST, a customer can legally demand a tax invoice for any taxable sale over $82.50 including GST, and you have 28 days to give it once asked. Everything in the table below is either part of those requirements or something a builder's office will ask for before it pays you.

Line on the invoice	Why it is there
"Tax Invoice", or just "Invoice" if you are not registered for GST	Tells the builder whether there is GST for them to claim.
Your legal or trading name and your ABN	Without the ABN the payer may have to withhold tax.
The builder's full legal name and ABN	Required once a claim reaches $1,000 (business.gov.au, "How to invoice"), and the paying entity is often not the name on the signboard.
Invoice number and issue date	Lets both sides track the claim, and lets you chase it by number.
Site address or job name	Their admin files by job, not by your business name.
Their purchase order, contract or job number	The single most common reason a trade invoice gets held up.
A description of each item with quantity and rate	Hours and rate for labour, quantities and unit rates for measured work.
GST, if you are registered	Shown per line or as a statement that the total includes GST.
Subtotal, retention if any, and the amount now due	The builder pays the amount now due, so make it the clearest number on the page.
Payment terms and bank details	Due date, BSB and account number.

Two of those lines are not tax requirements at all: the site reference and the purchase order number. They are the ones that decide whether you get paid this month. Put the builder's full legal name and ABN on every claim regardless of size and you never have to work out which invoices need the buyer's details.

The ABN line is the one that costs money

If you supply services to another business and your invoice does not quote your ABN, the paying business is generally required to withhold tax from the payment at the top marginal rate and send it to the ATO. You can claim it back at tax time. On a five-figure progress claim, that is a long time to be short.

The ABN also has to belong to the entity that holds the contract. If you signed the subcontract as a company or a trust, the invoice goes out in that entity's name with that entity's ABN, not in your own name. Builders check this, because their own records have to line up with what they pay.

If you are under the GST registration threshold and not registered, you still need the ABN. You simply do not add GST and you do not use the words "tax invoice". Invoicing without GST in Australia covers that version of the document, including what to write near the total so nobody emails you asking where the GST went.

Progress claims, variations and retention

A one-day job gets one invoice. Anything with a contract sum is usually claimed progressively, most often monthly, for work completed to date. That changes the shape of the document: you are not invoicing a job, you are claiming a slice of one.

What you are claiming	How to show it
Progress claim	Contract sum, value or percentage complete at this claim, less previously claimed, equals the amount for this claim.
Variation	Its own line with the variation number and the written approval reference, never folded into the base claim.
Day works	Date, hours, rate, and the docket or timesheet number so it can be checked against the site diary.
Materials and plant hire	Listed separately from labour, with any agreed margin shown the way the contract describes it.
Retention	A deduction under the subtotal with the percentage and the dollar amount, then the amount now due.

Three habits worth building.

Number your claims per job, in sequence, as well as giving each invoice its own invoice number. "Claim 4, job: Lot 18 Parkes Rd" tells a contract administrator in one line where it sits.

Never claim a variation that is not in writing. A text message from the site supervisor is writing. A verbal instruction is not, and it is the first thing to be forgotten when the job gets tight.

Keep a running retention ledger on the face of every claim: held to date, held this claim, total held. That total is what you chase at practical completion and again at the end of the defects period, and it is much harder to argue with when it has been printed on every claim all year.

One more thing to check before you rely on an invoice alone. Construction payments in Australia also sit under state-based payment claim rules, and the detail differs from state to state. If your claim needs to be a formal payment claim rather than an ordinary invoice, check what your own state requires, or ask the contract administrator what wording they expect.

When the builder issues the invoice instead of you

On some commercial jobs the head contractor values the work and issues the invoice itself, often off a quantity surveyor's assessment. The ATO calls this a recipient-created tax invoice, or RCTI, and its page "Recipient-created tax invoices" sets out the conditions, which include a written agreement between you and the builder and GST registration on both sides.

If a document like that turns up, treat it as a claim to check rather than a payment to celebrate. The quantities are the builder's reading of the job, not yours. Compare it against your own claim, raise any difference before it is paid, and file the RCTI with the job, because it is your record of that sale for GST and income tax.

GST on your claims

If you are registered for GST you add 10% to your taxable work and show the GST on the document. A GST-registered builder claims that back, so the GST is not a cost to them and being registered does not make you dearer.

The reverse is also true, and it surprises people: being unregistered does not make you cheaper to a builder, because there is no credit for them to claim on your invoice. Price on your rates, not on your GST status.

A busy run of jobs can tip a subbie over the GST registration threshold without them noticing. Business.gov.au ("Register for goods and services tax (GST)") sets it at $75,000 of GST turnover in a rolling 12 months, current or projected, and you have 21 days to register once you pass it or expect to. Check your rolling total after each big contract, not just at tax time, because registering late can mean the ATO treats past claims as GST-inclusive.

The free tax invoice generator sets the heading and the GST layout from whether you are registered, so you cannot accidentally issue a tax invoice with no GST on it. If you want the line items laid out the way a construction claim usually reads, start from the builder invoice template and change the trade wording to yours.

Paperwork that gets you paid faster

• Send the claim to the accounts address, and copy the person who engaged you. The supervisor is not accounts.
• One invoice per claim per job. Two jobs on one invoice guarantees a query.
• Attach the supporting paper: dockets, timesheets, variation approvals, and any compliance certificate the trade requires.
• Put the payment terms on the invoice, in words, with a due date. "Net 30" means nothing to a person paying 200 invoices.
• Diarise the follow up for the day after the due date, and chase by invoice number and job, not by "that job we did".

Common mistakes

Leaving the ABN off. The expensive one. See above.

Invoicing in the wrong name. Your trading name on the invoice and a company name on the subcontract is a mismatch their system will not accept.

Burying variations in the progress claim. The builder cannot approve what they cannot see, so the whole claim waits while one line is argued about.

Forgetting retention. If you invoice the full value and they pay less, you spend the year not knowing whether you have been underpaid or correctly retained.

Restarting invoice numbers on each job. Two invoices numbered 001 in the same quarter is a record-keeping problem for you and a duplicate-payment flag for them.

No site or purchase order reference. This is the single fastest way into the query pile.

Claiming past the contract sum. Approved variations lift it. Optimism does not.

Keeping the records

Keep every claim, docket, quote and written variation approval with the job it belongs to rather than scattered across a phone. Business.gov.au sets the general rule at five years for most business records, invoices included, and for a sole trader a numbered folder of PDFs per job is enough, as long as you can produce them if you are asked or if a claim is ever disputed.