Tilers: square metres in, invoice out.
Tiling is measured work, priced per square metre, and paid in stages. Which means three numbers per job — the area, the rate and what has actually been paid so far — and all three usually live on the back of a cement bag.
Orbit is in development. Join the waitlist and we WhatsApp you when it opens.
fixed tiling at job on 1st avenue. charged 3800.
Tracking that now ✅
invoice it
Invoice #0042 drafted — R3,800.00, 14 days. Tap to send.
ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE
Where it goes
What costs a tiler money after the job.
Stage payments drift
Half up front, half on completion is easy until the job runs over two weeks and a change is agreed in the middle. Then nobody is sure whether the second payment covers the extra bathroom or not, and the conversation happens after the work is done.
Adhesive, grout and wastage are invisible
You buy for the job, over-buy on purpose, and carry the surplus to the next one. Unless the buying is written against a job as it happens, every job looks like it used exactly what it needed, and none of them tell you your real margin.
The measurement is the price, and the measurement is on paper
Twenty-two square metres at R280 is the whole invoice. If the number lives on a photograph of a notebook page, then so does your billing.
What Orbit does about it
One message, at the end of the job.
Orbit is being built so a tiler can say the job in the way a tiler says it — the address, the area and the money — and have that become a record instead of a note. "fixed tiling at job on 1st avenue. charged 3800." is a complete instruction as far as Orbit is concerned: it makes the job, attaches the amount, and marks it done.
From there the invoice is a reply away. Orbit drafts it with the customer and the amount already on it, and you send it before you have washed the tools. The thing that usually costs a tiler money is not the rate — it is the fortnight between finishing and invoicing, during which the customer's enthusiasm cools and your memory of the extras fades.
Materials work the same way. Tell Orbit what you bought and roughly which job it was for, and it sits against that job rather than in a shoebox. Over a few months that is the difference between knowing your rate is right and hoping it is.
What it keeps for you
- Each job with the area, the rate and the amount charged
- Adhesive, grout and tile bought against the job that used it
- Draft invoices for stage payments and final accounts
- A running list of what is still owed on which address
Orbit drafts. You send.
Questions
Tilers ask us this.
Can I record a job by square metres instead of a total?
Say it the way you priced it — "22 sqm at 280" — and Orbit is being built to carry both the measurement and the total onto the invoice, so the client sees the basis rather than one number.
How do deposits and final payments work?
Tell Orbit what was paid and when, and it keeps the balance against the job. Split invoicing for stage payments is planned for launch; anything not in the first release will be marked as roadmap on this site rather than implied.
What if the job runs longer than quoted?
Add the change as its own line — "extra 6 sqm in the guest bathroom, 1680" — on the day it is agreed. The value of doing it in the moment is that the client's memory and yours are still the same.
Does Orbit work if I have two or three teams out?
Multiple people on one Orbit account is on the roadmap, not in the first release. The waitlist form asks how you work so the early releases are shaped around the answers rather than around a guess.
Orbit for other trades
Orbit for tilers.
Orbit is being built now. The list is free, it commits you to nothing, and founding pricing is locked for the people on it.