SideWRK is a welding invoice app for mobile and side-job welders.
This welding invoice app bills the hour you actually worked, with the steel, the wire and gas, and the drive on lines of their own. Five jobs a year are free; after that it’s $19 a month.
A torn-off spring hanger on a utility trailer. Every line of it is just below.
A trailer repair, quoted at $350
A 5×10 utility trailer with the front spring hanger torn off the driver-side frame rail and a crack started at the old weld. The customer towed it over.
| Grind out the crack, weld in new hangers and a fish plate (hrs) | 2.4 × $95 | $228 |
| Weld-on spring hangers (pieces) | 2 × $15 | $30 |
| 3/16 in. flat bar for the fish plate | $18 | |
| Spring bolts and lock nuts, grade 8 | $22 | |
| Welding wire and shielding gas | $32.50 | |
| Flap discs, wire wheel and primer | $19.50 | |
| Total the customer approves | $350 | |
| Materials cost (you), private | −$72 | |
| Est. profit | $278 |
Labor is $228 of the $350. The consumables are the line a welder forgets: wire, gas, discs and primer come to $52 here, and they cost you $30 whether the customer pays for them or not.
Bill the hour, not the arc
On a repair, the arc is lit for a small part of the time you’re there. The detailed mode of our welding cost calculator figures the arc is on about 35% of the labor time with MIG, 25% with stick and 22% with TIG, then adds 0.4 hours for fit-up and cleanup. The rest of the hour is grinding, fitting, moving the lead and cleaning up.
So the app bills welding by the hour. A new welding account starts at $95 an hour, the welding row of our 2026 Side-Work Rate Report, and you change it in Shop. Steel, wire, gas and discs go on as material lines, each with what the customer pays and a private cost only you see, so the profit under the total is what’s left after the gas bottle.
If you drove to the job, the drive goes on the bill too: type a trip charge as its own line, or tap Charge for the drive and enter the miles and your rate per mile. A mobile weld repair filed from a new account’s go-to jobs is written out as 1.5 hours at $95, steel, wire and shielding gas, and a $25 mobile trip charge: $220.
Welding & Fabrication
The grinder, the fit-up, the bead, the flap disc after.
Hours, steel, wire and gas.
The customer sees every line and approves the total before you strike an arc.
Six welding jobs and what they run
These are the welding numbers SideWRK’s demo and rate report are built on. About 70% of a typical welding ticket pays for your time; the rest is steel and consumables.
| Job | Typical total |
|---|---|
| Mobile weld repair | $220 |
| Equipment repair | $300 |
| Trailer repair | $350 |
| Cracked frame repair | $450 |
| Fabrication | $600 |
| Gate / railing | $800 |
| Anything else, by the hour | $95/hr |
A new welding account opens with three of them, mobile weld repair, fabrication and trailer repair, as go-to jobs on the Jobs board. Tap one to start an estimate, and change any price to yours.
Repair, fabrication, or installation
- Fixing a trailer or a skid steer bucket isn’t building work. Contractor licensing, in California for one, is about constructing, altering or repairing a building, a road or another structure. Install that railing on the porch, though, and you’re working on a structure. California licenses welding contractors as a classification of their own, and its small-job exemption ends when the job needs a building permit or reaches the state’s dollar limit.
- The printed estimate and invoice say where you stand. One notice says repair and fabrication of items is generally not contractor work, that installing fabricated metal on a building can be, and that with no license number shown you’re offering small repair and fabrication work only.
- Structural welding is a different job. Some building departments want the welder certified for it. Los Angeles, for one, requires welders to be qualified to American Welding Society standards and certified by the city for each type of welding involved, unless the work is done in an approved fabricator’s shop. The printed notice says SideWRK documents the work and doesn’t certify a weld.
- Hot work is on the paper too. The estimate and invoice you print carry a fire notice: clear or shield anything that burns within about 35 feet, keep a charged extinguisher close, and keep a fire watch during the work and for at least 30 minutes after. SideWRK doesn’t issue hot-work permits.
- When the total gets big enough that a license may be required and there’s no license number on your profile, the job screen shows a caution before you send it. It never blocks you.
A porch railing, quoted at $800
A 6-foot handrail with pickets for three concrete porch steps, built in the shop and painted black, then set on base plates and anchored on site.
| Measure, cut, fit, weld and paint in the shop (hrs) | 3.7 × $95 | $351.50 |
| Set, anchor and plumb the rail on site, one hour | $95 | |
| 1-1/2 in. square tube, 14 ga, 20 ft (sticks) | 2 × $70 | $140 |
| 1/2 in. square bar for pickets, 20 ft (sticks) | 3 × $28 | $84 |
| Base plates and wedge anchors | $38 | |
| Welding wire, shielding gas and grinding discs | $41.50 | |
| Primer and black enamel | $50 | |
| Total the customer approves | $800 | |
| Materials cost (you), private | −$210 | |
| Est. profit | $590 |
Labor is $446.50, a little over half. The steel and consumables bill at $353.50 and cost you $210, which leaves $590 before you pay anybody who helped you set it.
Who supplied the steel, and what you’ll stand behind
Every material line can be marked new, fabricated or customer-supplied, and anything other than new prints next to the line on the estimate, the approval page and the invoice. When the customer brings their own hinges or hitch, mark it customer-supplied and enter $0 for the price.
Each piece of work also takes a note that prints under it on the same three. The note field’s example for welding is “Repair weld — not certified for structural / DOT use.” Write what you will and won’t stand behind there, before the customer approves.
Price a weld from the bead
Our welding cost calculator runs two ways: time and material, or a detailed estimate from weld length, leg size and passes that works out the filler, the gas and the hours. Tick Mobile in the first mode and it adds a flat $200 trip fee; in the app the trip is a line you price yourself.
$19 a month, or $190 a year. Five jobs a rolling year are free and need no card. SideWRK takes no cut of what the customer pays you.
Start freeBefore you strike an arc
Can I bill wire, gas and grinding discs?
Yes. Add them as a material line with what the customer pays and a private cost only you see. The sample welding estimate already carries wire and shielding gas as its own line.
How do I charge for driving out to a job?
Type a trip charge as its own line, or tap Charge for the drive, enter the round-trip miles and your rate per mile, and the trip goes on the estimate as a line. For your taxes, put the round-trip miles in the job’s private Miles driven field too; those add up in Money → Tax wrap-up.
Can I mark a part the customer brought?
Yes. Set the line’s condition to customer-supplied and it prints as Cust-supplied next to the line, so nobody wonders later who bought the hitch.
Will the invoice say my weld is certified?
No. It records the work you did. The printed estimate and invoice carry a notice that SideWRK documents the work and doesn’t certify a weld or decide that it meets code.
What does the customer see when they approve?
Each line, the total and the note under the work, on their phone. Your private cost and your profit never show.