Free drone services invoice generator
Bill the flight, the processing and the licence separately — the parts of drone work clients most often assume are one price.
Build your drone services invoice
Prefilled with a construction progress mapping job. Swap in your flights, deliverables and licence, then download.
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What is a drone services invoice?
A drone services invoice covers three things clients tend to conflate: time in the air, time at the desk, and the right to use what you produced. Separating them is the difference between a healthy rate and a job that pays for the flight and donates the rest.
Processing is usually the larger half. A two-hour mapping flight becomes six hours of photogrammetry, orthomosaic generation and quality checking, and the deliverable list — orthomosaic, point cloud, DEM, annotated report — is what makes that time visible.
Because the pilot is the certificate holder, the invoice is also a compliance record. Part 107 number, aircraft registration, and any airspace authorisation obtained for the flight belong on the document, particularly on commercial and insurance-adjacent work.
What to include
Everything below is already in the generator above — this is what each part is for.
Flight date, site and mission type
Where you flew, when, and whether it was mapping, inspection or cinematography.
Flight time or day rate
Time on site or a day rate, with the number of flights or batteries where relevant.
Processing and deliverables
Photogrammetry, editing and QC time, with each deliverable named.
Pilot certificate and aircraft
Your Part 107 number and the aircraft registration used.
Airspace authorisation
LAANC or waiver reference where the flight needed one.
Licence and usage rights
What the client may do with the footage or data, and for how long.
Three steps to a finished PDF
Enter the mission
Client, site, flight date and mission type, with your certificate details.
Bill flight, processing and licence
Flight time or day rate, processing hours, deliverables, then the usage licence.
Download and send
Send the PDF with the deliverables, or invoice at delivery of the data package.
Day rates, processing and licensing your data
Price the desk work, not just the flight
Clients see a drone in the air for ninety minutes and price the job accordingly. Orthomosaic processing, point cloud cleanup, volumetric calculations and report writing routinely take three times the flight time. Put processing on its own line with hours shown and the ratio becomes obvious and uncontroversial.
Licence the output deliberately
- Define the use: internal, marketing, broadcast, resale — each is worth a different amount.
- Set a term and a territory rather than transferring everything by default.
- Price additional uses as add-on lines when the client comes back for them.
Put compliance on the invoice
Part 107 certificate number, aircraft registration, and the LAANC authorisation or waiver reference for controlled airspace. On construction, insurance and utility work this is often required by the client's own risk process, and having it already on the invoice saves a round of emails. Insurance certificate details are worth including for the same reason.
Three mistakes that delay payment
Flight time only
Processing is usually the bigger cost. Invisible on the invoice means unpaid.
Full rights by default
Handing over unlimited use gives away the asset you can licence again.
No certificate or authorisation reference
Commercial clients need it for their own compliance file before they can pay.