Free Material List Template
A material list is what you hand the supplier or the crew. It carries descriptions and quantities and deliberately no prices, because the person picking the order does not need to know your margin and the customer standing next to them definitely does not.
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What belongs on a material list
- The job name and the delivery address, which is often not your office
- A list number and the date it needs to be on site
- One line per material, described the way the supplier catalogues it
- Quantity and unit, written so nobody has to guess whether 12 means boxes or pieces
- Waste factor already included, or stated separately so it is not added twice
- Delivery instructions: gate code, where to stack it, who signs for it
- No prices, which is the entire point of a separate document
A finished material list, filled in
A bathroom remodel, three days into the job, written for the tile and building supply house. Ten lines, one number on each, and no price anywhere on the sheet. What makes this list work is not the quantities, which anybody can count, but the specificity: size, grade, finish and color on every line, so that what arrives on the truck is what the tiler is waiting for.
- There is no price column, and that is the pointThe table has DESCRIPTION and QUANTITY, and the description gets the width the two money columns would have taken. A list with prices on it is a quote, and this sheet is going to a supply house counter, into a truck, and onto a job site where the client walks past it. Every one of those is a place where your cost is nobody's business. Order the same list with prices and you have handed your margin to whoever picks the paper up.
- QUANTITY is the only number on the sheet, so the unit lives in the descriptionSheets, tubs, rolls, pails, square feet, bags, lengths. The quantity column prints 9, 1, 2, 1, 46, 92, 6, 2, 4, 1 and nothing else, so a line that says only "cement backer board" and 9 is a line somebody at the counter has to telephone about. Nine sheets, nine boxes and nine pallets are three different orders.
- Size, grade, finish and color on every line12 x 24 matte in Ashen Gray. 3 x 12 gloss white. Modified thinset, white, not gray, because it is going under a light floor. 1-1/4 inch screws, not 1 inch. This is the half of a material list that decides whether the tiler works on Monday, and it is the half that gets written loosely because the person writing it already knows what they mean.
- Twelve percent over the measurement, ordered onceThe floor measures 41 square feet and the list asks for 46. The wall measures 82 and the list asks for 92. Running out of tile halfway through means a second dye lot, and a second dye lot on the same floor is visible from the door. The waste allowance is not generosity, it is the difference between one delivery and a reorder that arrives four days later.
- NEEDED BY is a date, and it is not the date work starts26 September against a list written on 22 September. Four days is what the supply house needs to pull an order and route a truck, and the tile setter starts on the 28th. A list that says as soon as possible is a list that sits behind the ones with dates on them.
- The delivery instructions are where the money is actually lostWhere the truck puts it, who is on site and when, the thirty minute call, the dye lot check before the driver leaves, and one line saying what may not be substituted. Every one of those is a job that went wrong once. A driver who tips 92 square feet of wall tile onto a wet driveway has not done anything the paperwork told him not to.
- What is not on this listNo plywood, no joist material, no construction adhesive. This list is dated 22 September and the rotten subfloor was found on the 25th, when the tub came out. Those materials are priced on the change order example on this site, which is the same job. A material list is a snapshot of a scope that was signed, and changed work gets its own list rather than a line added to this one in pen.
This is a template and a worked illustration. A material list is not an order and not a contract: it is the document that makes an order checkable when the delivery is short or wrong. Keep the copy you sent, because a supplier crediting a wrong delivery asks what was ordered, and a phone call is not an answer.
Quantities the supplier can pick without calling you
"Some 2x4s" costs a phone call. "2x4x8 SPF stud, 46 pieces" does not. Describe material the way the supply house describes it, including length, grade and finish, and the order arrives correct.
If the calculators on this site produced the numbers, they already output a material list you can send straight through, including the waste factor.
Keep prices off it on purpose
The moment a material list carries your buy prices, it is a document you cannot leave on site. Contractors have lost jobs because a customer photographed a delivery note and worked out the markup.
Price belongs on the estimate, which is a different document with a different audience.
State the waste factor once
The most common material error is a waste factor applied twice, once by the calculator and once by the person ordering who rounds up "to be safe". Order 20 percent over on a roof and the overage is real money sitting in the driveway.
Write on the list whether the quantities already include waste. One line prevents it.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between a material list and a take off?
A take off is the measuring process and its output. A material list is the document you send out, which is usually the take off cleaned up, rounded to purchasable units and with waste added.
Should the material list include labor?
No. Keep it to material. Labor belongs on the estimate and the schedule of values, and a supplier has no use for it.
Can I get a material list from one of your calculators?
Yes. The roofing, drywall, concrete, flooring, paint and framing calculators all end with a material list you can download as a PDF, with the quantities already worked out.
Is there an Excel version?
Yes, a real .xlsx with description, quantity and unit columns, ready to hand to a supplier or paste into their order form.