QuickBooks was not built for unit price civil work, equipment cost allocation, or prevailing wage overhead separation. ControlQore was. Here is how SPM configures it for civil subcontractors.
QuickBooks allows job tracking but has no concept of unit price categories — pipe type, depth, soil condition, or production rate. Civil cost codes need to match how the work is estimated and performed. A generic accounting structure lumps all civil labor together, making actual versus estimated production rate comparison impossible.
Without equipment cost codes by machine in ControlQore, excavator hours, grader time, and water truck costs land in a general equipment overhead account. You can see total equipment cost. You cannot see which machine is over-running its budget on which job — which means you cannot calculate idle rate or allocate costs to jobs accurately.
Civil contractors doing both DOT and private work have different labor burden rates on each type. A single chart of accounts blends them. ControlQore allows separate job classification so prevailing wage projects have their own cost structure, overhead rate, and certified payroll reporting separate from private work.
SPM builds ControlQore cost codes by unit price category — conduit installation by diameter and depth, excavation by soil type, aggregate placement by material type, pipe by size and material. When a civil crew posts time or material, it hits the same cost bucket used in the estimate. Actual versus budgeted unit cost comparison is immediate and weekly.
Each major piece of equipment — each excavator, grader, compactor, water truck — gets its own ControlQore cost code. Daily hours post to the job and machine combination. Monthly utilization rate by machine is calculated automatically. Equipment running below break-even utilization is visible before it compounds into a margin problem.
Prevailing wage civil projects are tagged in ControlQore with the applicable wage determination. Certified payroll reports pull from classification data rather than manual timesheet assembly. Overhead rate for prevailing wage work is calculated separately from private work overhead and applied to the correct bid type.
The WIP schedule for civil clients is produced monthly from actual cost incurred versus estimated cost to complete — cost-to-cost percentage complete, the method most sureties prefer. Overbilled and underbilled positions are calculated automatically. The schedule is consistent every period, building the reporting history that supports higher bonding limits.
This contractor had no job costing system when SPM engaged — P&L only, no WIP, no unit price tracking. Equipment costs were in a general overhead account. Prevailing wage and private work were blended.
Collected in AR in 30 days once billing visibility was established.
With ControlQore unit price job costing showing production variance weekly — not at closeout.
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