WHY QUICKBOOKS FAILS AT CONSTRUCTION JOB COSTING.
QuickBooks was built as general ledger accounting software, not job costing software. It has no native percentage of completion or WIP calculation, and most contractors substitute classes or tags for real cost codes, which tracks spending by category but not true cost to complete against an estimate. The result is a job profitability picture that looks organized and doesn't answer the one question that counts: is this specific job making money right now?
This isn't a knock on the software. QuickBooks does general ledger accounting reliably for almost any small business, construction companies included, and most subs should keep it for that. The problem is asking it to do a job it was never built for and then trusting the report it produces. A category total tells you what you spent. Job costing has to tell you what you spent against what you should have spent by this point in the job, and no amount of discipline with classes produces that comparison.
WHAT IT MEANS.
QuickBooks is general ledger accounting software, which means it records and categorizes transactions but doesn't calculate percentage of completion, cost to complete against an estimate, or a WIP schedule.
WHAT THE SOFTWARE CANNOT DO.
General ledger, not job costing
QuickBooks was designed as general small business accounting software: track income and expenses, categorize transactions, produce a P&L and balance sheet, and support tax preparation. It does all of that reliably for almost any small business, construction companies included. What it wasn't designed to do is calculate percentage of completion, track cost to complete against a specific job's original estimate, or generate a WIP schedule natively. Those are construction specific accounting functions that sit outside general ledger accounting entirely.
A category isn't a cost code
Most contractors using QuickBooks for job costing repurpose classes or tags to approximate job level tracking. That can show total spend by job and category, but it doesn't compare that spend to what the job was estimated to cost, and it has no mechanism for calculating billing to date against percent complete. Without that comparison, a job can be significantly over budget on labor and still look fine in the report, because the report only shows what was spent rather than what was spent relative to what should have been spent by this point in the job.
The shortfall surfaces at the worst time
Without true job costing, most contractors either skip WIP reporting entirely or rebuild it manually in a separate spreadsheet every month, pulling numbers out of QuickBooks one at a time and reconciling them against the original bid. That manual process is slow, error prone, and usually a month behind by the time anyone reviews it, which means the overbilling, underbilling, and labor variance signals job costing exists to catch early get caught late, if they get caught at all.
WHAT REAL JOB COSTING REQUIRES.
Cost codes mirror the bid line by line rather than repurposing classes or tags, so actual cost compares directly to bid cost at the same level of detail. Every other job costing output depends on that structure being right first.
The WIP gets calculated by the system rather than rebuilt in a spreadsheet every month. A manual WIP process is a workaround for missing functionality rather than a fix, and it will always run a step behind the jobs regardless of how disciplined the spreadsheet process is.
The remaining spend on each job gets updated as conditions change, not set once at the start. Cost to complete is the column that predicts profit fade, and it only predicts anything if somebody updates it every month.
Keep it as the general ledger and the tax accounting system, connected to job costing software rather than replaced entirely. The two jobs are different and the tools should be too, which is why a costing platform like ControlQore sits alongside the ledger rather than on top of it.
Implement job costing and prove it on a job that's already complete, where you know the answer, before relying on it for a live one. A costing system nobody has checked against a known outcome is a spreadsheet with better formatting.
FLAT MONTHLY FEE. NO SURPRISES.
Three tiers, priced by your trailing twelve month revenue. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No hourly billing, no payroll, and no add-ons.
| Last 12 months revenue | Monthly fee |
|---|---|
| Up to $1M | $1,900 to $2,900 |
| $1M to $3.5M | $2,600 to $3,900 |
| $3.5M to $6.5M | $3,800 to $5,700 |
| $6.5M to $9.5M | $5,100 to $7,100 |
| $9.5M to $12.5M | $6,100 to $8,500 |
| $12.5M to $15.5M | $7,400 to $11,000 |
| $15.5M to $18.5M | $9,400 to $13,500 |
| $18.5M+ | Quoted individually |
Range reflects the three tiers below. Which one you're in depends on how much of the work you want off your desk. No payroll. No hidden line items.
You stop guessing.
You get the CFO work. Job costing built against the way you estimate, a 13 week cash forecast, monthly WIP, and a meeting every month that ends in decisions rather than a report.
Your bookkeeper keeps doing the books.
You stop touching the books.
Everything in Core, and we run the bookkeeping and the controllership as well. Nobody in your office is answering coding questions or chasing a reconciliation at month end.
We do the books. No payroll.
Every job shows its margin while it's still running.
Everything in Executive, plus the job costing and WIP platform set up, loaded with your cost codes, and managed for you every month. You never have to learn it.
We do the job costing.
FREQUENTLY ASKED.
