For job costing in QuickBooks, contractors need QuickBooks Online Plus ($115 per month as of mid-2026) or higher, because the Projects feature that tracks profit per job is not on the cheaper tiers. Set it up with two-sided items, an hourly cost rate that includes payroll burden, and one project per job, and every job reports its own margin. This guide gives the exact click path, verified 2026 prices, and the add-ons worth paying for.
Key takeaways
- QuickBooks Online Plus is the minimum plan for job costing. As of mid-2026 Intuit lists it at $115 per month with 5 users; Simple Start ($38) and Essentials ($75) cannot track profit by job.
- QuickBooks Desktop is closed to new buyers: Intuit stopped selling new Pro Plus, Premier Plus, and Mac Plus subscriptions in September 2024, and Desktop 2023 lost payroll and bank feeds on May 31, 2026. Only Desktop Enterprise is still sold.
- Labor is the number one job costing leak. Use the hourly cost rate in Projects to load employer taxes and workers comp on top of wages, or every job looks 15 to 30 percent more profitable than it is.
- Budget roughly $135 to $200 per month all-in for a small crew: QBO Plus plus QuickBooks Time (now $20 base and $10 per user after the July 2026 increase).
- Move to construction-specific accounting when AIA billing with retainage, certified payroll, or bonded WIP schedules become weekly needs. Intuit Enterprise Suite runs roughly $7,800 to $12,000 per year at that level.
Before you start: pick the right QuickBooks product and plan
Picking the QuickBooks product is the decision that locks in everything else, so settle it before touching any settings. QuickBooks Online (QBO) is the only sensible starting point in 2026: Intuit stopped selling new Desktop Pro Plus, Premier Plus, and Mac Plus subscriptions after September 30, 2024, and per Intuit's lifecycle notices, Desktop 2023 lost payroll, bank feeds, and security updates on May 31, 2026. The old Premier Contractor edition is gone with it. Desktop Enterprise remains for sale, but it is priced for established firms, not a starting point.
Within QBO, job costing lives inside the Projects feature, and Projects starts at the Plus tier. Simple Start and Essentials cannot report cost or profit per job no matter how creatively you tag things. Prices below are from Intuit's own pricing page as of July 2026 (a 50 percent for 3 months promo usually applies at signup, and another increase takes effect August 1, 2026, so confirm at checkout).
| Plan | Price (mid-2026) | Users | Job costing | Right for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simple Start | $38/mo | 1 | No | Solo operator who only needs invoices and taxes |
| Essentials | $75/mo | 3 | No | Small office, bills and multiple users, no per-job tracking |
| Plus | $115/mo | 5 | Yes (Projects) | Most contractors, roughly $250K to $3M revenue |
| Advanced | $275/mo | 25 | Yes, plus custom reporting | Larger crews, office staff, heavier reporting |
| Desktop Enterprise / Intuit Enterprise Suite | Roughly $7,800 to $12,000/yr | Up to 40 | Deepest: cost groups, WIP, AIA-style billing | Established construction firms, multi-entity |
For most trades, QBO Plus is the answer. If you want to see how QuickBooks stacks against the alternatives before committing, our comparison of the best accounting software for contractors covers FreshBooks, Wave, and Buildertrend head to head.
Step 1: Turn on Projects
Turning on Projects takes under a minute and is the foundation for everything else. In QBO Plus or Advanced: select the gear icon, then Account and settings, then Advanced, find the Projects section, toggle it on, and save. A Projects tab appears in the left menu. While you are in settings, go to the Sales tab and switch on Progress Invoicing too; you will need it in step 4. One-line takeaway: both toggles live in Account and settings, and neither is on by default.
Step 2: Build two-sided Products and Services items
Two-sided items are what make budget-versus-actual reporting possible, and skipping them is the most common setup mistake we see. Go to the gear icon, then Products and services, and create service items that mirror how you estimate: labor phases (demo, rough-in, finish), material categories, equipment, and one subcontractor item. In each item, check both "I sell this" and "I purchase this", mapping sales to income and purchases to cost of goods sold. The same item now carries what you charged and what you paid, so QuickBooks can show margin per phase, not just per job.
Step 3: Create one project per job and estimate inside it
Each project is a bucket that catches every dollar in and out of one job, so create one the moment a job becomes real. Open the Projects tab, select New project, name it the way your crew talks about it (customer name plus street address), and attach it to the customer. Then build the estimate from inside the project screen using your items from step 2; that estimate becomes the budget QuickBooks tracks actuals against. Never leave an estimate floating under a bare customer, because it will not roll into project profitability.
Step 4: Bill in stages with progress invoicing
Progress invoicing turns the estimate from step 3 into staged bills so cash arrives during the job, not 60 days after punch list. From the project, open the estimate and choose Convert to invoice; because you enabled Progress Invoicing in step 1, QuickBooks asks whether to bill the total, a percentage, or specific line items. Bill by phase as work completes, and the project screen shows billed-to-date against contract value, your early warning on underbilling. If collections are the bigger problem, our roundup of the best invoicing and payment software for contractors covers tools that chase the money for you.
Step 5: Map labor with a burdened hourly cost rate
Labor burden mapping is the step almost everyone skips, and it quietly inflates every job's margin. Wages are not your labor cost: employer payroll taxes, workers comp, and benefits typically add 15 to 30 percent on top. In the Projects tab, open the Hourly cost rate panel and set a rate per employee; the built-in calculator loads employer taxes, workers comp, and overhead per hour on top of the wage. Then get hours flowing in: crews clock time against a project in QuickBooks Time (Premium runs $20 per month base plus $10 per user after the July 1, 2026 increase), and QuickBooks applies the burdened rate to every tracked hour. Other trackers sync too; see our tested list of the best time tracking software for contractors.
Step 6: Tag every material bill and sub invoice to its project
Material and subcontractor tagging is a habit, not a setting: every expense, bill, check, and card swipe gets assigned to a project and an item, no exceptions. When you enter a supplier bill, pick the material item and select the project in the customer/project column, and snap receipts with the QBO mobile app so nothing waits for month-end. Enter sub invoices against your subcontractor item on the same project, and collect W-9s as subs start so 1099 season is painless. An untagged transaction does not disappear; it hides in overhead and flatters every job.
Step 7: Run the Project Profitability report weekly
The Project Profitability report is the payoff for the whole setup, and it only changes behavior if you read it on a schedule. Open any project for income, costs, and margin in dollars and percent, with burdened labor included from step 5. A weekly 15-minute review against the estimate catches a blown labor budget in week two, while you can still fix it. Fold it into the daily numbers checklist you already run.
Add-ons that feed QuickBooks from the field
QuickBooks is the ledger; the field data has to come from somewhere. The biggest payoff is connecting one field platform that pushes time, invoices, and costs into QBO automatically. Verified pricing as of mid-2026:
| Add-on | What it does | Price (mid-2026) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Time | GPS time clock, hours flow to projects and payroll | $20/mo base + $10/user (Premium) | Labor costing on any crew |
| Knowify | Construction job costing, AIA-style billing on top of QBO | Core from $99/mo billed annually; Advanced from $329/mo (10 users), per Knowify's pricing page | Commercial subs, contract-heavy work |
| Buildertrend | Project management, selections, budgets, QBO sync | Custom quote by annual volume (published tiers were dropped in 2026; historically $339 to $829+/mo) | Remodelers and home builders |
| Housecall Pro | Scheduling, dispatch, invoicing for service trades | From about $79/mo | HVAC, plumbing, electrical service |
| Jobber | CRM, quoting, scheduling for small crews | From about $39/mo (solo) | Small home-service businesses |
| Dext / built-in receipt capture | Snap and auto-code supplier receipts | Built-in free; Dext from about $24/mo | Killing material-cost paperwork |
Pick one per trade lane and feed it well: service contractors should read our Housecall Pro review and Jobber review to see which syncs the way they work, while remodelers and GCs should start with the best project management software for general contractors. Two well-fed integrations beat six half-configured ones.
Common mistakes that break job costing
- Tagging to the customer, not the project. Transactions on a bare customer never reach project profitability. Every line needs a project.
- One-sided items. If an item only has a sales side, your costs land in generic expense accounts and budget-versus-actual dies.
- Unburdened labor. Costing wages without employer taxes and comp overstates margin on every labor-heavy job.
- Estimates outside projects. No estimate in the project means no budget line to compare actuals against.
- Overhead dumped into jobs. Truck insurance and office rent are overhead. Force them into projects and you can no longer tell a bad job from a bad month.
- Month-end batching. Coding six weeks of receipts from memory produces fiction. Tag daily from the phone.
When QuickBooks stops being enough
QuickBooks reaches its ceiling when contract administration, not bookkeeping, becomes the daily work. The specific triggers: AIA-format progress billing with retainage held and released, committed-cost tracking on purchase orders, certified payroll for prevailing-wage jobs, and WIP schedules a bonding agent will accept. QBO Plus does none of these natively; Knowify layers AIA billing and retainage on top of it, which buys most subs years of runway. Past that, Intuit's own answer is the Intuit Enterprise Suite, which per Intuit's construction pages adds cost groups, change orders, WIP reporting, and AIA-style invoicing, at roughly $7,800 to $12,000 per year depending on entities. In practice the wall shows up between roughly $3 million and $10 million in annual volume, mostly on commercial and prevailing-wage work; a $2 million residential remodeler may never hit it. When you do, compare Sage 100 Contractor and Foundation alongside IES before paying for any of them.
How we put this together
Plan names and prices come from Intuit's QuickBooks pricing page and Desktop stop-sell announcement, plus Knowify's and Buildertrend's pricing pages, all checked in July 2026. Ratings context comes from Capterra listings (QuickBooks Online: 4.3 stars across 1,400+ reviews; Buildertrend: 4.5 across roughly 2,500). Intuit raises prices often, next on August 1, 2026, so confirm every number at checkout.
Frequently asked questions
Which QuickBooks plan do contractors need for job costing?
QuickBooks Online Plus, $115 per month as of mid-2026, is the minimum because the Projects feature is not available on Simple Start or Essentials. Advanced adds 25 users and custom reporting for larger offices, but Plus covers most crews under roughly $3 million in revenue.
Is QuickBooks Desktop still an option for contractors?
Not for new buyers, with one exception. Intuit stopped selling new Pro Plus, Premier Plus, and Mac Plus subscriptions in September 2024, and Desktop 2023 lost payroll, bank feeds, and security updates on May 31, 2026. Only Desktop Enterprise is still sold, and it is priced for established firms.
How do I include payroll taxes and workers comp in job costs?
Set a burdened hourly cost rate per employee in the Projects tab. The hourly cost rate calculator lets you add employer taxes, workers comp, and overhead on top of the wage, and QuickBooks applies that rate to every tracked hour on a project.
Can QuickBooks Online handle AIA billing and retainage?
Not natively. QBO does percentage-based progress invoicing, but AIA-format pay applications and retainage tracking require an add-on like Knowify (Core from $99 per month) or a move to Intuit Enterprise Suite or construction-specific accounting.
What does a full QuickBooks job costing stack cost per month?
Plan on roughly $185 per month for a five-person crew as of mid-2026: QBO Plus at $115 plus QuickBooks Time Premium at $20 base and $10 per user. Add a field platform like Jobber or Housecall Pro and a realistic all-in range is $250 to $400 per month.
When should a contractor switch to construction-specific accounting?
Switch when retainage, certified payroll, committed costs, or bonded WIP schedules become weekly work, which typically happens between $3 million and $10 million in volume on commercial or prevailing-wage jobs. Until then, QBO Plus with the right add-on is cheaper and easier to staff for.
Next step
Run the seven steps this week: they take one afternoon, and from then on every job reports its own margin. If you are still assembling the tools around your accounting, our complete software stack for remodeling contractors shows where QuickBooks sits next to your CRM, estimating, and field apps.
