Labor never hits the job
If your crew and helper hours are not costed to jobs, your labor looks cheaper than it is and every job profit number is optimistic fiction. You will keep bidding based on numbers that are not real.
Guide
Job Costing for Contractors: Track Every Cost, See Real Profit
Most contractors know whether the year was decent. Very few can tell you which jobs made money and which ones quietly bled it. That is not a business problem. It is a bookkeeping problem. Job costing is the setup that gives you the answer every month, not just at tax time when it is too late to do anything about it.
Quick answer
- Job costing puts labor, materials, equipment, and sub costs on each job so you see profit per job, not just one company-wide number.
- In QuickBooks it runs on Class or Location tracking paired with a trade-native chart of accounts.
- When it is set up right, you see your true margin by job type, by crew, and by customer. You bid smarter. You stop chasing the wrong work.
- We set it up and keep it clean as part of the monthly close on the Crew plan and up.
What job costing actually is
Job costing means tracking the full cost of each job against the revenue that job brought in. That sounds simple. The hard part is staying consistent: every material receipt, labor hour, and sub payment has to land on the right job, every month. When it does, your P&L can be sliced by job. The winners and the bleeders stop hiding inside one company-wide total.
How we set it up in QuickBooks
We build it on the tools QuickBooks already gives you. No separate system to learn. You keep your file.
- A trade-native chart of accounts that separates materials, tools, equipment, and labor
- Class or Location tracking so every transaction ties back to a job
- Subcontractor cost mapped to the job, with W-9s tracked for 1099s
- A monthly Job Profit view that ranks jobs by margin, not just revenue
Why most job costing falls apart
Materials all in one bucket
When every material purchase lands in a single account instead of the job that used it, you cannot tell a strong job from a thin one until the cash is already gone.
Set up once, never touched again
Job costing is a monthly discipline. Skip a single month of consistent coding and the report quietly drifts from reality. We maintain it every close so it stays accurate.
Which plan includes job costing
- Truck, solo operator, 1 to 2 accounts, simple job tracking
- Crew, growing crew, job costing, FSM sync included
- Shop, payroll, 1099 subs, AR/AP, priority close
- Builder, multi-entity, high volume, custom mapping
Job costing FAQ
What is job costing for contractors?
Job costing means tracking the full cost of each job, labor, materials, equipment, and subcontractors, against that job's revenue. So you can see profit per job instead of only a company-wide total. You find out which jobs actually pay.
Can QuickBooks do job costing?
Yes. QuickBooks Online supports job costing through Class or Location tracking paired with a well-structured chart of accounts. The work is setting it up correctly and keeping it clean every month. That is what we handle.
How is job costing different from a normal P&L?
A standard P&L tells you whether the whole company made money. Job costing lets you slice that same P&L by job, crew, or customer, so you can see exactly where your margin comes from and where it leaks.
Which plan includes job costing?
Job costing and a monthly Job Profit view are included on the Crew plan and up. The Truck plan covers core bookkeeping, and you can move up as your job costing needs grow.
Do I need new software for job costing?
No. We work inside your existing QuickBooks Online file. If you use a field-service tool like Jobber or ServiceTitan, we can sync it on the Crew plan and up so job data flows in cleanly.
Find out which jobs actually put money in your pocket
Trade-native categories, job costing, and an expert-reviewed close every month. You keep your QuickBooks file.