Labor never hits the job
If crew and helper hours are not costed to jobs, your labor looks cheaper than it is and every job profit number is optimistic fiction.
Guide
Job Costing for Contractors
Most contractors know whether the year was good. Far fewer can name which jobs made money and which ones quietly lost it. Job costing is the bookkeeping setup that answers that question, every month, instead of once at tax time.
Quick answer
- Job costing assigns labor, materials, equipment, and subcontractor cost to each job so you see profit per job, not just company-wide.
- In QuickBooks it runs on Class or Location tracking plus a trade-native chart of accounts.
- Done right, it shows your true margin by job type, by crew, and by customer, so you can bid smarter.
- We set it up and maintain it as part of the monthly close on the Crew plan and up.
What job costing is
Job costing is simply tracking the full cost of each job against the revenue that job brought in. The hard part is doing it consistently: every material receipt, labor hour, and subcontractor payment has to land on the right job. When it does, your P&L can be sliced by job so the winners and the bleeders stop hiding inside one company-wide number.
How we set it up in QuickBooks
We build it on the tools QuickBooks already gives you, so there is no separate system to learn and you keep your file.
- A trade-native chart of accounts that separates materials, tools, equipment, and labor
- Class or Location tracking so every transaction can be tied 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 fails
Materials in one bucket
When all materials land in a single account instead of the job that used them, you cannot tell a thin job from a fat one until the cash is gone.
Set up once, never maintained
Job costing is a monthly habit, not a one-time setup. Skip a month of discipline and the report quietly drifts from reality.
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 is 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.
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 in setting it up correctly and maintaining it every month, which is what we handle.
How is job costing different from a normal P&L?
A normal 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.
See which jobs actually pay
Trade-native categories, job costing, and a CPA-reviewed close by the 15th. You keep your QuickBooks file.