Job costing tells you which jobs made money and which ones just kept the crew busy. QuickBooks Online does it well on the right plan, with every dollar coded to a job. This guide covers the plan, the setup, and our monthly routine.
Greg Neilsen, JD, LLM (Master of Laws in Taxation), reviews our guides. Last reviewed: October 5, 2026.
Each answer is below.
Job costing matches every dollar of income and cost to the job that caused it. The result is a profit number per job, not just one profit number for the whole company.
That number drives two decisions: which work to chase, and what to charge on the next bid. Your estimate should start from what the last ten jobs cost, not from memory.
Example: A remodeler bid a $48,000 kitchen to earn $14,000. It earned $10,000. Without job costing, the owner never learns labor ran $2,400 over. With it, the next kitchen bid carries more labor hours.
Plus, at minimum. Projects, classes, locations, and billable expenses all start at the Plus plan. Estimate versus actual tracking inside a project needs Advanced.
| Tool | What it does for a contractor | Plan needed |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | Groups each job’s income, costs, and time in one place | Plus or Advanced |
| Project profitability, time cost, and unbilled time and expenses reports | Profit per job, labor per job, and costs not yet billed | Plus or Advanced |
| Project cost estimates versus actuals | Compares the bid to the real costs by line | Advanced |
| Classes | Splits the business by type of work, such as install and service | Plus or Advanced |
| Locations | Splits by branch, region, or office | Plus or Advanced |
| Billable expenses | Marks a cost to pass through to the customer, with markup | Plus or Advanced |
| Time tracking | Timesheets in QuickBooks, or an upgrade to QuickBooks Time | Essentials, Plus, or Advanced |
| Estimates and progress invoicing | Bills a job in stages from one estimate | All plans, Simple Start and up |
| Tags | Being retired by Intuit and replaced with custom fields | Do not build on tags |
Intuit stopped offering tags for new reporting in 2025, so we never use them for job costing. Payroll that posts labor straight to projects depends on the Intuit payroll plan you buy. Confirm it on Intuit’s payroll page first.
Turn on projects, create one project per job, and code every transaction to it. The coding is the real work.
Example: A painter’s $9,500 exterior job gets its own project. The $1,850 paint bill, the $600 lift rental, and the invoice all carry it. The project shows $7,050 left before labor.
Labor is the job cost most often missing. Get it there through payroll by job, or through an allocation entry.
Payroll by job: crews log hours to a project. QuickBooks then posts labor one of two ways. Payroll expenses post real wages, taxes, and workers’ comp after payroll runs. Estimated hourly costs post hours times a set rate right away.
Allocation entry: when payroll runs outside QuickBooks, such as Gusto, we post a monthly journal entry. It moves labor onto each job using hours from timesheets or your field app. The rate carries the burden: employer payroll taxes, workers’ comp, and benefits.
Example: A lead carpenter earns $28 an hour and logs 120 hours on the Jones kitchen in October. Wages are $3,360. The company’s burden runs 35 percent, so another $1,176 lands on the job. The kitchen carries $4,536 of labor, not $3,360.
Each one goes to its own cost account and to the project. That split lets you compare each category to the estimate.
Example: A $2,400 lumberyard receipt covers $1,900 for a kitchen and $500 of shop stock. Split it into two lines. Only $1,900 hits the kitchen.
Example: A remodeler signs a $48,000 kitchen. Here is the bid against the finished job.
| Cost category | Estimate | Actual | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Materials | $16,000 | $17,200 | $1,200 over |
| Labor, with burden | $9,000 | $11,400 | $2,400 over |
| Subcontractors | $8,000 | $8,300 | $300 over |
| Equipment and disposal | $1,000 | $1,100 | $100 over |
| Total job cost | $34,000 | $38,000 | $4,000 over |
| Gross profit | $14,000 (29.2 percent) | $10,000 (20.8 percent) | $4,000 less |
Labor drove 60 percent of the miss. That is a pricing fix first. Advanced shows this comparison inside the project. On Plus, we build it from the project profitability report and the estimate. More on remodelers.
Use classes. Mark every sale and cost as Install or Service, then run profit and loss by class.
Example: An HVAC company does $1.8 million a year. Install brings in $1,200,000 and costs $684,000 in equipment, labor, and permits. That is $516,000 of gross profit, 43 percent. Service brings in $600,000 and costs $276,000 in parts and labor. That is $324,000, 54 percent.
Install brings more dollars. Service earns more per dollar. After $600,000 of overhead, the company keeps $240,000. Now the owner can weigh a maintenance agreement push against another install crew. More on HVAC.
A deposit is not income yet. You owe it back in work. Record it to a customer deposits liability account and apply it to invoices as you earn it.
Progress invoicing works on every plan. Turn it on under Account and settings, Sales. Each progress invoice bills a percentage or chosen lines of the estimate, never more than 100 percent.
Example: The $48,000 kitchen bills 25 percent at signing ($12,000), 35 percent after rough-in ($16,800), 30 percent after cabinets ($14,400), and 10 percent at completion ($4,800). The four bills total $48,000.
On jobs that run past a month or two, what you have billed rarely matches what you have earned. Work in progress, or WIP, measures the gap.
Divide cost to date by total estimated cost to get percent complete. Multiply that by the contract price to get earned revenue. Compare it to what you have billed.
Example: A $200,000 addition has $150,000 of estimated cost. Costs to date are $90,000, so the job is 60 percent complete and has earned $120,000. If you have billed $140,000, you are overbilled $20,000. You hold cash for work not yet done. Billed $100,000, you are underbilled $20,000, and you are financing the customer.
Your tax return may report long contracts on a different method than your WIP schedule. That is a separate decision we make with you.
Example: A plumber sets a bank rule for the supply house: category Job Materials, auto-post on. In one month, 40 charges totaling $9,600 post with no project. That month’s jobs look $9,600 better than they were.
Your field app runs the job: scheduling, dispatch, estimates, and invoices. QuickBooks Online keeps the books. What matters is whether each item the app sends over carries the job.
We connect the field app you already use rather than replace it. Our guides cover each one: Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, Buildertrend, Builder Prime, and Zevbit. The full list is in our software guides.
Example: A landscaper invoices from a field app that sends invoices to QuickBooks. Mulch bought on a company card reaches the job only if someone codes it there each week.
Example: On October 8 the bookkeeper finds 14 uncoded transactions. Twelve belong to two open kitchens. Two are shop supplies that stay in overhead.
Our bookkeeping service builds this setup and runs the monthly routine. We use QuickBooks Online, Gusto for payroll, and Ramp for cards.
One flat monthly fee covers bookkeeping, tax preparation, and planning on most plans. Plans start at $750 per month. We set the fee in writing after we see your books.
Not well. Projects, classes, and billable expenses start at Plus. Essentials cannot show profit per job.
Only if you want the bid and the actual costs compared inside each project. Plus handles projects, classes, and profitability reports.
Usually both. A project is one job for one customer. A class is a line of work, such as install or service.
Payroll posts them to the project with the wages, or a monthly allocation entry adds a burden rate. A tech who costs $28 an hour in wages may cost $37.80 with a 35 percent burden.
Some field apps report job profit. The books still live in QuickBooks Online. We make the two agree, so the profit you price from matches the profit you pay tax on.
This guide is educational and is not accounting or tax advice for your business. QuickBooks plans and features change, and Intuit’s current pages control. Talk to a professional before you change your setup.
Greg Neilsen, JD, LLM (Master of Laws in Taxation), reviews our guides. Last reviewed: October 5, 2026.
One free 15-minute call with Greg. Bring your questions. Leave knowing what Zero Tax would handle for your business and what it would cost.
Book a free 15-minute callNo pressure, no obligation. Just clarity.
