Yes, QuickBooks Online can do job costing, but only if you are on the Plus or Advanced plan, and only up to a point. You get a Projects hub, cost tracking by project, labor costs tied to a job through QuickBooks Time, and progress invoicing on larger contracts. You do not get real-time profitability forecasts, work-in-progress reporting, or a payment structure built for a long list of subcontractors. For a small contractor running a few jobs a year, that is often enough. For a company running tens of active projects with crews and subcontractors on each one, the gaps show up fast. If that is not enough, our guide to the best construction job costing software compares the dedicated tools.
What is Construction Job Costing?
According to Wikipedia, job costing is a type of accounting that tracks the costs and revenues by “job” and enables standardized reporting of profitability by job. This means that you would also attach a job code or description in addition to the G/L ledger account information for each bill line. In addition to just the job code, a project code is also added. This also allows the companies to track their profitability on the project level.
Check out our article on Xero job costing, which also describes construction job costing in more detail.
QuickBooks Online Job Costing Features by Plan
QuickBooks Online comes in four plans: Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, and Advanced. Job costing is not spread evenly across them, and the plan you pick decides how much of this article actually applies to you. We checked the feature and pricing pages on quickbooks.intuit.com in October 2026 to confirm what each plan includes.
| Feature | Simple Start | Essentials | Plus | Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Projects (job costing hub) | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cost by project reporting | No | No | Yes, basic | Yes, enhanced |
| Labor costing by project | No | Time added to invoices only | Yes, with QuickBooks Time or Workforce | Yes, with QuickBooks Time or Workforce |
| Progress invoicing | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Estimates versus actuals report | No | No | No | Yes |
Intuit’s own job costing page states that QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced include job costing, which rules out Simple Start and Essentials for Projects and cost by project reporting. The same page ties the estimates versus actuals report to Advanced only. Progress invoicing is listed as a Plus and Advanced feature on Intuit’s invoicing page. Labor costing runs through the separate QuickBooks Time or QuickBooks Workforce products, and on its own, Essentials only goes as far as adding employee time to invoices, not to a project cost report.
What can QuickBooks Online do well?
QuickBooks Online is a great piece of G/L accounting software. Since it is so popular, it is very easy to find educational materials online on how to resolve specific issues, especially when it comes to questions about general accounting. QuickBooks has also added different features regarding project, customer, and job tracking. For the fundamentals of general ledger accounting with QuickBooks, see our guide to construction accounting with QuickBooks.
Unfortunately, there are some reasons why QBO is possibly not the ideal solution for construction job costing. To learn more, check out our blog post about comparing different QuickBooks versions.
Enabling the project tracking feature
Turning on the project tracking feature is quite simple. You must click on the settings cog wheel in the top right corner. Click the “Advanced” section on the left and then find the “Projects” section. Once you enable this setting, you can access project tracking for expenses and incomes. You will also gain access to various reports that aggregate all of the relevant info on the project and customer level.
Project tracking when approving costs
If you enable the project tracking feature under account settings, you can attach a customer or a project to each bill line. This means you can easily attach and track which costs correspond to which projects. This information allows us to view costs on a customer or a project level. This means it is straightforward to quickly see who the price is connected to and understand what you are looking at directly. It also allows you to promptly have an overview of the payment status of all incomes and expenses connected to a client.
Project profit/loss reporting and project dashboards
Once you enable the project tracking report in QBO, you will be given access to various dashboards and reports that will allow you to look at your incomes and costs in various ways. You can see the total project profitability and profit margins at a glance without having to do any extra work.
You can also quickly look at all project transactions in a convenient list with some filtering and sorting capabilities. In addition, you can easily track your employee hours and attach them to the projects. All of this becomes easily digestible in a straightforward dashboard.
Contractors who already run QuickBooks for the books notice when the job costing data lines up with the rest of their workflow. Grant Collins, a quantity surveyor at Skyler Contracting, pointed out how closely the purchase order process in Planyard matches what he was already doing in QuickBooks:
"The ordering process now only takes about 10 minutes per purchase order, whereas it used to take us roughly 30 minutes before.
And this is not even counting in the time saved on reconciling."
What can’t QuickBooks Online do?
Although QBO has some powerful project management features built in, some important features are still missing. Since QBO is a financial tool, we have listed various financial features that are missing from it. This list is in no way exhaustive and will be missing many construction-specific features.
Project profitability projections
For many construction companies, the project profitability must be known throughout the whole lifecycle of the project. This is not the case when a contract structure like cost-plus is used. This means that knowing the profitability of the project or a job is a matter of survival. For example, let’s say you find out at the end of project that your quoted cost of $100k is instead $120k. You might run into cashflow issues, assuming you don’t have enough money in the bank.
Unfortunately, QuickBooks does not provide a good way of projecting future profitability. It provides you with different tools to examine your past costs and incomes. This means there is no way to continuously see the profitability of the project when the project is still running. You might need to do this analysis with a different tool or try to solve this with a custom Excel spreadsheet.
Project progress and WIP reporting
Tracking current progress and the remainder of the project is slightly connected to project profitability. This task involves seeing how much the project is finished compared to the initial estimate and budget. It is critical to keep track of up-to-date project cost value to compare it to the currently paid-out expense amounts.
Since QuickBooks is not a construction-specific tool, it doesn’t know much about your estimations and budget. It also does not know anything about your initial estimate vs. the current, up-to-date prognosis of the project. This means that compiling an accurate enough project progress report is not really possible.
Find the cost of a job overall projects.
Having an easy way to access this information when putting together quotes for new projects allows you to learn from the mistakes of previous projects. Even if the estimation of the other project was accurate, you can still use the info for the new project as a rough estimate.
When estimating a new project in QBO, there is no very simple way to look at the cost of a job over all of your projects. At least not in the default reports. This means that all of the job cost information you provided during the execution of the project is not so easily accessible when the project is finished. Due to this, it’s possible that your estimations are not as accurate as they could have been when you did have access to this info.
Easily share the information with your project management team
User access control is a fundamental issue in using accounting software for job costing. You probably want your quantity surveyors, project managers, and possibly also your site team to be able to attach project and job information to the costs that they have incurred.
One challenge is that you may not want to give non-accountant users too much access. You want the users to access their projects and the jobs where they are doing something. With QBO, there isn’t a way to give access to some parts of the financials. There are some options to allow time tracking or looking at reports, but that isn’t enough.
An additional problem with having a lot of users on QBO is the pricing. You can not have over 25 users, even on the highest package.
So, does QuickBooks Online cost construction jobs well?
QuickBooks Online does manage some parts of the construction job costing process in an okay-ish way. It can handle very basic parts for a small company that does not have multiple projects, many users, and many complicated jobs in each project.
It doesn’t work for a medium or large-size construction company that has multiple quantity surveyors and project managers and works with tens or hundreds of subcontractors. Construction processes are too specific for general construction accounting software to handle them all. For a closer look at what a construction-ready setup looks like alongside QuickBooks, see our QuickBooks for construction page.
Jordan Cohen, a partner at TITN Development in Florida, ran into the same ceiling after testing several tools alongside QuickBooks before settling on a construction-specific add-on:
"I believe too many companies currently rely on spreadsheets or feel forced to purchase massive, bloated software that takes months—if not a year—to learn, only to use about 10% of the features. Smaller to mid-size companies would be much better off focusing on Planyard. It allows you to integrate quickly and track job costs effectively without wasting time, manpower, and money trying to figure out 5,000 different features you don't actually need."
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How to get access to advanced construction job costing features using QuickBooks Online?
Since construction processes are too specific for G/L accounting software, why not use it together with a special tool for them? QBO has an app store with many different construction software options that will fill in the gaps. Integrating QBO and construction-specific software can be done in a few clicks and doesn’t require an IT degree.
One of the options we (understandably) recommend is using Planyard with QBO. You can use Planyard for all construction job costs, and QuickBooks Online gets expense documents and reports. This means that all the relevant information the project management teams need is available to them. All of the accounting information is available to the accountants. Furthermore, the accountants already get all the costs sent to them with the chart of accounts and client information prefilled.
You can check out how Planyard works with QuickBooks Online before trying it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you do job costing in QuickBooks Online?
Yes, but only on the Plus and Advanced plans. Turn on the Projects feature under Account and Settings, then tag bills, expenses, and time entries to a project to see its profit and loss. Simple Start and Essentials do not include Projects.
Which QuickBooks Online plan includes job costing?
Projects and project profitability reporting come with QuickBooks Online Plus and QuickBooks Online Advanced. Advanced adds project financials and an estimates versus actuals report that Plus does not have, verified on quickbooks.intuit.com in October 2026.
Does QuickBooks Online support progress invoicing for construction billing?
Yes, on the Plus and Advanced plans. Progress invoicing splits one estimate into several invoices by milestone or percentage complete, which fits a typical draw schedule on a construction contract.
How do you calculate job costing in QuickBooks?
QuickBooks adds the direct materials, direct labor, and overhead tagged to a project, then subtracts that total from the income tagged to the same project. The report updates automatically once every bill, check, and timesheet carries the right project tag.
How do I track job costs in QuickBooks Online?
Turn on Projects, then assign every expense, bill, and invoice to the right project as you enter it. Connect QuickBooks Time or QuickBooks Workforce so labor hours flow into the same project automatically instead of being added by hand.
Does QuickBooks Online show estimates versus actuals?
Only on the Advanced plan. Plus gives you project profitability reports, but the report that compares your original bid to what you have actually spent so far is limited to Advanced.