QuickBooks Online for Construction?
QuickBooks Online (QBO) Plus can do enough for small contractors. Putting up with a few inefficiencies might be better than paying for expensive construction management software. First ask yourself: Are you willing to let all your project managers access QuickBooks? If it’s just one or two of you, having access to your accounting records is probably fine. You can do job costing in QBO by setting up jobs as sub-customers. You can (in the Plus version) link expenses to a
Knowify for Construction Management
Need progress invoicing, detailed job costing, scheduling, and budgeting? Knowify is affordable and works well with QuickBooks Online. Your project managers can use Knowify without needing to access QuickBooks and your accounting data. I can help get you set up and do a trial run to see if Knowify (or similar software) will work for you. After you are up and running, I can monitor it's sync with QuickBooks. Knowify features: Bids and progress invoicing, including AIA st
My Thoughts on Job Costing
I strongly recommend fixed price bids over cost plus or time and materials. Cost plus and time and materials put the risk of overages on the customer. They can cause the customer to micromanage you and pick apart your invoices. I have seen disputes over line items eat up enormous amounts of time and goodwill. Customers see your markup, so you can’t make it very high. If you are going to use them, cost plus and Time and Materials are best left for small, simple contracts
BuilderTrend
BuilderTrend does everything Knowify does: Progress invoicing, job costing, and budgeting, but it adds more sophisticated marketing features. I haven't used this one, but it gets good reviews and seems worth checking out. Pricing is by project, so it will cost several hundred a month for most contractors. It looks beautiful, and adds customer relationship management (lead tracking), customer account portals, and email integration. It has a full featured app. You can upl