QuickBooks Contractor Review: Features and Pricing for 2023

QuickBooks Contractor Edition has the same dashboard as the general business edition, but also has the contractor-specific menu. From here, you can access key features that are useful for contractors, such as the ability to create estimates and change orders, create invoices, and access contractor-specific reports.

Contractor-specific menu in the QuickBooks Contractor Edition dashboard

You can create and send job estimates to potential customers. To complete the estimate form, provide several information, such as the customer or customer job and the services you propose to do or products to include as a sale. It’s important to add as much detail as possible in the estimate as this provides the base for future change orders, invoices, and budget analysis.

Estimate form in QuickBooks Contractor Edition

Large jobs rarely go as planned. When a change is necessary, you can make modifications to your original estimate, and QuickBooks will produce a change order automatically to send to your customer. To edit an existing estimate, go to the Customer Center and find the estimate you wish to edit from the Transactions tab.

Edit an existing estimate from the Customer Center

You can create POs from scratch or directly from the estimate form. This helps prevent your project managers from forgetting to order needed materials, resulting in pricey add-ons and lost time. Your project managers can also use the POs to identify needed materials that aren’t included in the estimate.

You can make an invoice directly from an estimate. You can create an in-progress invoice by specifying a set percentage to bill for each item on the estimate, or you can select only specific items on the estimate to invoice. For example, you might decide to invoice only the materials listed on the invoice. When it’s time to invoice the remaining estimate, view the estimate again, click Create Invoice, and QuickBooks will ask if you want to invoice the remaining amount.

QuickBooks Contractor lets you track time worked by your crew. You can assign the cost of an employee’s wages to a particular job and to a service item that corresponds to the service items listed on your estimate. When wages are assigned to a particular job and service item, QuickBooks will assign any payroll taxes automatically to that job as well.

QuickBooks Contractor Timesheet entry by job and service item

QuickBooks Contractor Edition lets you set up a budget or forecast, which is useful for financial management teams. You can create a forecast from scratch or use your previous year’s actual data. Either way, it can help you get a good look at your company’s financial future, which can be useful if you’re ensuring that all employees and bills will get paid in the next month.

Create a new forecast in QuickBooks Contractor

To track expenses accurately, QuickBooks Contractor lets you upload receipts that can be attached to expense entries as documentation support. You can also select a classification, vendor, job, or account.

Uploading receipts in QuickBooks Contractor

The job costing center provides the top and bottom three jobs ranked on profitability over the last three months. It also includes a few highlights of your recent performance and links to useful job costing reports.

QuickBooks Contractor Edition Job Costing Center

In addition to the standard reports you can create in QuickBooks Premier, Contractor Edition provides contractor-specific reports, such as:

• Job profitability: This shows actual revenue and costs. Revenue and costs can be summarized for all selected jobs or can be displayed by service items for a particular job.
• Job estimates vs actuals: This provides a comparison of actual to estimated revenue and expenses. The report can be summarized by job or broken out by service items for a particular job.

Sample Job Estimates vs Actual Cost report in QuickBooks Contractor

• Job progress invoices vs estimates: This compares the cumulative amount of progress invoices to the estimate by job, so you can identify any jobs that haven’t been invoiced fully.
• Item profitability: This shows actual revenue and cost separated by service item across all jobs. This helps you identify which service items are the most and least profitable.
• Item estimates vs actual: This provides a comparison of actual vs estimated revenue and expenses by service item across all jobs. This enables you to see which service items are being poorly estimated.

Sample Item Estimates vs Actuals report in QuickBooks Contractor

• Unpaid bills by job: This is a list of outstanding bills separated by job. This is important to track to wrap up jobs properly and avoid any errors that could cause a customer being threatened with a lien from your vendor.
• Expenses not assigned to jobs: This offers a list of expenses not assigned to jobs that should be reviewed to ensure they don’t include direct materials or other charges that can be billed to a job.