QuickBooks for Contractors — Job Margins, Live

You're in QuickBooks, but the numbers that matter — which jobs are making money, which are drifting, what's owed on retention — are buried in reports nobody runs mid-week. Our dashboard surfaces per-job profitability, materials vs labour, and cash position continuously: the office sees it, the van sees it, nobody waits for month-end.

Job costing, WIP and per-job margins — visible from the van, not just the office

QuickBooks Online for contractorsQB Desktop contractor editionsJob costing via Customers:Jobs / ProjectsRetention & CIS trackingMulti-crew / multi-job estates

The QuickBooks for Contractors Trapped-Data Problem

Job margins are a month-end surprise

The labour overrun on the Smith job only shows up when someone runs the report — weeks after the materials were already bought.

CIS and retention get lost

Retention held, CIS deductions, stage payments — tracked in memo fields and spreadsheets, invisible until it's time to chase.

The van has no QuickBooks

Site managers deciding whether to order more materials have no visibility into what the job has already spent.

The owner is the report desk

Every 'how are we doing on that job' question means the owner stopping to run reports.

How It Works

Step 1

Agent on your server

A lightweight agent installs beside your existing system — reads the data store directly, makes outbound connections only. No open ports, no VPN, no firewall changes.

Step 2

Continuous replica

Your records flow to an encrypted, read-only cloud copy via a private tunnel — change-tracking, not dumps. The production system never takes the load.

Step 3

Web dashboard

Your team searches, reports and browses from any browser or phone — scoped and audited. Answers from the data, not access to the server.

What Your Team Can Finally Do

Per-job P&L — labour, materials, subs — refreshed continuously
Retention and CIS balances tracked visibly
Stage billing vs work-in-progress views
Cash position and aged receivables by customer
Job-at-risk alerts when margins drift
Mobile-first — the dashboard works from the van
Crew/PM-scoped views — see your jobs, not the whole books
Read-only — books stay in QuickBooks where they belong

Common QuickBooks for Contractors Scenarios

The job that quietly lost money

Labour hours and materials vs the agreed price, tracked live — margin drift gets flagged in week 2, not discovered at invoicing.

Chasing retentions properly

Every retention held, its release date and the customer — visible at a glance instead of buried in the file.

Site managers self-serve

PMs see their own jobs' spend and remaining budget without asking the office — purchasing decisions get made with real numbers.

QuickBooks for Contractors Data Access Pricing

Every plan includes the agent, the replica and the dashboard. Setup is scoped to your systems — most installs are live within two weeks.

Sole Trader / Small Crew

£59/mo

1 week setup

  • ✓1 company file
  • ✓Per-job P&L dashboard
  • ✓Retention/CIS tracking
  • ✓Mobile access
  • ✓5 named users
  • ✓Email support
Most Popular

Established Contractor

£149/mo

1–2 week setup

  • ✓Up to 5 company files
  • ✓Multi-job portfolio view
  • ✓Margin-drift alerts
  • ✓PM-scoped access
  • ✓15 named users
  • ✓Priority support

Contractor Group

Custom

Scoped project

  • ✓Unlimited entities
  • ✓Group consolidation
  • ✓Estimator/QS portals
  • ✓SSO + audit feed
  • ✓SLA + dedicated support
  • ✓Dedicated engineer

Billed monthly or annually (2 months free). One saved job overrun — spotted in week 2 instead of week 12 — pays for a year.

QuickBooks for Contractors Data Access FAQ

Does this replace my job-costing workflow in QuickBooks?+

No — it reads what you're already doing. If you use Customers:Jobs or Projects for costing, the dashboard surfaces it live. If the coding isn't there yet, we help set it up properly.

What about CIS and retention tracking?+

Retention balances, CIS deductions and release dates surface as first-class data on the dashboard — the things QuickBooks buries in memo fields become visible numbers.

Can the lads on site see it?+

Scoped per-person — a PM sees their jobs' budgets and spend, not the company payroll or other jobs' margins.

Works for QS and estimating too?+

Yes — estimators and QSs get the same scoped access; historical job costs become genuinely usable for pricing the next job.

Your QuickBooks for Contractors Data, Reachable

If the answers your team needs live in a system nobody can reach, that's fixable — without migration, without VPN, without new infrastructure.