What contractors need from accounting software
General small-business accounting software was built for a shop that sells products or bills retainers. A contractor's money moves differently. A single furnace install can involve a deposit, a supplier bill, two techs' labor, a permit fee and a final payment three weeks apart, and you only find out whether it made money if all of those land on the same job. Here's what that requires:
- Job costing. Revenue, labor, materials and subs tracked by job, so you can see, for example, that water heater installs earn a healthy margin while service calls barely break even. This is the single biggest reason contractors pay for a higher tier.
- Class or division tracking. Service versus install versus new construction. Many shops are profitable in one and losing money in another without knowing it.
- Progress billing and retainage if you do commercial or larger remodel work. Billing a GC monthly against a schedule of values, with 10% held back, is something basic accounting software handles poorly.
- Sales tax on materials. Rules vary by state, and whether you charge tax on parts, labor or both changes how invoices should be set up. Ask your accountant, then make sure the software can do it.
- Subcontractor tracking for 1099s. Collect a W-9 from every sub before you pay them, and tag their payments so 1099-NEC prep in January takes an hour, not a weekend.
- Bank feeds and receipt capture. Supply-house receipts from the truck dashboard need to get photographed and matched to a job, not shoved in a glovebox.
- A clean sync to the field app. Your techs create the invoices. The accounting system should receive them without someone retyping.
Who does what: accounting software versus field service software
Most shops get the split wrong at least once. A field service app (Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan) is where jobs, schedules, invoices and payments are created. The accounting system (QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreshBooks) is where those payments meet your bank account, bills, payroll and taxes.
The clean setup looks like this: customers and invoices are created in the field app and sync one way to accounting. Payments sync with their processing fees as a separate expense, so a $1,000 payment that deposits as $970.70 reconciles without anyone doing math. Vendor bills, payroll, loan payments and owner draws live only in accounting.
Problems start when both systems try to own the customer list. Pick one source of truth, usually the field app, and turn off customer creation in the other. That one setting prevents most of the duplicate-customer mess bookkeepers complain about.
How the picks compare
QuickBooks Online wins on compatibility rather than features. Xero's accounting is just as good, and FreshBooks is easier. But when a field app, a payroll service, a lender or a new bookkeeper asks what you use, QuickBooks is the answer that causes no friction. For a contractor, Plus is the real starting tier.
Xero is the value pick once you have more than five people who need to see the books. At $97/mo for Established with unlimited users, it undercuts QuickBooks Advanced ($340/mo) by a wide margin. Confirm your field app's Xero sync is as deep as its QuickBooks sync before you commit; often it isn't.
FreshBooks is for the owner-operator who doesn't want to learn accounting. It's genuinely pleasant to use, and its time tracking flows onto invoices well. The client caps and per-member fees make it a poor fit past three or four people.
Knowify fills the gap between QuickBooks and heavy construction software. If you bill progress payments to GCs and need to track retainage and change orders, it's cheaper and simpler than a full construction suite. Budget for it plus QuickBooks.
Jobber and Housecall Pro aren't accounting tools, but they decide how clean your books are. A good field app with a good sync is worth more to your bookkeeper than a fancier general ledger.
ServiceTitan is the answer when job costing has to include commissions, truck inventory and labor burden across 15 or more techs. It costs much more than everything else combined, by third-party estimates.
Job costing: what each option can actually do
| Tool |
Job costing |
Progress billing |
Notes |
| QuickBooks Online Plus |
Yes, via projects and classes |
Basic |
Needs every bill and timesheet tagged to a project |
| QuickBooks Online Simple Start / Essentials |
No real job costing |
Basic |
Fine for bookkeeping only |
| Xero Established |
Yes, project time and cost tracking |
Basic |
Usage charges may apply |
| FreshBooks |
Light |
Basic |
Better for time-based billing than material-heavy jobs |
| Knowify |
Yes, budgets versus actuals |
AIA-style with retainage |
Runs on top of QuickBooks |
| Jobber / Housecall Pro |
Light |
Deposits and partial payments |
Job-level profit, not full accounting |
| ServiceTitan |
Deep, including inventory and commissions |
Yes |
Quote only |
Job costing is only as good as the habits behind it. If techs don't clock in and out of jobs, and the office doesn't tag supply-house bills to projects, every tool on this list will report fiction.
What it costs at 1, 5 and 15 techs
The trick with accounting software is that you pay for logins, not technicians. A 15-tech shop usually has four to six people who need the books: owner, office manager, a dispatcher who handles receivables, maybe a part-time bookkeeper and the outside accountant (who often gets free accountant access). Prices below are as of October 2026.
| Shop |
QuickBooks Online |
Xero |
FreshBooks |
| Solo (1 login) |
$38/mo Simple Start, or $140/mo Plus for job costing |
$59/mo Growing, or $97/mo Established |
$43/mo Plus or $70/mo Premium |
| 5 techs (3 logins) |
$140/mo Plus |
$97/mo Established |
$92/mo (Premium + 2 × $11) |
| 15 techs (6 logins) |
$340/mo Advanced (Plus caps at 5 users) |
$97/mo Established |
$125/mo (Premium + 5 × $11) |
Now add the field app. A 5-tech shop on Jobber Connect (5 users, $149/mo billed annually) plus QuickBooks Online Plus pays about $289/mo for both. A 15-tech shop on Jobber Connect with 15 users ($299/mo billed annually) plus QuickBooks Advanced is around $639/mo. Knowify, if you need it, starts at $99/mo on yearly billing on top of QuickBooks.
Promotions muddy this. QuickBooks runs 50% off for three months, Xero has run 80% off for three months for new US customers, and FreshBooks discounts the first four months. They're real savings, but your year-two budget is the full price. QuickBooks also notes its free trial and its promo discount are typically alternative offers, so you may have to choose one.
Trade-specific money that trips up generic setups
A few kinds of contractor revenue get booked wrong constantly, and the software only helps if it's set up for them on day one.
Deposits on future work. A remodeler who takes $12,000 down on a kitchen starting in six weeks hasn't earned that money yet. Booking it straight to income makes March look great and May look terrible. Ask your accountant whether to treat deposits as a liability until the work is done, then set up a deposit item in QuickBooks or Xero to match. Field apps that take deposits need to sync them the same way.
Maintenance agreements. An HVAC company that sells 400 annual tune-up agreements at $180 each collects $72,000 that it delivers over twelve months. Whether you recognize that up front or monthly is an accounting decision with real tax consequences. Settle it before the agreements start syncing from your field app.
Seasonal cash. Lawn, pool and snow businesses earn most of their money in a few months. Class tracking by season or service line, plus a simple cash-flow report, tells you how much of July's revenue has to carry you through February.
Supplier accounts. Most trade shops buy on account at the supply house. Enter those bills against jobs as they come in, not when the statement arrives at month-end, or job costing for the month will always be wrong.
Common bookkeeping mistakes in trade businesses
- Mixing personal and business cards. The fuel-and-lunch card used for both is the first thing any bookkeeper will ask you to stop.
- Recording deposits net of card fees. Record the full payment and the fee separately, or your revenue and your merchant costs are both understated.
- Paying subs without a W-9 on file. Chasing tax IDs in January, when you need to file 1099-NECs, is far harder than collecting them before the first check.
- Never closing the month. Reconcile every bank and card account monthly. Errors found in month two take minutes; errors found at tax time take days.
Buying checklist
- Confirm your field app's sync. Ask exactly which records move (customers, invoices, payments, fees, items, sales tax) and in which direction. Get it in writing or read the help docs.
- Ask your bookkeeper or accountant first. Their hourly rate is higher than the software. If they work faster in QuickBooks, that's worth more than Xero's lower price.
- Price the tier with job costing, not the entry tier. For QuickBooks that's Plus; for Xero, Established.
- Count logins, not people. Techs rarely need accounting access.
- Check payroll. QuickBooks and FreshBooks have their own payroll add-ons, Xero uses Gusto in the US. If you already run Gusto or ADP, confirm it syncs.
- Test receipt capture on a phone. If the owner won't snap a photo of the supply-house receipt, job costing falls apart.
- Plan the cutover date with your accountant. Year start is cleanest, quarter start is acceptable.
If you're still on QuickBooks Desktop
A lot of contractors still run QuickBooks Desktop, often the Contractor edition, because it handled job costing and progress invoicing well. Intuit stopped selling new Desktop Pro Plus and Premier Plus subscriptions to new US customers in 2024, so new buyers are pushed toward QuickBooks Online or the much pricier Desktop Enterprise. If your current Desktop version still has support and does what you need, there's no rush. Plan the move to Online during a slow month, and check that your field app supports QuickBooks Online before you go. Kickserv, for example, charges $50/mo extra for its Desktop integration, so moving to Online can cut costs elsewhere.
Switching without wrecking your books
Do it at the start of a fiscal year if you can. Bring over the chart of accounts, open invoices, open bills and opening balances, not five years of transaction history; keep the old system read-only for that. Rebuild bank rules and the field-app sync in the first week, then have your bookkeeper reconcile the first month in both systems before you trust the new one.
