QuickBooks for contractors: the setup that tracks cost by job

The chart of accounts for a builder

The chart of accounts is the system's list of categories. In a construction company it separates the cost that belongs to a job from the spending the company would have with no job at all. The first group is direct cost:

• Materials. Supplies bought for the job, with the receipt tied to the project.
• In-house labor. The share of payroll that went to the job, not all of it.
• Subcontractors. Payments to trades, kept apart from material they supplied.
• Equipment. Machine and tool rental, a job cost, kept apart from equipment purchases, which are assets.
• Permits and fees. Licenses, inspections and fees paid because of that job.

Project, cost item and class

These are three layers, and each answers one question. The project answers which job the money went to: each job becomes a project under the customer. The cost item answers what was bought: it is the line on the bill that points to the right account, so whoever enters it picks drywall without needing to know the category.

The class answers what type of work it was. It only earns its place when the company runs more than one line, such as new builds, remodels and service calls. With a single line, skip classes: every extra field is one more field someone forgets.

Buildertrend and QuickBooks: who owns what

Buildertrend is the job system: schedule, budget, change orders and vendor bills tied to a stage. QuickBooks is the money system: bank, card, payroll, payables and receivables and the reports your CPA understands. Every cost needs one owner, and the owner is the system where it is born.

Double entry shows up when both systems create the same transaction. The rule that fixes it is simple: a cost enters once, and the bank feed exists to match the payment to the entry that is already there, never to create another. In practice that becomes a list of which cost comes from which system.

The material card and the right job

Material purchases are where cost gets lost most. A bank rule, the automatic rule in QuickBooks, guesses the category from the store name, but it cannot guess the job. The job comes from whoever bought it: a photo of the receipt the same day with the job name, or one card per crew. At close, every purchase with no project comes back on a list.

Deposits, draws and retainage inside the system

Money coming in is not always revenue. A customer deposit is an obligation: the company has been paid and still owes the work, so it sits as a liability and becomes revenue as the job is billed. A draw, the release by stage, is billed through a progress invoice that applies the deposit and recognizes the part that was built.

Retainage, the part held back until completion, gets its own place: a separate receivable, so the amount neither disappears from the report nor counts as collected. The contract side of that is on construction bookkeeping in Florida.

The vendor flagged for 1099

Subcontractor bookkeeping starts at the vendor record: every subcontractor is set up with 1099 tracking on, the W-9 attached and the address filled in. The yearly total then comes straight out of the system in January instead of being added up check by check. What the system will not split on its own is what was paid by card or platform: that comes from the payment method on each entry. The routine is on 1099 bookkeeping.