QuickBooks Desktop

By audience

Accounting & Finance

• Holds the general ledger: AP, AR, payroll and bank reconciliation for the contracting entity run here, not in the project system.
• Job costing compares estimated against actual cost per customer:job, with payroll allocated by job, class and item so labor burden lands on the right project.
• Ships contractor-bundled reports (job profitability, estimates vs actuals, unbilled costs) that field and PM systems push cost data toward.
• Is the sync target for AP-automation, field-time and estimating tools: coded invoices, approved hours and estimates post here as the system of record.

General Contracting

• Holds the company ledger that project management, AP-automation and payment platforms sync commitments, invoices and payments into.
• Job costing by customer:job gives real-time cost-to-date against the estimate without leaving the accounting file.
• Subcontractor bills and 1099 tracking sit on the same record as job cost, so payables and compliance stay together.

Specialty Contracting

• Desktop Enterprise Contractor Edition sizes job costing and contractor report bundles for a single-trade subcontractor's back office.
• Field Service Management and QuickBooks Time push technician hours back into the file for job-costed payroll.
• Estimates and progress invoices are raised against the job, so a trade contractor bills from the same record that carries the cost.

By phase

Pre-Construction

• Estimates and sales orders are raised in QuickBooks Desktop before a job starts, including advance prepayments taken against the estimate.
• Estimated cost lines set the baseline that job-costing reports later compare actuals against.

Construction

• Job costs accumulate in real time — payroll by job/class/item, subcontractor bills, material purchases — against the original estimate.
• Progress invoicing and payment application run off the job record as work is put in place.
• Third-party field, time and AP tools sync into the file during the build so cost-to-date stays current without re-keying.