Job Costing in Quickbooks for Construction Companies

See where you’re going and whether you’re still under budget with job costing in Workyard and QuickBooks. Workyard makes job costing in QuickBooks more manageable—by helping you track job-related costs in real-time.

While QuickBooks is an excellent suite for tracking your expenses, you can’t be at your computer at all times. In Workyard, your employees can allocate labor costs to specific projects.

Through Workyard’s QuickBooks integration, your project and employee information syncs with your QuickBooks file—so you can easily pull analytical reports such as project-by-project job costing. You can even build job costing reports directly in Workyard to save time.

Let’s look at job costing in Quickbooks, Workyard’s internal job costing reports, and the value of comparing your estimated job costs to your actual costs for each of your construction projects.

What Is Job Costing in QuickBooks?

In QuickBooks, job costing begins with allocating expenses to specific jobs. Job costing reports provide an overview of how much each job has cost so far—so you can determine whether you’re making or losing money on the job. You can pull job costing reports while a project is still active to determine where you are relative to your budget.

You can also pull job costing reports after you’ve finished a job to see your profit margin and make tweaks in future bids. Your job costing reports will include a brief overview, transactions assigned to the project, and the time spent working on the project.

How Do You Create a Job Costing Report in QuickBooks?

Creating a job costing report requires that you book all your expenses in QuickBooks on a project-by-project basis; in other words, you should allocate every project-related expense you book in QuickBooks to a project. Workyard helps by letting employees allocate time and mileage to a given project or work code—which you can then import.

Let’s look at how you can quickly and easily create a job costing report.

1. Set Up a “Customer” and a “Job” for Each Job

Before you pull your job costing reports, you will need to create customers and projects to track.

• In QuickBooks, go to the “Customers” menu and select the “Customer Center.”
• Click the “New Customer & Job” button at the top of the page.
• Select the appropriate customer from the list, or create a new one.
• Enter information about the job in the “Job Information” section, such as the job name, start date, and job status.
• Click OK to save the customer and job information.

If you’re already working in Workyard, Workyard can sync your customer and job-related information, so you don’t have to.

2. Begin To Assign Your Expenses to Jobs (You Can Do This in Workyard)

You can assign expenses to jobs in both QuickBooks and Workyard, but Workyard will automatically track labor-related expenses.

• In QuickBooks, go to the “Vendors” menu and select “Enter Bills.”
• As you assign transactions, assign them to a specific job.
• In Workyard, allocate employee labor directly to projects through GPS tracking.
• Sync Workyard with QuickBooks to pull in your labor-related job costing information.

Once expenses sync with the platform, you can easily compare your actual and estimated expenses. Syncing means that nothing gets duplicated—the data will match on both sides.

3. Enter Estimates Into Each Project (or Use Your Invoices As Estimates)

QuickBooks can generate project estimates based on invoices. Alternatively, you can enter estimates into the project yourself. Pulling a job costing report requires an estimate to compare with your actual costs.

• In QuickBooks, click on your “Customer” menu and select “Estimates.”
• Click on “Create Estimates” and fill in your estimated expenses based on each quote.
• You can also rely on your invoices to produce estimates for you if you have created your invoices in Quickbooks.

If you find that your estimates are frequently inaccurate, you can dig a little deeper—it may be that you’re overestimating or underestimating your labor.

4. Use Job Costing Reports To See Whether You’re Making or Losing Money on a Job

Ideally, you should pull job costing reports regularly to ensure that you aren’t losing money on any of your jobs. Set aside time every week to do so.

• To run a job costing report, go to the “Reports” menu and select “Jobs, Time & Mileage.”
• You’ll see a list of your current and past jobs. Click on the job name to pull a job costing report for a specific job.
• You can also click on the “Customize” button to further customize your report. For example, you can include or exclude billable and non-billable time, project profitability, and other information.
• Once you’ve customized your report, click on the “Run Report” button.
• Your job costing report will populate. You can then save, print, or export the report as needed.

At the end of a project, you can pull a final job costing report to see how your actual costs stacked up to your estimates.

How Do You Create a Job Costing Report in Workyard?

In Workyard, you can create job costing reports using your already accessible labor-related information. Workyard allows you to quickly pull job costing reports at any stage of the project—thereby taking control of your project expenses.

Workyard’s job costing dashboard operates in real-time, showing you the regular, overtime, and double-time hours assigned to each project. These job costs give you a better picture of how each project is going at a glance—and help you figure out which projects could be at risk of going over budget.

What Are the Benefits of Using Workyard for Job Costing in QuickBooks?

Workyard simplifies job costing in QuickBooks by helping you track job-related costs in real-time—so you always know where you stand. 

Meanwhile, easy QuickBooks syncing saves you the hassle of manually inputting information into QuickBooks while improving your data’s accuracy.

• Sync job costs with QuickBooks through Workyard. Rather than having to track all your labor costs manually, you can get real, accurate reports on where your employees were throughout the project.
• Avoid having to enter your customer and project information twice. Workyard can sync your customer information with QuickBooks, making tracking your customers and projects much easier.
• Get real-time project-related labor reports in Workyard. Labor is frequently the highest cost in construction. Rather than booting up QuickBooks, look at your labor reports within the Workyard dashboard.
• Accurately track mileage and travel. In addition to labor-related costs, Workyard also makes it easier to track mileage and travel—and allocate those costs to your expense reports.

When you use Workyard along with QuickBooks, you get a complete picture of your project costs so you can make better, more informed decisions. Use Workyard to quickly pull construction in-progress labor reports in real-time and QuickBooks to dig into the deeper expense-related reports.

How Do You Connect Workyard to QuickBooks?

We’ve created simple videos you can follow to sync Workyard to your QuickBooks file.

You can connect Workyard to QuickBooks Online:

Or you can connect Workyard to QuickBooks Desktop:

Whether you’re using QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop, syncing Workyard will make it easier to pull job costing and project reports. Workyard will sync your employee, customer, project, and labor information—reducing your administrative time and the potential for error.

The Common Mistakes in QuickBooks Job Costing

Mistakes happen—especially when it comes to complex accounting tasks. As you start to pull job costing reports in QuickBooks and Workyard, keep in mind some of the most common mistakes.

• Failing to track billable and non-billable hours. It’s crucial to track billable and non-billable hours and keep your billable and non-billable hours separate. Otherwise, you won’t thoroughly understand your labor-related costs or your overhead. Workyard lets you easily allocate and sync your labor data.
• Not allocating indirect costs. Indirect costs are costs not directly allocated to a single job or project. These costs still go under your overhead and affect the profitability of each project. Forgetting to allocate your indirect costs will give you an inaccurate picture of your revenue stream.
• Tracking your data too late. Workyard helps by tracking labor-related data in real-time. You can’t track your current profitability through job costing reports if you aren’t entering your expenses until well after a project.

Avoid these mistakes by being as diligent as possible when tracking your job costing data. With accurate job costing reports, you’ll be able to make better decisions about your projects—and keep your business profitable.

Try a Free Trial of Workyard Today

Want to see how Workyard can effortlessly sync with QuickBooks? You can start tracking your company’s labor-related costs in real-time using Workyard’s GPS technology within minutes.

Workyard gives you the power to:

• Track employee hours accurately by projects through GPS-powered technology
• Sync employee hours and labor costs between Workyard and QuickBooks
• Easily pull labor-related job costing reports

But the easiest way to understand the benefits of Workyard is to experience it yourself. Try a free trial of Workyard today to start building your job costing reports—and to take more control over your job costing in QuickBooks.

FAQs

How Do I Categorize Construction Expenses in QuickBooks?

QuickBooks doesn’t have a blanket “Construction” category, but when you create a new QuickBooks file, you can select the type of business you own. QuickBooks will populate its income and expense list with the most common construction expenses, such as “Materials” and “Labor”.

What Is Job Costing in Construction?

In construction, job costing refers to allocating direct and indirect costs to a specific job or project. Job costing helps contractors track the actual cost of a project and compare it to the estimated cost, but you need accurate numbers for your reports to be helpful.

What Is Job Costing in QuickBooks?

In QuickBooks, job costing refers to assigning income and expenses to a specific job or project, so you can better in-progress job costing reports. These in-progress reports compare your estimates to your actual expenses.

How Do I Turn On Job Costing on the QuickBooks Desktop Application?

To turn on job costing on QuickBooks desktop, go to Edit > Preferences > Job & Estimate Preferences. Then, check the “Enable Job Costing” box and click “OK.” When you want to check your job costing, you can look at a project in QuickBooks—you will be able to see the current and estimated costs.