QuickBooks for Contractors: What It Does Well and What It Leaves You Doing
QuickBooks is accounting software that a lot of contractors try to run their whole business on. It is excellent at the thing it is for: books that reconcile, a P and L your accountant trusts, 1099s in January, sales tax that adds up. It is not built for the part of your day that happens on a ladder, and no amount of configuring makes it into that.
This is the honest version of what QuickBooks Online covers for a trade contractor, what it hands back to you, and how to set up the two system arrangement that most small shops land on anyway.
What it costs in 2026
Intuit raised prices on August 1, 2026. As of September 2026 the US list prices on their pricing page are:
- Simple Start: $38 per month
- Essentials: $85 per month
- Plus: $140 per month
- Advanced: $340 per month
Promotional rates for the first few months are normal, and they expire. Budget against the list price.
The number that catches contractors is which tier you actually need. Progress invoicing, the thing that lets you bill a job in stages instead of one lump at the end, requires Plus or above. So does Projects, which is where job costing lives. A trade contractor who bills in milestones is on the $140 plan, not the $38 one.
What QuickBooks genuinely does well
Give it credit where it earns it.
- The books. Bank feeds, reconciliation, categorized expenses, a balance sheet that is actually correct. This is the whole point and it does it well.
- Tax time. 1099s for your subs, sales tax tracking, and a file your CPA already knows how to open. That last part has real value. An accountant who has to learn your software bills you for learning your software.
- Job costing, on Plus and up. Projects will tell you what a job made after the fact, as long as every cost got coded to it. That conditional is doing a lot of work, and it is where most contractors fall down.
- Payroll, as an add on. Separate product, separate cost, and it works.
If someone tells you not to use QuickBooks, be skeptical. Most contractors should be using it. The question is what else you need alongside it.
What it leaves you doing
Open QuickBooks standing in a customer's driveway and you will feel the gap immediately. Everything below is either impossible in it or so slow that nobody does it twice.
Quoting in the field. QuickBooks has estimates. They are forms you fill in, one line at a time, built for a desk. Nobody has ever built a 22 line bathroom estimate on a phone in QuickBooks while the homeowner waits.
Getting the estimate signed. There is no real e signature flow with a deposit attached. You send a document and then you chase it yourself.
Chasing the money. Reminders exist and they are generic. Escalating follow up on an invoice that has gone 45 days without anyone in your office remembering is not what it does.
Change orders. There is no change order object. You edit the estimate or you add lines to the invoice, and either way the trail of what the client approved and when is in your text messages rather than in the system. Given how much change order management decides your profit, that is not a small hole.
Scheduling and the field. No crew schedule, no client reminders, no job photos, no receipt capture from the supply house.
Anything before the job exists. Leads, quotes that have not closed, follow up on quotes that went quiet. QuickBooks starts at the invoice. Most of the money you lose is lost before that point.
None of this is a flaw. It is an accounting package. It is a flaw only if you expected it to run the job.
The two system setup that actually works
The arrangement most small contractors end up with, whether by plan or by accident:
The field app owns the job. Quote, sign, deposit, schedule, change orders, photos, invoice, payment. Everything that happens between the phone call and the check clearing.
QuickBooks owns the books. Everything that happens after, plus every part of the business that is not a job at all.
The seam between them is the sync, and a bad sync is worse than no sync. If you are typing the same invoice into two places, you now have two sets of numbers and one of them is wrong.
In Staxen the connection runs both directions. Estimates, client invoices, and vendor bills push into QuickBooks Online, so what you sent from the truck is in the books without retyping it. Payments recorded on the QuickBooks side come back, which is the half people forget: when a client mails a check and your bookkeeper marks it paid in QuickBooks, Staxen stops chasing it. Ivy the Invoicer is not sending a reminder for money that already landed. Auto sync on send is a toggle in settings, so you can leave it manual until you trust it.
Before you connect anything, check five things
Your chart of accounts. Decide where income and cost of goods sold land before you turn on a sync, not after 200 transactions have picked their own homes.
Customer name matching. If your field app has "Bob Sanderson" and QuickBooks has "Robert Sanderson", you will have two customers and a confusing aging report. Clean the list first.
Sales tax. Whether you charge it, on what, and whether the two systems agree. This one produces the ugliest cleanups.
Deposits and retainage. Money taken before work is not revenue yet, and how you want it posted is a question for your accountant, once, before it happens a hundred times.
Who sends the invoice. Pick one system. Sending from both is how a client gets billed twice and you get an email you do not enjoy. If you want the anatomy of one that gets paid, the construction invoice template guide lays it out.
Do you need both
Depends on the shape of your week.
One or two big jobs at a time, billed at the end, and you like spreadsheets. QuickBooks alone can hold it. Add a signature tool and accept that quoting is a desk job.
Anything with volume. Six quotes a week, jobs billed in stages, a client list that repeats, deposits to collect. Running that from an accounting package means working nights, and the nights are where the quoting stops happening. That is the trade off described in subcontractor invoice management.
You already left QuickBooks for an all in one. Check what your accountant is charging you for the reconstruction at tax time. It is often more than the subscription you cancelled.
Staxen does not replace your accounting. It has no payroll, no tax filing, no general ledger, and that is on purpose. It runs the job and hands the result to the software your accountant already uses.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is QuickBooks good for contractors?
For accounting, yes. Bank reconciliation, profit and loss by job on Plus and above, 1099s, and sales tax are all solid, and your CPA already knows it. For quoting on site, collecting signatures and deposits, change orders, and scheduling, it was never built for that and it shows.
Which QuickBooks plan do contractors need?
Most trade contractors need Plus at $140 per month as of September 2026, because progress invoicing and the Projects job costing feature both start at that tier. Simple Start at $38 works only if you bill jobs in a single lump and do not need job level profitability.
Does QuickBooks do construction estimates?
It creates estimate documents you fill in line by line at a desk, then convert to an invoice. What it does not do is draft the estimate for you, take a signature with a deposit on the same screen, or follow up when the client goes quiet. Contractors who quote in the field usually pair it with something that does.
Can I use Staxen and QuickBooks together?
Yes, and that is the intended setup. Estimates, client invoices, and vendor bills push from Staxen into QuickBooks Online, and payments recorded in QuickBooks flow back so an invoice paid by check stops getting reminders. Auto sync on send is a setting you control.
What does Staxen cost next to QuickBooks?
Staxen is $59 per month for one AI employee or $149 per month for all three, with your first job free and no card required. It sits next to QuickBooks rather than replacing it, so budget both. See the pricing page for what each employee does.
Let QuickBooks keep the books. Start free with Staxen and let the job run itself, first job on us, no card required.
Start free with Staxen: your first job is on us, no card required.