Construction accounting software tracks costs and profit by individual job or project, not just for the business as a whole. It's built for how contractors work, handling tasks general bookkeeping tools weren't designed for:

• Job costing
• Progress invoicing
• Subcontractor payments and holdbacks
• Construction-specific reporting

QuickBooks Online brings these to Canadian construction businesses, alongside invoicing, expenses, and sales tax in one place.

Regular accounting measures the health of the business overall; construction accounting breaks it down job by job—because each project has its own budget, margin, and timeline. Contractors also handle realities most businesses don't:

• Progress billing
• Holdbacks
• Change orders
• Subcontractor (T5018) reporting

Financial software that can track your projects, like QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced, shows not only if the business is making money, but whether each job is.

Job costing tracks every cost tied to a specific project against what you billed, so you see the true profit on each job. Those costs typically include:

• Labour
• Materials
• Equipment
• Subcontractors

It's the core of construction accounting, since a company can be busy and still lose money if jobs aren't priced well. In QuickBooks Online, the Projects feature (Plus and Advanced) groups all income and costs by job, and you can track profitability in real time.

The features that matter most come down to running projects profitably and staying CRA-compliant:

• Job costing to track profit by project
• Progress invoicing for billing in stages
• Estimates and change-order tracking
• Expense and receipt capture from the field
• Subcontractor tracking for CRA T5018 reporting
• GST/HST and provincial sales tax
• Holdback tracking
• Job-level and work-in-progress reporting

Progress invoicing (or progress billing) means billing a customer in stages as a project advances. For example, a percentage at each milestone instead of one invoice at the end. It keeps cash flowing during long builds and is standard on larger contracts.

QuickBooks Online supports it directly from an estimate: invoice a set percentage or specific line items as each phase finishes, while the estimate tracks what's left to bill. Learn more about our invoicing features.

A holdback is the portion of a payment—often around 10%, set by provincial construction and lien legislation—retained for a fixed period to ensure work is finished and guard against liens. It matters because those amounts sit on your books before they're released and paid.

In QuickBooks Online, you can track holdbacks with a dedicated account and invoice line items, so the amount held on each job stays visible and reconciled until it's released.

Construction payroll is often more complex than an office. Construction companies have hourly crews across multiple sites, overtime, and hours that need to be costed back to jobs. Good software runs payroll and ties labour costs to the right project. With QuickBooks Online Payroll Software you can:

• Pay your crew and remit source deductions to the CRA
• Cost labour by project when combined with job costing

Payroll is a paid add-on rather than part of a base plan.

Yes. Capturing receipts, hours, and expenses where the work happens keeps job costs accurate and is one of the biggest reasons why contractors leave spreadsheets behind. The QuickBooks mobile app lets you:

• Snap and categorize receipts
• Track mileage between sites
• Assign expenses to a specific project from your phone

Explore what's available on the mobile app page and the expense tracker page.

Beyond profit and loss and the balance sheet, construction businesses rely on job-level reports to protect margins:

• Project profitability
• Job cost detail
• Estimate versus actual
• Work-in-progress (WIP)

QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced generate project profitability and job cost reports alongside the core statements, so you can catch a job going over budget before it's done.

It should, and QuickBooks does. Construction businesses charge GST/HST on most taxable supplies and may deal with provincial sales tax too, so automatic tracking keeps you CRA-ready. Registration is required once revenue passes $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters.

QuickBooks Online tracks GST, HST, and PST automatically, calculates the tax on your invoices, and organizes the totals so filings and remittances to the CRA are ready when they're due.