Best Bookkeeping Software for Construction Companies

Construction businesses have unique accounting needs that traditional bookkeeping software often can’t meet. To streamline financial management, it’s important to choose software designed for project-based accounting, complex labor tracking, and industry-specific billing. The more tailored your solution, the more time you’ll save, allowing you to focus on revenue-generating work. Below, we break down the key features to look for and highlight the top options available.

Software	Price	Verdict
Sage 100 Contractor	Custom	Best for small- to medium-sized construction businesses
QuickBooks Plus	$115/mo	Best for outsourced bookkeeping
Xero Established	$80/mo	Best for beginner construction companies
Jonas Construction Software	Custom	Best for field service management
Buildertrend	Custom	Best for residential builders
Viewpoint Vista	Custom	Best for medium- to large-sized companies

Features to Look For

In addition to core bookkeeping features like expense tracking and financial reporting, look for industry-specific tools:

• Job costing — automatically record and tag direct costs (labor, materials, subcontractors, equipment) and indirect costs, generate real-time budget-vs-actual dashboards, and calculate gross profit per job.
• Progress billing — build a schedule of values, track work completed per category, generate progress invoices, and automatically hold back retainage, since construction companies typically receive staggered payments across project phases.
• Work in progress (WIP) reporting — compare budgeted costs against costs incurred, revenue earned, and percentage of completion, calculating cost-to-date, projected total cost, and under-/over-billing status.
• Contractor management — set up contractor profiles, assign them to projects, track activity and retainage, link expenses to job costing, and generate tax forms.
• Change order management — track added/removed work, material spec changes, timeline extensions, and contract value changes.
• Estimates and construction payroll — create detailed bids, and handle multiple job sites, dynamic wage rates, union dues, and prevailing wages.
• Integrations — with banking/payments, project management, time tracking, and document storage.

Sage 100 Contractor: Best for Small- to Medium-Sized Businesses

Sage 100 Contractor is an all-in-one construction management solution providing bookkeeping, project management, job costing, estimating, and payroll. Where it excels is job costing — you can track costs by phase, cost code, and job category, and connect exported estimates and budgets for side-by-side projected-vs-actual comparisons. The main issue is ease of use: its abundance of features and outdated interface make for a steep learning curve. Larger companies should choose Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate.

QuickBooks Plus: Best for Outsourced Bookkeeping

QuickBooks remains one of the most popular bookkeeping solutions, holding a 37.37% market share in 2025. Because so many businesses use it, most accountants and bookkeepers are proficient in it, making it much easier to find professionals who specialize in it. It offers four transparent plans — Simple Start ($38), Essentials ($75), Plus ($115), Advanced ($275) — and recommends Plus for construction, which adds job costing, financial planning, and inventory management. The main issue is that it isn’t a dedicated construction solution, lacking native support for construction payroll, change orders, and retainage.

Xero Established: Best for Beginner Construction Businesses

Xero offers three plans — Early ($20), Growing ($47), Established ($80). It’s widely used, intuitive, and integrates with popular construction tools, but much cheaper than QuickBooks. The recommended plan for construction is the $80 Xero Established, which offers job costing and project tracking, quoting, and inventory management. Like QuickBooks, it’s not a dedicated construction solution, but it’s a solid choice for new business owners operating at a smaller scale.

Jonas Construction Software: Best for Service Management

Jonas Construction Software is an all-in-one job cost, bookkeeping, project management, service management, and payroll solution for medium- to large-sized construction companies. It provides deep functionality without add-ons, including robust job costing (broken down by cost codes), construction-specific payroll (union rates, prevailing wage, certified reporting), and service management tools. The downsides are typical of enterprise solutions: complex, difficult to learn, and expensive, with setup taking months.

Buildertrend: Best for Residential Builders

Buildertrend is a robust construction management platform known for project scheduling and client communication. Its streamlined job costing, invoicing, and financial management make it a great construction bookkeeping solution despite not being a full accounting platform. What sets it apart is how easy it is to use. Its job costing system tracks every project expense with cost codes and real-time budget-vs-actual comparisons. For full bookkeeping, integrate it with QuickBooks, Xero, or Sage.

Viewpoint Vista: Best for Medium- to Large-Sized Businesses

Viewpoint Vista is a full-fledged ERP and bookkeeping solution from Trimble Viewpoint, with specialized bookkeeping tools, advanced custom job costing, construction payroll, and detailed reporting. It has a construction-focused general ledger, full payroll management (union, certified, multi-state), and handles progress billing and time-and-materials billing. It particularly excels at job costing for large projects. Like other enterprise software, it’s expensive, complex, and time-consuming to implement.

Honorable Mentions

• Deltek ComputerEase (custom) — for general contractors and medium-to-large businesses, with detailed job costing and construction payroll, though limited customization.
• CMiC (custom) — the industry-standard for enterprise-level firms, with a steep learning curve.
• FreshBooks ($21–$65) — affordable and user-friendly for beginners, but without detailed job costing.
• Wave ($0–$175) — free for very simple accounting needs, but manual transaction entry on the free plan.
• Zoho Books ($0–$249) — best for users already in the Zoho ecosystem.

Building a Strong Financial Foundation

The best bookkeeping software depends on the size and complexity of your projects. Software built for larger firms provides more advanced features but tends to be more expensive, harder to use, and slower to implement, while solutions aimed at smaller businesses offer simpler functionality. Ultimately, the right choice comes down to balancing your project needs with your team’s capacity and budget.

FAQs

Should construction companies use ERPs or construction bookkeeping software?

It depends on size. Small- to mid-sized companies will find construction bookkeeping software satisfactory — it covers basic needs affordably and is easier to use. Large-scale or enterprise-level firms with multiple departments and complex operations need the deep functionality ERPs offer, combining bookkeeping with project management, HR, inventory, and equipment tracking.

Which method of accounting is best for construction companies?

Long-term projects benefit from the percentage-of-completion method, which recognizes income and expenses after each phase of work. Short-term jobs benefit from the completed-contract method, which reports income and expenses only when the entire project is complete.

Build Your Financial Foundation with EpicBooks

Whether you’re breaking ground on your first project or overseeing multiple sites, EpicBooks provides scalable bookkeeping tailored to construction companies — detailed job costing, project tracking, subcontractor payments, and equipment expense management.