Partly. QuickBooks Online Plus ($140 a month) and Xero Established ($97) track costs by project, and their AI helps with bill coding and reconciliation, but neither plan lists committed costs, retention or a work-in-progress (WIP) report. Intuit lists WIP reports only on QuickBooks Advanced ($340); otherwise a contractor who bills in stages usually needs a bolt-on.
The AI is the smaller question. It works from a bank feed and supplier bills, so it sees what has been spent, not what has been promised. On an $84,000 kitchen extension, that gap is the difference between $24,650 of apparent profit and $7,850 of earned profit, worked through below.
What job costing needs that a bank feed never sees
Job costing means knowing, while a job is still running, whether it will make the margin you priced. That takes seven things beyond coding bills to accounts. The table uses one job: a kitchen extension at $84,000, budgeted at $63,000 of cost across seven cost codes, which is a planned gross profit of $21,000, or 25%.
| What job costing needs | On the kitchen extension | Why a bank feed misses it |
|---|---|---|
| Cost codes and a budget | Seven codes totalling $63,000 | A bank line has a supplier and an amount, not a budget line |
| Committed costs | The electrician's $7,800 quote is accepted but unbilled, so spend to date shows $0 for it | Commitments reach the bank only when a bill arrives |
| Forecast at completion | $34,150 spent plus $34,150 committed is $68,300, which is $5,300 over budget | It needs spend and commitments together |
| Progress billing | Stages of 30%, 40% and 30% are $25,200, $33,600 and $25,200 | Invoices are the customer side; the cost side has to follow the same stages |
| Retention (also called retainage) | If the client holds 5% of each stage, $2,940 of the $58,800 invoiced so far isn't payable until completion | It looks like an unpaid invoice unless tracked separately |
| Change orders | A $3,400 upgrade for a steel beam that costs $2,600 moves both the contract and the budget | Invoicing the extra without raising the budget makes the job look $2,600 over |
| WIP: over or under billing | $58,800 billed against $42,000 earned is $16,800 overbilled | It needs a percentage complete, which needs the forecast |
Plain accounting handles the left-hand column badly, and not through any fault of the AI. A bill that hasn't arrived doesn't exist in the books. A stage payment that is 70% of the contract doesn't mean 70% of the work is done. The two reports in the next section show how far apart those can be.
One job, two reports: $24,650 of profit or $7,850 earned
Suppose the extension is half built. These are the seven cost codes, with figures invented for the example. Each line's forecast is the larger of its budget and what has been billed plus committed.
| Cost code | Budget | Billed and paid | Committed, not yet billed | Forecast at completion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 Demolition and skips | $3,500 | $3,900 | $0 | $3,900 |
| 02 Groundworks and structure | $16,000 | $11,000 | $6,500 | $17,500 |
| 03 Roofing and windows | $9,500 | $4,200 | $5,800 | $10,000 |
| 04 Electrical, subcontract | $7,200 | $0 | $7,800 | $7,800 |
| 05 Plumbing, subcontract | $5,300 | $2,650 | $2,950 | $5,600 |
| 06 Kitchen units and finishes | $12,000 | $6,000 | $7,000 | $13,000 |
| 07 Own labour | $9,500 | $6,400 | $4,100 | $10,500 |
| Total | $63,000 | $34,150 | $34,150 | $68,300 |
Report one: invoices minus costs. The firm has invoiced the first two stages, 70% of $84,000, which is $58,800. Costs billed and paid are $34,150. A project profit screen that compares invoices with the bills assigned to the project shows $58,800 minus $34,150, or $24,650, a margin of 42%. That's the figure a bank feed and a project profitability screen can produce.
Report two: earned profit. Costs to date are $34,150 against a forecast of $68,300, so the job is 50% complete on a cost-to-cost basis. Earned revenue is 50% of $84,000, or $42,000. The firm has billed $58,800, which is $16,800 more than it has earned: cash it holds for work not yet done, and a liability, not a profit. Earned profit to date is $42,000 minus $34,150, or $7,850, which is 18.7% of earned revenue and matches the forecast margin of $15,700 on $84,000. The job was priced at 25% and is heading for about 19% because the forecast is $5,300 over budget.
Nothing in report one is wrong; it's just answering a different question. A firm that read $24,650 and spent it on a van deposit would be spending the client's stage payments. Ask your accountant and your lender which completion method and layout they expect, because that's theirs to specify.
Two smaller traps: held retention and a change order's budget
Retention on a subcontractor's bill. The electrician's accepted quote is $7,800 and the subcontract holds back 5% until the end of the defects period. When the invoice arrives, $390 is retained and $7,410 is paid. If the bookkeeper enters the bill for $7,800 and pays $7,410, the remaining $390 sits on the aged payables report and turns overdue after 30 days, though nothing is due for a year. If someone writes it off to tidy the report, the liability vanishes and the job's cost looks $390 lower than it is. Neither is a software failure. Both happen when the software has no separate place for retention. Ask where it goes, whether it ages, and whether it shows on the job.
A change order that reaches the invoice but not the budget. A $3,400 change order adds a steel beam that costs $2,600. Raised on the invoice side only, the contract becomes $87,400 while the budget stays at $63,000, so forecast cost of $70,900 shows $7,900 over budget instead of the real $5,300 against a corrected budget of $65,600. The margin is right either way, since $87,400 minus $70,900 is $16,500, or 18.9%. The cost-code variance is the part that misleads, and variance is what a project manager acts on. Ask whether a change order updates the contract value and the budget in one step.
What the AI features on the pricing pages do for job costing
Intuit and Xero both market AI. The useful question is which listed feature touches job costing at all, and what plan it sits on. This is what the vendors' own pages say, read in October 2026.
| Feature | Plan and list price | What the page says | Does it help job costing? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Expense categorisation (Intuit Intelligence) | From Simple Start, $38 a month | Listed with intelligent onboarding and tax deduction features | It codes bank lines to accounts; the page says nothing about jobs |
| Accounting AI | From Essentials, $85 a month | Listed as 'cleans up your books, fast', with no more detail | Unknown; test it on your own bills |
| Project profitability tracking | Plus, $140 a month, five users | A project feature, not an AI one | Yes, if costs are assigned to projects by you or by rules |
| Project Management AI | Advanced, $340 a month, 25 users | 'Auto-creates projects and allocates costs' | The only listed AI aimed at job costing, and it sits on the top plan |
| Construction financials solution (QuickBooks) | Advanced only, listed as new | Described as job costing, phase-based progress billing, change orders and WIP reports; a feature, not an AI one | On paper, most of the needs table; retention and committed costs aren't mentioned |
| Auto-reconciliation (Xero) | Growing, $59 a month; optional $5 add-on on Early | Reconciles matching bank lines automatically; Xero's reconciliation page says it can be switched on or off for each bank account | It reconciles; the pricing page doesn't mention allocating to jobs |
| Smart Document Capture (Xero) | Every plan | Built-in capture of receipts and bills | Capture, not allocation; check whether the draft carries a job or tracking category |
| Project time and cost tracking (Xero) | Established, $97 a month | A project feature, not an AI one | Yes, but it isn't on Early or Growing |
Three things follow from that table. First, the AI that Intuit lists for auto-creating projects and allocating costs is on Advanced, not on Plus, so the $140 plan tracks projects but leaves the allocation to you or your bank rules. Second, Xero's project cost tracking sits on its top plan, so a firm on Growing has reconciliation help but no project screen. Third, the construction features sit on Advanced too: Intuit's construction page for that plan describes budgets against actuals by cost group and phase, WIP reports that flag drift, and invoices tied to phases and milestones. Neither that page nor the pricing page mentions retention or committed costs, so ask for a live demo of both, and of the WIP report on your own job, before assuming any plan covers them. Intuit also says its AI features can't currently be switched off one by one, so decide up front who reviews what they post.
A quick sum on the upgrade. Plus to Advanced is $200 a month more, $2,400 a year. At $40 an hour of bookkeeper time that is 60 hours, or five hours a month, which the cost-allocating AI would have to save beyond what bank rules already do before the upgrade pays for itself on time alone. The sum changes if Advanced's construction features would otherwise mean a bolt-on: Knowify's Advanced plan, its tier with job costing and WIP, lists at $329 a month billed yearly on top of the accounting subscription, so $200 more for QuickBooks Advanced is the cheaper route if its WIP report and billing cope with your jobs. Run the 30-bill test below during any trial or demo of that plan and count the minutes. Keep the AI for what it is good at in a contractor's books: coding fuel and tool receipts, suggesting bank matches and reading bills into drafts, all reviewed before they post.
Where AI misposts a contractor's bills, and a 30-bill test
A realistic failure looks like this. A builders' merchant sends one $2,380 invoice for deliveries to three jobs: $720 to Job 14, $1,150 to Job 17 and $510 to Job 19. The software's rule says 'this supplier goes to Job 17', because that's where the last four bills went. The account is right (materials) and the job is wrong. Job 17 now carries $1,230 too much cost and Jobs 14 and 19 carry $1,230 too little in total. The company profit is unchanged, so nothing looks broken. The error shows up months later, when Job 17's margin looks poor and the next quote for a similar job is padded.
That's a bank rule more than AI, but AI suggestions follow the same pattern: they're good at the account and weak at the job, because the job is written on a delivery note the software hasn't seen. Test it before you trust it. Take last month's 30 supplier bills, record the true job or jobs for each from the delivery notes, and compare. Here is an illustrative result:
| Check on 30 bills | Right | Share | Pass mark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account correct (materials, subcontract, plant) | 27 | 90% | 95% or better |
| Job correct on single-job bills (21 bills) | 14 | 67% | 90% or better |
| Multi-job bills routed to a person (9 bills) | 2 | 22% | All 9 |
On this result the software passes none of the three marks. The job column is the one that matters for job costing, and 14 of 21 single-job bills right is a third wrong. Seven of the nine multi-job bills were posted to one job without a flag. The fix isn't to abandon the tool. It's a rule that any bill from a supplier who delivers to several jobs, or any bill with more than one delivery note, goes to a person, and a monthly check that repeats the 30-bill test. Intuit's pricing page lists Advanced's cost-allocating AI separately, which is another reason to run the test on a trial of that plan rather than assume.
If bills end up on the wrong job in your books, recategorising transactions in QuickBooks Online after AI mislabels them covers the clean-up.
Three setups for a small contractor, priced from list pages
There are three ways to cover what the table of needs asks for. List prices below are USD from the vendors' own pages.
| Setup | List price | What the page says it gives | What to check |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accounting-first: QuickBooks Online Plus | $140 a month, five users | Project profitability tracking, up to 40 classes and locations; progress invoices from accepted estimates (Intuit's help article names no plans) | WIP reports are listed only on Advanced; neither the pricing page nor the progress-invoicing article mentions retention |
| Accounting-first: Xero Established | $97 a month | Project time and cost tracking; reconciliation and Smart Document Capture on every plan | Its pricing page names no retention or WIP feature; ask about tracking-category limits |
| Bolt-on: a job-costing tool that syncs to your ledger, for example Knowify | Core $99 a month billed yearly ($149 monthly, one user); Advanced $329 billed yearly ($399 monthly, ten users); plus the accounting subscription | Pay applications with retainage tracking on every plan; job costing and real-time WIP reporting on Advanced and Enterprise only; QuickBooks sync | The $99 plan has no job costing or WIP, so price Advanced; two systems to keep in step |
| Construction features in the ledger: QuickBooks Online Advanced | $340 a month, 25 users | A construction financials solution described as job costing, phase-based billing, change orders and WIP reports, with budgets against actuals by cost group and phase | Retention and committed costs aren't mentioned; test both on a dummy job before moving plans |
Monthly list prices tell you little until they are set against the cost of typing. A firm paying $140 and then re-keying committed costs into a spreadsheet each week has bought a project screen and still pays in hours. Several construction-focused tools have their own tutorials in this series; JobTread pricing for a five-person builder is one worked through for a small firm. The point of the table is to know what to ask each vendor to show, not to pick a winner from a price column.
A spreadsheet baseline before you pay for anything
For two to four live jobs, a sheet beats paying for the wrong software, and it teaches you what you'll later ask a vendor for. The method is in how to build a job costing sheet in Excel with AI help. This prompt builds the WIP section from the kitchen-extension numbers:
Build a job cost sheet for Excel. Columns: cost code, description, budget,
billed and paid, committed (accepted quotes and orders not yet billed),
forecast at completion (the larger of budget and billed plus committed),
variance (budget minus forecast).
Below the table calculate:
- percentage complete = total billed and paid / total forecast
- earned revenue = percentage complete x contract value
- over or under billing = amount invoiced to the client minus earned revenue
- earned gross profit to date = earned revenue minus total billed and paid
My numbers: contract value 84,000; invoiced to client 58,800.
Give the formula for every calculated cell and say which cells I type into.A realistic first answer (illustrative) gets the table right and then writes percentage complete as total billed and paid divided by total budget, which is $34,150 over $63,000, or 54.2%. That gives earned revenue of about $45,533 and overbilling of about $13,267, against the correct 50%, $42,000 and $16,800. The sheet understates the cash the firm owes back in work by about $3,500 and makes the job look healthier than it is. The fix is to point the denominator at the forecast column. Test any sheet an AI writes by putting in one job you've already worked out by hand, which is what the two reports above are for.
Using an assistant for the weekly job note, not the arithmetic
Once the sheet holds the numbers, an assistant earns its keep on words. Keep the sums in the sheet and ask only for commentary, because a language model is the wrong place to add up a column. A prompt that works:
Below are the calculated columns from one job's cost sheet. The numbers come
from the sheet: do not recalculate anything. Write five plain sentences for
the owner: where the job stands, which cost codes are over budget by more
than $500, and what to check this week. If a figure you need is not in the
data, say so.
[paste the table: code, budget, forecast, variance, plus percentage complete,
earned revenue, amount invoiced and over-billing]An illustrative answer: 'The kitchen extension is 50% complete on costs and is forecast to finish $5,300 over budget, with gross profit heading for about 19% against 25% priced. The largest overruns are groundworks and structure ($1,500 over), kitchen units and finishes ($1,000) and own labour ($1,000). We have billed $16,800 more than we have earned, so the next stage payment should not be treated as profit. Check the electrical quote against the $7,200 budget before the work starts.'
Two fixes are needed. The electrical line is $600 over, which is more than $500, so it belongs in the list of overruns. And the advice to check the quote 'before the work starts' is stale, because the $7,800 quote is already accepted and committed; the useful note is that the commitment is $600 above budget. Both errors are small, and both are the kind a person catches in thirty seconds by reading the note against the sheet, which is why the note is a summary of the sheet and never the source of a number.
Five questions that choose the setup, run on four firms
Answer yes or no. Do you bill in stages? Does anyone hold retention, on either side? Do most jobs have two or more subcontractors? Does a lender, surety or insurer ask for a WIP schedule? Do you usually have five or more live jobs? As a rule of thumb, zero or one yes suits an accounting-first plan, two or three suit a bolt-on, and four or five point to construction-specific software. It's a heuristic, not a standard, so adjust it for how often your jobs go wrong.
- Two-person bathroom fitter. Bills a deposit and a final invoice, no retention, one subcontractor now and then, three jobs at a time. One yes, if that. A sheet plus a Simple Start or Essentials plan covers it, and projects and classes on Intuit's page start at Plus.
- Six-person remodeller (the example above). Stage billing, client retention on some jobs, two or three subcontractors per job, no lender request, four live jobs. Three yes. A bolt-on, or QuickBooks Online Plus with a disciplined sheet for commitments, tested on the 30-bill check first.
- Twelve-person builder with a bank facility. Stage billing, retention both ways, many subcontractors, a monthly WIP request from the bank, ten live jobs. Five yes. Construction software with the ledger kept in step, or QuickBooks Advanced if a demo on one of your own jobs shows its WIP report matching your hand figures and retention handled.
- Four-person electrical subcontractor working under retention terms. Stage billing, retention held by the main contractor, no subcontractors of their own, no WIP request, four live jobs. Two yes, which points to a bolt-on, but with no subcontractors to track, a bolt-on would mostly be holding retention. Plus or Xero Established with a retention schedule on the side is the cheaper test, reviewed after a quarter.
What to ask a vendor to show on your own job
- Enter the electrician's accepted quote as a commitment and show the forecast move before any bill arrives.
- Bill 30% of a contract with 5% retention and show the retention as a separate receivable, then release it.
- Raise a change order with a revenue and a cost side and show both the contract and the budget change.
- Produce a WIP report for the half-built extension above and compare it with $42,000 earned and $16,800 overbilled.
- Import 30 of your own supplier bills and show which job each landed on, with the AI's suggestion and the confidence it gives.
- Export everything about one job, costs and invoices, and tell me what is lost.
If you'd rather work out what your billing style needs with someone, that's what my AI implementation consultation covers: finding the jobs where AI pays off, adding it to the tools you already use, and handing over something the business can run. The contact page has the form. For how the AI features of the two big packages compare outside construction, Xero vs QuickBooks AI is the broader view, and job costs, WIP and retainage checks with AI goes further on the WIP side.
Questions contractors ask about AI accounting and job costing
Can QuickBooks Online do job costing for a contractor?
Partly. Intuit's pricing page lists project profitability tracking on Plus ($140 a month) and puts a construction financials solution, described as job costing, change orders and WIP reports, on Advanced ($340). Its help article covers progress invoices from an estimate. None of the pages checked mentions retention, so test retention and the WIP report on a dummy job before relying on them.
Does Xero have job costing?
Xero's pricing page in USD lists project time and cost tracking only on the Established plan, $97 a month list. Early and Growing don't include it. The same page lists bank reconciliation and Smart Document Capture on every plan and auto-reconciliation from Growing, but it names no feature for retention or WIP, so ask for a live demo on your own job.
What is a WIP schedule and do I need one?
A work-in-progress schedule compares what you have billed on each job with what you have earned, using costs to date against the forecast cost. It shows which jobs are overbilled, meaning you hold cash for work not yet done. Lenders and sureties often ask for one. Ask your accountant and lender which method and layout they expect.
Can ChatGPT replace job costing software?
For a handful of jobs, a spreadsheet with ChatGPT's help writing the formulas is a fair free baseline, as the sheet below shows. It won't read your ledger, so every figure is typed in by someone. Once you have several live jobs, staged billing or retention on both sides, that typing becomes the cost and software starts to pay.
Will the AI put each supplier bill on the right job?
Not reliably, and not without a test. A bill that covers three jobs needs the delivery notes, which the AI hasn't seen. Run last month's 30 supplier bills through the software, compare the job it chose with the true one, and send every multi-job bill to a person. Set the pass mark before you test.
Further reads
- Fergus for Builders: Job Costing and Progress Claims, With Fergus AI — One job-software option for job costing and progress claims.
- Best AI for a Small Construction Company's Financials and QuickBooks — A broader look at AI for a small construction company's books.
- AI Contract Management Software Demo: 10 Questions for Contractors — Where retention terms and dates start: the contracts themselves.
- AI Software for Contractors: An Office Stack for a Five-Person Firm — A worked monthly bill for a five-person contractor: scheduling, quotes, calls and reviews priced at lean, standard and one-vendor levels from vendor pages.
- AI Solutions for Construction Companies: One Platform or Point Tools? — One construction platform or several point tools? Four tests (jobs, integrations, data ownership, upkeep) and two stacks priced from vendor pages.
- AV Integrator Software: Quotes, Projects and Service, AI Compared — D-Tools Cloud, Specifi and XTEN-AV compared stage by stage for a five-person AV integrator, with first-year costs and a way to test their AI.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: Intuit's QuickBooks Online pricing page, QuickBooks Online Advanced construction page and progress-invoicing help article, read in October 2026; Xero's pricing page in USD and bank reconciliation page (October 2026); Knowify's home and pricing pages (October 2026).