Which jobs are making money, and which ones only look like it.

Estimated vs actual lists every running job with its contract, its cost so far, what is committed and its projected margin. Sort it by lowest projected margin or biggest forecast overrun, and the job going sideways is at the top of the list instead of at the bottom of a pile.

The portfolio report is the owner’s view of the whole company: the jobs, the biggest cost categories, and eight weeks of field activity.

Profitability shows profit to date two ways: on what you have billed, and on percent complete. The gap between them is usually the story. It also shows the cost breakdown, labour, and how much change orders have moved the contract.

Budget variance lists every budget line with estimated, spent, committed, remaining and projected final, and prints to PDF. Labour shows the hours and cost on the job by person and by week. Purchasing shows what was ordered, what was received and what was billed, with the orders and bills behind each figure.

Accounts payable ages what you owe every supplier, so you see who has been waiting longest.

Sales tax shows the GST or HST and the PST, RST or QST charged on every invoice issued in a period, by tax and rate, with the invoices behind it. Beside it, the tax you paid on supplier bills, split into what you claim back and what went to job cost, as your settings define it. That is the working your bookkeeper needs for the return.

Every person’s hours for a pay period, across every job, split into approved, waiting and rejected. Hours from a job that has since been archived are included and flagged, because the work was done and someone is owed for it.

Every report exports to CSV. Money is in dollars and time is in hours, with the unit in the column heading. There is no row limit: a file pulled for an insurer, an auditor or a CRA review is the whole file.

Connect QuickBooks Online and the documents behind these reports are entered in your books every hour: client invoices and holdback releases, client payments, supplier bills and what you pay on them, and sub-trade payments, each under its job and on the accounts and tax codes you chose. Your bookkeeper stops retyping them, and the books start from the same documents as the job numbers.