Know if a job made money before you bid the next one.
Materials, labor burden, equipment, overhead, change orders, retainage — real job costing pulled from your books in real time. And yes, BDB Project Tools is included free to make it actually work.
You finish a job. Was it profitable? Nobody actually knows.
Labor burden is invisible.
Payroll taxes, workers' comp, PTO, benefits — none of it lands on the right job. You quote labor at $28/hr. Fully burdened, it's $42. Math matters.
Materials live in one giant bucket.
Home Depot receipts stack up. Nobody codes them to a job. By year-end, $200K of materials is "uncategorized cost of goods sold."
Change orders disappear.
You verbally okay the extra work. You bill for it. But the cost side never ties back to the job — so the margin reads wrong.
Real job costing. Without building an accounting department.
- Per-job P&L — revenue, materials, labor, subs, equipment, overhead, margin.
- Labor burden calc — fully loaded rate per crew member, applied automatically.
- Estimate vs. actual — budgets logged up front, variance tracked as jobs progress.
- Change-order tracking — costs and revenue stay tied to the right job.
- Retainage handling — separate receivable, aged and reconciled correctly.
- 1099 subcontractor tracking — vendor setup, W-9 management, year-end filing.
- Overhead allocation — rent, insurance, fuel, equipment burden spread across jobs honestly.
- Profit First integration — bank flow templates for contractors who want it.
- Service-line margin analysis — install vs. service vs. emergency — which is carrying the business?
- BDB Project Tools — the job-level software, included free.
Finally — your books and your jobs talk to each other.
Most contractor bookkeeping is duct tape: books in QBO, jobs on a whiteboard, estimates in a spreadsheet. Project Tools replaces all of it — six tools, one login, zero downloads. Crews work in a phone browser; data feeds straight into your books.
Timekeeper
GPS clock in/out tied to jobs — real labor cost, right job, every time.
Receipt Capture
Photo or voice capture, AI categorization, direct QBO sync. Job-tagged.
Scheduler
Recurring job scheduling with auto-generated crew assignments.
Job Photos
Geotagged, AI-sorted photos. One-click jobsite PDF for clients or insurance.
Field Estimating
Speak the scope on-site; AI turns it into a priced, professional estimate.
CFO Dashboard
Revenue, margin, WIP, cash — all live, with red/yellow/green gauges.
Included with every BDB plan · 20 users · No extra fees · No contracts
We speak your language.
General Contractors
Residential and light commercial — retainage, subs, change orders.
HVAC & Plumbing
Service + install, truck stock, dispatch labor, warranty work.
Landscape & Lawn Care
Seasonal labor, equipment depreciation, route profitability.
Cleaning & Home Services
Recurring routes, per-property margin, labor turnover.
Real job costing lives in our Contractor Essentials ($495+) and Contractor Pro ($995+) packages — not our entry-level Basic Business tier. Project Tools is included free with both, because it's how accurate job costing gets delivered without adding overhead.
See the packages →Job Costing FAQ
We're a small crew — is job costing overkill?
If you bid jobs and want to know if they made money, you need job costing. Scale just changes the tool. For a 2-person crew, Project Tools might be a simple weekly entry routine. For a 20-person crew, it's daily.
Do I need construction accounting software?
Usually not. Between QuickBooks Online, Xero, and our Project Tools layer, we cover 90% of contractor needs without the complexity (and cost) of construction-specific platforms.
How do you handle retainage?
Retainage sits as a separate receivable on your balance sheet, aged, and tracked until released. It doesn't inflate your revenue or distort margin.
What about 1099 subs?
We set up each sub as a vendor, track W-9s, tag their payments to jobs for cost attribution, and file 1099s at year-end.
Can you help with estimates too?
Indirectly. We build historical margin data by service line so your next estimate is informed by real numbers, not guesswork.
Stop bidding jobs on a gut feeling.
Book a free 30-minute strategy call. We'll look at your last 5 jobs and show you what real job costing would have told you.
Book Free Call