Revenue alone shouldn't decide your software. Complexity should. QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced include job costing through Projects and progress invoicing, and QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and Elite can produce a certified payroll report, so a contractor around $1M with simple jobs is often well served if the file is set up for construction. Intuit's construction page doesn't list retainage or WIP reporting for QuickBooks Online, so those usually live in a separate schedule. Sage 100 Contractor, Sage Intacct Construction and FOUNDATION document retainage, progress billing, over/under billing or WIP reporting and certified payroll inside the system. The time to look at them is when those workarounds start costing more hours, errors or surety questions than the switch would.
Every growing contractor hits the same moment: the month-end close takes a week, the WIP schedule lives in a spreadsheet only one person understands, and someone asks whether it's time for "real" construction software. Here's a neutral way to answer it, built only on what each vendor says its own product does.
What does a contractor actually need from accounting software?
Before comparing products, list the jobs the system has to do. For most $1M to $5M contractors, it comes down to six:
- Job costing by cost code, with labor, burden, materials, subcontractors and equipment landing on the right job. (Our job costing guide covers the setup.)
- Progress billing, often on AIA-style applications against a schedule of values.
- Retainage, both what customers hold from you and what you hold from subcontractors. (See retainage accounting.)
- WIP and over/under billing, monthly, for your own margin tracking and for your surety. (See WIP schedules explained.)
- Payroll that feeds job cost, including certified payroll if you bid public or federally funded work.
- Clean financial statements that a CPA, a bank and a surety can rely on.
Every product below can produce financial statements. The differences show up in the other five.
What does QuickBooks handle for contractors?
Intuit sells two lines that contractors use.
QuickBooks Online. On its construction page, Intuit says job costing for construction "is integrated into QuickBooks Projects," a feature available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced. Its help article on progress invoicing explains that progress invoicing "lets you split an estimate into as many invoices as you need." For public work, Intuit documents a certified payroll report (the federal WH-347) for QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and Elite, with fields like the project ID and wage determination number added by hand before signing.
What the construction page doesn't list for QuickBooks Online is retainage or WIP reporting. In practice that means retainage is tracked through accounts your accountant sets up, and the WIP schedule is built outside the system, in a spreadsheet or a tool like our WIP calculator.
QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise. Intuit's contractor page for Enterprise names a construction industry edition with "powerful job costing tools," "customizable reports bundled for contractors" and payroll that uses job costing, class and item tracking data. It names Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond subscriptions. For certified payroll, Intuit's Desktop help article applies to QuickBooks Desktop Payroll Enhanced and Assisted, and says "you'll need a full version of Microsoft Excel." The Enterprise contractor page doesn't list retainage or WIP reports either.
What does Sage offer for contractors?
Sage sells more than one construction product. Two of them document the construction-specific pieces clearly.
Sage 100 Contractor. Sage's help documentation describes a Progress Billing window that builds "each new application" on the previous one and notes that "most progress bills are printed on AIA certificates." The job record holds the retention percentage withheld on the contract and a "Requires certified payroll reporting" check box. On the payables side, the system withholds retention on subcontractor invoices at the rate in the subcontract record and can release it for the whole subcontract at once. For WIP, the help files point to the 6-1-7 Over/Under Billing Report for jobs in progress. Labor posts to jobs by cost code on the timecard.
Sage Intacct Construction. Sage describes it as cloud accounting software for general contractors and real estate developers, organized around a work breakdown structure of project, task and cost type. It invoices customers "incrementally" based on contract terms. Its retainage documentation covers withholding retainage on both customer invoices and vendor bills, with bulk release and advanced retainage marked for Construction subscriptions only. Sage's construction reporting list includes prebuilt "Construction WIP reports," and the overview describes Sage Intacct Construction Payroll as able to handle federal, state and local certified payroll.
What does Foundation Software offer?
FOUNDATION, from Foundation Software, is built around construction. Its module list includes job costing, payroll, general ledger, POs and subcontracts, accounts payable, accounts receivable and a CPA audit/review module, with add-ons such as equipment management, service dispatch and unit price billing.
The job costing page lists "over/under billing or work-in-progress (WIP) reports." The payroll page says it can "manage prevailing wage, Davis-Bacon and union payrolls" and create "print or electronic certified payroll reports for numerous state, federal or local agencies." The accounts receivable page describes AIA billing features and lets you "view A/R aging and retainage by job, customer, PM and more." On deployment, Foundation's module guide says its cloud apps sync with both cloud-hosted and on-premises FOUNDATION servers.
How do they compare side by side?
This table records only what each vendor's own pages say, as we read them on October 20, 2026. "Not listed" means the vendor page we opened didn't mention it, not that it can't be done.
| Need | QuickBooks Online | QuickBooks Enterprise | Sage 100 Contractor | Sage Intacct Construction | FOUNDATION |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job costing | Projects, in Plus and Advanced | Job costing tools | By cost code | Project, task, cost type | Job costing module |
| Progress / AIA billing | Progress invoices from an estimate | Not listed | Progress billing, AIA certificates | Incremental contract invoicing | AIA billing features |
| Retainage | Not listed | Not listed | Receivable and subcontract retention | Receivable and payable retainage | Retainage reporting by job |
| WIP / over-under billing | Not listed | Not listed | Over/Under Billing Report | Construction WIP reports | Over/under billing or WIP reports |
| Certified payroll | WH-347 report, Payroll Premium and Elite | Desktop Payroll, requires Excel | Job-level flag | Construction Payroll | Federal, state and local reports |
Two cautions. Features vary by edition and subscription, and every vendor sells add-ons and integrations that change the picture. And none of these pages tells you how much work it is to set the feature up correctly, which is where most of the real cost sits. We haven't included prices: they change, they depend on users and modules, and several of these vendors quote them individually.
Which fits a $1M, $3M or $5M contractor?
This is judgment, not a rule. Two companies at the same revenue can need very different systems.
Around $1M. Usually a handful of jobs at a time, one or two people doing the books, mostly private work. A QuickBooks file set up for construction (items mapped to cost codes, jobs as projects, burden allocated, retainage on its own accounts) plus a monthly WIP schedule covers most of what this company needs. The bigger risk is a file that was set up like a retail store.
Around $3M. This is the decision zone. If you're winning public work with certified payroll, holding retainage from a dozen subcontractors, or your surety wants WIP every quarter, check how many hours a month go to workarounds. If it's a day or two and the numbers tie out, QuickBooks may still be right. If retainage is in a spreadsheet nobody trusts, it's time to demo something built for construction.
Around $5M and up. More jobs, more project managers, bigger bonding lines. Contractors here often find a construction-specific system pays for itself in close time and fewer errors, especially once committed costs (purchase orders and subcontracts) need to show up in job reports before the invoices arrive.
What are the signs you've outgrown your system?
- Month-end close takes more than a week, mostly reconciling job reports by hand.
- The WIP schedule is rebuilt from scratch every month in a spreadsheet.
- Retainage receivable and payable don't tie to the balance sheet.
- Certified payroll is re-keyed from the payroll system into another format each week.
- Project managers can't see committed costs, so overruns show up after the money's spent.
- Your surety or bank asks questions your reports can't answer.
What does switching really cost?
The subscription is the smallest part. The rest is time: redesigning the chart of accounts and cost codes, converting open jobs mid-stream (with their billings, retainage and committed costs), training staff and running both systems side by side for at least one close. Plan the cutover for a quiet month or the start of a fiscal year, and don't convert closed jobs line by line when opening balances will do.
When you take demos, bring a real job. Ask each vendor to show you a progress billing with retainage, a change order, a subcontractor retention release, a WIP report for that job and a certified payroll week. How long that takes in the demo tells you a lot.
We set up and clean up QuickBooks for construction companies and support contractors on Sage. If you're weighing a change, start with our QuickBooks setup and consulting page or our construction accounting services.