This calculator vs. QuickBooks Job Costing
Two different shapes: QuickBooks Online's job costing tracks every booked transaction against a project, inside a full ongoing accounting subscription. This page is a free, private six-field worksheet for one question — where did this one already-finished job move from estimate to actual, and what should that change about the next quote.
What each tool is for
QuickBooks Online Job Costing lives behind the Projects feature on the Plus and Advanced plans. Every invoice, bill, expense, and timesheet entry gets tagged to a project as the job runs, QuickBooks Time supplies the labor hours, and the Project Profitability report totals whatever was actually booked in the books over the job's life — estimates, transactions, and outstanding invoices in one dashboard. It is accurate exactly to the extent every transaction was tagged correctly, and it requires the accounting system underneath it: a chart of accounts, bank feeds or manual entry, and an ongoing subscription. QuickBooks' own pricing and plan details are not repeated here, since this session cannot verify today's exact figures against Intuit's current pricing page; only its well-documented feature set and plan structure are described.
This calculator does none of what QuickBooks' job costing does. It has no ledger, no chart of accounts, and no memory between visits. It takes six numbers you already have once a job is finished — estimated and actual labor hours, materials, and other costs, read off a spreadsheet, invoice, or job folder — and returns the cost variance, the labor-hour variance, whichever line moved the most (in matching units if you add a labor rate), and, if you add the job's bid price too, the estimated margin, actual margin, and the margin swing between them. It runs free in any browser, needs no account and no bookkeeping setup, and uploads nothing you type.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| I run my whole business's books through QuickBooks and want every job's profitability tracked automatically as invoices and bills come in. | QuickBooks Online Job Costing (Projects) — that ongoing, transaction-level tracking is what it is built for. |
| A job just finished and I have the estimated and actual hours and costs in a spreadsheet or job folder — where did the number move, and by how much? | This calculator — free, instant, private, no account or bookkeeping setup. |
| I do not use QuickBooks, or my books are not tagged by project, but I still want one job's variance. | This calculator — it needs only the six figures for that one job, nothing else in the accounting system. |
| I want the margin swing, not just the raw cost variance, once I add the bid price. | This calculator's optional labor-rate and job-price fields turn cost variance into an estimated-vs-actual margin comparison. |
| I need the same profitability view across every open and closed job, tied to real booked transactions. | QuickBooks Online Job Costing — built for the fleet view, not a single job's before/after comparison. |
| Do I need to create an account or tag transactions to use the tool? | This calculator: no. QuickBooks Job Costing is used through an ongoing, tagged accounting subscription. |
Most contractors get different value from each: QuickBooks (or a comparable accounting platform) for a running, transaction-accurate profitability record across every job, and a private calculator like this one for an instant, no-login read on where one already-finished job moved and which assumption to revisit before the next quote. This page's own figures are a completed-job review, not a ledger, an invoice record, or a substitute for bookkeeping.
This tool needs no account and no sign-in: it is a static page, the arithmetic runs in your browser, and once it has loaded it keeps working with the connection off.
Common questions
Should I use this calculator or QuickBooks Job Costing?
They do different jobs. QuickBooks Online's job costing lives behind the Projects feature on the Plus and Advanced plans: every invoice, bill, expense, and timesheet entry gets tagged to a project as it happens, and the Project Profitability report totals whatever was actually booked over the job's life, integrated with QuickBooks Time for labor hours. It requires an ongoing accounting subscription, a chart of accounts, and consistent tagging discipline to be accurate. This calculator does none of that. It takes six numbers you already have after a job is done — estimated and actual labor hours, materials, and other costs — and returns the cost variance, labor-hour variance, the single largest movement, and optionally the margin swing, instantly, in the browser, with no account, no bookkeeping setup, and nothing uploaded. A contractor running their whole business's books through QuickBooks is better served finishing that setup; a contractor who wants a fast, private read on one already-finished job, without opening the accounting system, is in the right place here.
Is this page affiliated with QuickBooks or Intuit?
No. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Intuit or QuickBooks. QuickBooks is a trademark of Intuit Inc., named here only to describe what this calculator is and is not.
Open the Job Margin Variance calculator to review your own job, or read why a job costs more than estimated.