QuickBooks and job costing software answer different questions. QuickBooks asks whether the company, the quarter, and the tax return hold together. Job costing asks whether the call you just finished kept any money. A plumbing, HVAC, or electrical shop can be current on its books and still not know which job type paid for the truck.
This page is the comparison for an owner who already lives in QuickBooks and is deciding whether the books are enough. The numbers below use the same formula as the free job calculator and the phone log: onsite labor, travel labor, miles times a per-mile truck cost, materials at your cost, permits, other direct costs, overhead on the hours, and a lead fee. The method behind that formula is in the job costing guide.
Rates in every table here. Labor is $45 an hour, the truck is $0.65 a mile, and overhead is $12 an hour. That $12 is a $1,920 monthly shop cost spread across 160 hours on the job. Lead cost is $0 unless the table says otherwise. These are the public calculator's starter numbers, so you can rerun every ticket. On the phone, overhead is the monthly shop cost split across hours you actually log that month, and the month stays a draft until it closes.
What QuickBooks is for
Keep QuickBooks. It is the system of record for invoices, customer payments, supplier bills, payroll, sales tax, and the profit and loss your accountant closes. A job costing log that tries to become your ledger will drift out of date the first month someone enters a bill in only one place.
On plans that include projects or classes, QuickBooks can group income and costs under a customer or a job. That is useful for a remodel with a stack of bills. It is a poor fit for a Tuesday of six service calls, because the costs that decide those calls do not arrive as bills.
- Drive time is paid labor with no supplier invoice.
- The truck is fuel, tires, and insurance spread across miles, not a receipt taped to one work order.
- Rent, insurance, phones, and software sit in overhead accounts until someone allocates them.
- A lead fee from Angi, Google, or a home-warranty company belongs on the ticket that consumed it, not only in "advertising" for the month.
- The wage on the paycheck is lower than the cost of an hour once payroll tax, workers' comp, and unbilled time are included. The burdened-rate worksheet is the place to set the $45 figure. QuickBooks will not invent it for you.
The same drain call, two reports
A repeat customer pays $225 for a kitchen drain. You are on site an hour, you drive 30 minutes and 18 miles, and the parts on the ticket cost you $18. Here is the ticket.
Repeat kitchen drain
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| What they paid | $225.00 | |
| Onsite labor | 1 h × $45.00 | $45.00 |
| Travel labor | 0.5 h × $45.00 | $22.50 |
| Vehicle | 18 mi × $0.65 | $11.70 |
| Materials, your cost | $18.00 | |
| Overhead | 1.5 h × $12.00 | $18.00 |
| Lead | $0.00 | |
| Total job cost | $115.20 | |
| Net profit | $225.00 − $115.20 | $109.80 |
| Net margin | $109.80 ÷ $225.00 | 48.8% |
| Profit per hour | $109.80 ÷ 1.5 h | $73.20 / h |
Open this ticket in the calculator. Change one number and the margin moves with it.
The verdict is solid — 35%+ net. Do more of this work. This invoice is $47.77 over the 35% price. Gross margin, before overhead and lead, is 56.8%. The net figure is what is left after this ticket's share of the shop.
In QuickBooks that visit often looks like this. An invoice for $225.00. A supply-house bill for $18.00, sometimes entered on Friday with a dozen other tickets. Payroll as a lump for the week. Truck expense as a fuel card. Rent as rent. Nothing on the profit and loss is named "kitchen drain, 48.8% net." The month can look fine. You still do not know whether to keep the price.
The lead fee never lands on the invoice
Same drain, same crew, same parts. The only change is an $85 lead. QuickBooks will record advertising somewhere in the month. The ticket below puts that $85 on this invoice, which is the only place it changes the decision.
Same drain bought with an $85 lead
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| What they paid | $225.00 | |
| Onsite labor | 1 h × $45.00 | $45.00 |
| Travel labor | 0.5 h × $45.00 | $22.50 |
| Vehicle | 18 mi × $0.65 | $11.70 |
| Materials, your cost | $18.00 | |
| Overhead | 1.5 h × $12.00 | $18.00 |
| Lead | $85.00 | |
| Total job cost | $200.20 | |
| Net profit | $225.00 − $200.20 | $24.80 |
| Net margin | $24.80 ÷ $225.00 | 11.0% |
| Profit per hour | $24.80 ÷ 1.5 h | $16.53 / h |
Open this ticket in the calculator. Change one number and the margin moves with it.
The verdict is thin — under 20% net. Travel, burdened labor, or the lead fee is eating this. A busy week of these still feels broke. To hit 35% net with this cost stack, the invoice needed to be $308.00 (you charged $225.00). The work did not get worse. The acquisition did. A monthly advertising total hides that. A class or a project will show it only if someone types the $85 onto that job before they forget which lead it was.
Time entry is a second product, and it arrives late
QuickBooks Time, or a timesheet inside payroll, can hold hours. On a service truck the failure mode is specific. The tech remembers wrench time and forgets the drive. The office enters the sheet on Friday. The invoice was sent on Tuesday, priced from a flat rate that assumed a short trip. By the time the hours exist, the price is already collected.
The phone log is built for the gap between the stop and the next stop. You start a timer or type hours and minutes, then minutes driving, then miles. "Stop timer and see profit" is the end of the visit, not a Friday reconstruction. Travel stays its own line so a 30-minute drive on a one-hour call is half the labor, which is what the drain table shows: $22.50 of drive labor on top of $45.00 on site.
Overhead is a monthly pile until you split it
QuickBooks already has the overhead. It is rent, insurance, software, phones, and the truck payment, sitting in expense accounts. Those accounts do not attach themselves to a service call. Someone divides them by hours, or they stay in the profit and loss and every job looks more profitable than the company.
On the phone the shop cost is a monthly number, starter $1,920, split across hours logged that month when the month closes. The tables here use $12 an hour because $1,920 divided by 160 hours is $12. Log only 100 hours and the same shop costs $19.20 an hour, and every margin on this page gets worse. That is the point of tying overhead to hours you actually sold. The overhead rate guide walks the division. The public calculator asks for the hourly figure so one ticket can be checked before you have a month of logs.
A water heater makes the books look busy
Large tickets dominate a QuickBooks income line. This replacement invoices $1,850.00. The tank at your cost is $980.00, plus a $75.00 permit. The margin is a different story from the deposit.
Water heater replacement
| Line | Math | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| What they paid | $1,850.00 | |
| Onsite labor | 3.5 h × $45.00 | $157.50 |
| Travel labor | 0.75 h × $45.00 | $33.75 |
| Vehicle | 22 mi × $0.65 | $14.30 |
| Materials, your cost | $980.00 | |
| Permits and fees | $75.00 | |
| Overhead | 4.25 h × $12.00 | $51.00 |
| Lead | $0.00 | |
| Total job cost | $1,311.55 | |
| Net profit | $1,850.00 − $1,311.55 | $538.45 |
| Net margin | $538.45 ÷ $1,850.00 | 29.1% |
| Profit per hour | $538.45 ÷ 4.25 h | $126.69 / h |
Open this ticket in the calculator. Change one number and the margin moves with it.
The verdict is OK, not a winner. Fine if this is filler between high-margin installs. To hit 35% net with this cost stack, the invoice needed to be $2,017.77 (you charged $1,850.00). Revenue is eight times the drain. Net margin is lower, because the material is most of the cost. A profit and loss that celebrates the $1,850 will not tell you the drain kept a higher share of each dollar. Job mix is invisible until each ticket is costed the same way.
What to keep where
| Question | QuickBooks | A costing log |
|---|---|---|
| Did the customer pay, and is the bill recorded? | Yes. This is the ledger. | No. Type the invoice total in as revenue. |
| What did this call keep after drive, truck, parts, overhead, and the lead? | Only if you allocate all of those onto the job by hand. | Yes. That is the whole screen. |
| Payroll, sales tax, and the year-end return | Yes. | No. |
| Price the next call before you leave the driveway | The books close after the fact. | The result shows the 35% price from this cost stack. |
| Schedule the day and send the invoice | Invoicing yes. A dispatch board, no. | Neither. Keep Jobber, Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, or paper for the board. |
Use the QuickBooks invoice as revenue and the supplier bill as material cost. If you type the price you charged for the part into the materials field, you count the markup as if it were cost and the margin collapses for a fake reason. Permits belong in permits, not inside materials, so a panel or a water heater does not hide fees inside the part.
When QuickBooks is the only tool you need
Stay with QuickBooks alone when the work is a few large projects, every cost is a bill you can attach to the project, and you do not make pricing decisions from service-call mix. A remodel with a purchase order trail is what projects were built for. A shop running eight short calls a day is the opposite shape.
Add a field-service suite when the unsolved problem is the board, the invoice, and the customer record, and someone in the office will maintain it. Those products can hold costs. They still need the same honesty on drive time, burdened labor, and leads. The roundup of job costing software separates that case from a focused log.
A month-end check that does not wait for the CPA
Once a week, cost the tickets you remember arguing about: the far drain, the cheap diagnostic, the replacement with a heavy part, the callback. Sort them by margin. The profit and loss can wait for your accountant. The price of the next drain cannot.
MarginMate is the costing log that sits beside the tools you already pay for. On the phone you enter the customer (a last name is enough), what you did, what they paid, time at the job, minutes driving, miles, and what you spent on parts. Permits, a lead fee, and other direct costs are there when the ticket is unusual. Labor rate, truck cost per mile, and the monthly shop cost live in Settings. The shop cost starts at $1,920 and is split across the hours you actually log that month. The month stays a draft until it closes. The result screen shows net profit, net margin, and profit per hour, plus the price that would have cleared 35% net. There is no sign-in. Jobs stay on that phone. Export a backup or a CSV when you change phones.
It does not invoice, dispatch, keep a schedule, manage inventory, or post the entry into QuickBooks. An optional phone number can be stored on the job. Texts are not part of the costing math, and they are not what this log does today. If you need a board and invoices in one product, that is a field-service suite. If the books are the gap, that is still QuickBooks. If the gap is "which tickets paid," this is the log.
Where this leaves the books
QuickBooks tells you whether the company made money. A costing log tells you which calls built that number. Keep both. Put the invoice and the bills in QuickBooks. Put the drive, the miles, the lead, and the shop's share on the ticket the same day, and read the verdict before you copy that price onto the next one.
Frequently asked questions
Does job costing software replace QuickBooks?
No. QuickBooks remains the place for invoices, bills, payroll, and the tax return. Job costing software answers a different question: what did this ticket keep after labor, the truck, parts, overhead, and the lead.
Can QuickBooks show profit on a single service call?
It can group income and costs by customer or project on the plans that include that, and a separate time product can hold hours. Drive time, a per-mile truck cost, a monthly shop cost spread across job hours, and a lead fee on this invoice still have to be built. Most small shops never finish that build.
What should I keep entering in QuickBooks?
The invoice the customer paid, supplier bills at your cost, payroll, and the overhead accounts. Use those invoice and bill totals as the revenue and materials on the ticket. Do not type the marked-up parts price in as your cost.
When is a field-service suite a better buy than a costing log?
When the schedule, dispatch, and the invoice are the actual problem, and you have someone to run the system. Job costing inside those products still depends on the same inputs. A costing log is the better first buy when you already invoice somewhere and cannot tell a drain call from a water heater on margin.
Cost one ticket beside the books
The calculator uses the same formula as the phone log. No account. QuickBooks stays the system of record.