Quickbooks is kind of the industry standard, it's not cheap though. It is worth it, and it's what most CPAs will be able to sync with for tax filing and checking your books.

If you're still small then I think Wave still offers a free basic package, but you can upgrade later when you want to do things like add payroll or increase the number of monthly transactions.

 

Appreciate this, I will look into both options.

 

I was going through a similar problem. I couldn't justify all these expensive softwares and how complicated they are to use. I came across Clientility as it was recommended to me, and so far, I am very happy with how easy it is to use, and their prices seem to be among the best

 

Thank you, how much is it monthly?

 

We use Buildertrend. It is great but we have 6 PM's, a sales team, designer etc. Definitely highly recommended.

 

Thank you for the recommendation. How much is it monthly?

 

I went thru this years ago. It depends on what you are doing, and what your volume is. Are you a sub or a GC? Commercial or Residential? One thing I was told about QB is it wasn't great for GC's because it didn't have a lot of flexibility if you ran into something weird. It's my opinion that there isn't one program that will do everything WELL. Accounting is kind of standardized; estimates are not. The systems I looked at would do one thing really well, but everything else was an add on. FWIW, back in the mid-2000's, I was doing $10 million a year with Excel for accounting, Word for contracts, etc and various different programs for quantity surveying.

 

Yes, I have been told this as well. I am a GC, residential. $10M a year with Excel for accounting and Word for contracts, that is impressive 🙌

 

Whatever you choose, get out the mindset of cost... get what serves your companies needs, THAT'S what's important, then add it to your yearly overhead costs (and then Hourly Rate) and then pass the cost along to your customer(s), as ALL your costs are... no different than say, insurance, as one example...

 

Thank you for the tips.

 

From what I've come across from working with clients:
QBO - great if you have really standard costs for labor and material, easy-ish to invoice out of (can be a pain for progress billing). I am not sure if they do scheduling, but I don't think they do. Pricing starts at $480/yr but each add-on is an additional fee that adds up quickly
Clientility - could be what you're looking for, they don't mention scheduling. Starts at $720/yr
Buildertrend - It looks like what you're looking for and the folks that I've worked with who have this love it. Starts at $3600/yr
Jobber - Looks like it has everything you've mentioned and it is one of the lower cost items. Starts at $300/yr, but the tier that connects to QBO is $900/yr. What is complicated / not working for you with Jobber right now?
Excel - super flexible but you can't invoice directly out of it (but you could automatically create an invoice), you could have it do a rough schedule but not perfectly. Pricing for common items and specific jobs is doable. Cost is $200/yr but includes a lot of other items.

 

Appreciate all the recs Daniel. I actually found Jobber way too pricey. $900 a year to connect to QBO felt kinda wild, especially with so many affordable options out there. It also felt a bit messy and overcomplicated. I’m on the road most of the time so I don’t really have the patience and time to dig through a bunch of tabs and menus 😅
I ended up going with Clientility after someone recommended it. It’s $516 USD a year, connects to QBO and it actually has scheduling, So far it’s been great super simple and straightforward to use.

 

I use QB Desktop for accounting, estimating, invoicing, payroll. It does nothing for scheduling, but I'm uber-small (1 man show, occasional helper). My contracts are typically fixed price with specified draw schedule, so I just invoice for whatever the contract calls for at the appropriate time. I'd really like to have a CRM type software (that integrates with QB) for managing and tracking customer contact and job scheduling. But otherwise, QB desktop is meeting the needs for me. FWIW, they tried pushing me to switch to QB online, but it was considerably more expensive and I don't need to access info on the go.

 

We use BluePro.app - It's about half the price of Jobber and has all the major features - invoices, quotes, job tracking, scheduling, payment pricing, time tracking etc. We are a small business and dont need half the features Jobber has so it doesn't make sense to pay for them. It does connect to our Quickbooks instance