Best Plumbing Job Costing Software for Contractors in 2026

Quick Comparison of the Best Plumbing Job Costing Software

Each row reflects what the vendor's pricing and product pages list, so the best plumbing job costing software for you depends on which columns match how you bill. Prices are as published in October 2026.

Tool	Best for	Job costing	Change orders	Pricing
Simpro®	Commercial and growing contractors	Labor, materials, contractors, and equipment per job	Supported	Price for your workflow
FieldPulse	Growing residential teams	Labor, materials, and overhead per job	Not listed	Quote only, per seat
Jobber	Smaller service businesses	Grow and Plus plans	Not listed	$49 to $699 a month
Knowify	Project-based contractors	Advanced and Enterprise plans	All plans	$99 to $399 a month, Enterprise by quote
QuoteIQ	Small businesses wanting simpler job costing	Pro plan and above	Not listed	$29.99 to $699.99 a month
STACK	Takeoffs and preconstruction	Not listed	Not listed	$49 to $348 per user a month
PlanSwift	Takeoffs and material estimating	Not listed	Not listed	$2,000 to $3,000 per seat a year
Harvest	Labor cost tracking	Time and expenses only	Not listed	Free, then $9 to $17.50 per seat a month

If you only need job costing, the five tools that list it come first below, starting with Simpro, and the three built for takeoffs and time tracking follow.

1. Simpro: Best for Commercial and Growing Plumbing Contractors

Simpro supports over 250,000 users worldwide. You can forecast and track job costs across labor, materials, contractors, and equipment, and view job costs per employee. Foster Plumbing in Colorado used the Over/Under Bill report and real-time job costing while it grew from $1 million to $10 million in revenue, and it cut its collection period from 90 days to around 60.

The same system covers the front end of the job. Foster's estimators completed up to 25 tenant improvement bids a week from a catalog of more than 7,000 items with photos and multiple vendor prices, and its schedule-of-values quotes won trust even when its price wasn't the lowest. Tropical Coast Plumbing, which could only track labor before it switched, now sets up pre-builds for recurring jobs and gets an alert when someone with an outdated license is scheduled.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• You get travel time on each job's timesheet.
• Progress invoices and retainage claims sit next to job costs for commercial work.
• Change orders and change order costs each have their own page in Simpro's help guide.
• You can sync with QuickBooks and Xero, as well as Sage and MYOB.

Cons

• Pricing is unpublished, so you can only compare it with the tools below by sending a pricing request.
• Takeoffs, Maintenance Planner, and Digital Forms are add-ons to the Base Plan.

Pricing

Simpro doesn't publish prices. The Base Plan covers quoting, scheduling, inventory, invoicing, accounting, and reporting. Add-ons such as Takeoffs and Maintenance Planner cost extra. Price for your workflow with a pricing request.

Related: Ten early warning signs that a commercial job is losing money show up before closeout, and the guide to unprofitable plumbing jobs lists them.

2. FieldPulse: Best for Growing Residential Plumbing Teams

FieldPulse lists job costing for labor, materials, and overhead. Each job shows actual cost, actual sales, and profit, and you can estimate margins before work begins, then confirm actual profit once the job is done.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• You see cost, price, and profit on each job, broken out by line items.
• A QuickBooks integration, plus estimates and invoices, appears on the pricing page.

Cons

• Change orders and purchase orders aren't mentioned on its job costing page.
• Rates and plan tiers aren't published on the pricing page.

Pricing

FieldPulse prices by seat, and you get a custom quote after a sales conversation. Engage and Fleet Tracking are optional premium add-ons.

Related: Simpro's roundup of plumbing job management software compares eight tools by business type, from small residential shops to large commercial contractors.

3. Jobber: Best for Smaller Plumbing Service Businesses

Jobber is a home-service platform that handles invoices and payments, and it builds job costs from three inputs. You log labor hours in the mobile app at each employee's set rate, materials carry over from the quote, and you log expenses in the field. For job profitability, its reports compare price against costs.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Labor, materials, and expenses roll into job profitability on Grow and Plus.
• Published tiers, with QuickBooks Online sync from Connect.

Cons

• You need Grow or Plus to get job costing at all.
• Change orders and purchase orders don't appear on its job costing page.

Pricing

On monthly billing, Core starts at $49 for one user. Connect runs $139 to $399, Grow $199 to $499, and Plus $499 to $699. Extra users cost $29 a month, and if you prepay annually, Core drops to $21.

Related: Twelve habits for plumbing companies growing past $1 million in annual revenue, including job-level costing and weekly KPI tracking, appear in Simpro's plumbing management tips.

4. Knowify: Best for Project-Based Plumbing Contractors

Knowify is project and service management software for the trades. If you run AIA billing or progress billing, it supports both, and every plan gives you change orders and purchase orders, plus bills and expenses. Job costing and WIP reporting begin at Advanced.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Change orders and progress billing on all plans.
• Job costing and WIP reporting on Advanced and Enterprise.
• QuickBooks Online on every plan.

Cons

• Core gives you no job costing or WIP reporting.
• Real-time dispatching for each service call, service maps, and maintenance agreements require the Service Pro add-on.
• QuickBooks Desktop works only on Enterprise.

Pricing

Core costs $99 to $149 a month for one user. Advanced costs $329 to $399 for 10 users, and Enterprise is quote-based. Extra users on Core and Advanced cost $29 a month, and Service Pro adds $99 to $199 a month on any plan.

Related: The path from contract signing to final payment, with schedules, crews, materials, costs, and change orders, runs nine steps in Simpro's guide to commercial plumbing project management.

5. QuoteIQ: Best for Small Plumbing Businesses That Want Simpler Job Costing

QuoteIQ is a CRM and field service platform for home-service contractors. If you want job costing, it starts at the Pro plan, which covers four users and adds a QuickBooks connection, and you get expense tracking one tier lower at Beginner.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Job costing and a QuickBooks connection at $199.99 a month on Pro.
• Expense tracking from the $99.99 Beginner plan, and Time Tracker Pro on Elite and Max.

Cons

• Change orders aren't listed on the pricing page.
• You need a credit or debit card to start the 14-day trial.

Pricing

Essentials costs $29.99 a month for one user, Beginner $99.99 for two, Pro $199.99 for four, Elite $299.99 for 10, and Max $699.99 for 20. Extra users cost $25 a month. If you pay yearly, you save two months.

Related: For the pricing, job costing, and service-tier changes that lift net margin, read the guide to plumbing profit margins.

6. STACK: Best for Plumbing Contractors Focused on Takeoffs and Preconstruction

With STACK's Takeoff & Estimate plan, you get takeoffs bundled with flexible estimates and proposals. Build & Operate adds issue tracking, punch lists, and daily reports, and the full platform adds field and project management.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Takeoffs, estimates, and proposals in one preconstruction tool.
• Daily reports and punch lists on Build & Operate.

Cons

• Job cost tracking and change orders don't appear on its pricing page.
• Field and project management come only with the full platform.

Pricing

Takeoff & Estimate starts at $299 per user per month. Build & Operate starts at $49, and the full platform at $348.

7. PlanSwift: Best for Detailed Plumbing Takeoffs and Material Estimating

PlanSwift is takeoff and estimating software that includes Auto Count, Auto Scale, and Auto Bookmark tools, plus pre-built trade assemblies. The Core plan adds the Takeoff BOOST suite, which includes Auto Takeoff for a first-pass takeoff.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• AI counting and scaling tools with pre-built assemblies.
• You get a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

Cons

• Job costing and change orders don't appear on its pricing page.
• Licenses are annual and sold per seat.

Pricing

Essential costs $2,000 a year per seat, and Core costs $3,000. Additional seats are discounted, and teams with 10 or more licenses can ask sales about volume pricing.

8. Harvest: Best for Plumbing Businesses Focused on Labor Cost Tracking

With Harvest, you track time and expenses and send invoices. Every plan includes project estimates that forecast hours and costs before kickoff, and Enterprise includes profitability reporting.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Time and expense tracking from the free plan.
• Published per-seat rates.

Cons

• Materials and purchase order tracking aren't listed on the pricing page.
• Profitability reporting is limited to Enterprise.

Pricing

The Free plan covers one seat and two projects. Teams cost $9 per seat per month billed annually or $11 on monthly billing. Enterprise costs $14 annually or $17.50 monthly.

What the eight tools capture differs more than what they cost, so the frequently asked questions before you buy come down to which inputs a tool records.

What Should Plumbing Job Costing Software Track?

Job costing software for plumbing contractors needs to capture five inputs on every job and compare them with the estimate, so you can act before the job closes:

• Labor hours from mobile timesheets, including travel time
• Materials from purchase orders and truck stock
• Subcontractor invoices
• Equipment and overhead charges
• Change orders priced against the original budget

The burdened labor rate matters as much as the hours. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put construction wages and salaries at $36.13 an hour in June 2026 and benefits at $15.84, which brings total employer compensation to $51.97. Cost a job at wages and you understate every hour by $15.84. Materials costing works the same way: parts should hit the job at purchase order and truck stock cost the moment they leave the shelf. That way a supplier invoice that arrives after billing doesn't rewrite the margin you reported.

Related: Counting parts before they reach the truck is covered in Simpro's comparison of seven tools for plumbing inventory management.

A change order adds cost the day the crew starts it, and revenue only when someone prices and approves it. Add two floor drains and a trench cut mid-job, and a three-person crew spends 48 crew hours on it. At the $51.97 average, that is about $2,495 in labor before you buy a single fitting. A CFMA analysis of audited construction financial statements found an average profit bleed of a little over 1% between what work-in-progress reports projected and what jobs earned.

Retainage hides cash the same way. On a $400,000 commercial contract with 10% retainage, $40,000 stays withheld until closeout, held by the owner or by the general contractors above you. Even a fully billed job can leave you $40,000 short.

Split commercial costs by phase and give rough-in, trim, and testing their own budgets. You see a rough-in labor overrun in week three, not at closeout.

Decide which system holds the ledger before you buy. If accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero keeps the books, costs should flow one way from the job costing tool, so a supplier bill never lands in two places.

The operational fix: Load the estimate as the job budget on day one, give every change order its own cost line, and compare budget with actual every week, so you can still change course while crews are on site and your customer service rep isn't explaining a surprise charge.

That budget starts as an estimate, and the line between estimating and costing software solutions gets blurred often enough to need its own section.

Plumbing Job Costing Software vs. Plumbing Estimating Software

Plumbing estimating software measures drawings and prices a job before you win it. Job costing records what a specific job consumes after you win it. STACK and PlanSwift sit on the estimating side, Harvest covers time and expenses, and Simpro, FieldPulse, Jobber, Knowify, and QuoteIQ list job costing. Simpro lists quoting, estimating, and job costing in one platform, with takeoffs as an add-on, and its quoting tools deliver 10x faster estimates that then feed the job budget.

Related: AI drawing review, fixture counts, and pipe measurements are covered in Simpro's guide to plumbing estimating.

The handoff between the two decides whether accurate estimates turn into a budget that means anything. A takeoff that misses two fixtures in a 40-fixture bathroom group shortchanges the budget by those two fixtures. You only see that error once actuals arrive. Plumbing job cost software compares actual hours, parts, and subcontractor bills against that budget and reports the shortfall as an overrun.

Improve Plumbing Job Profitability With Better Cost Visibility

If you learn a job's margin when the books close, you had no chance to change it while crews were on site.

Simpro tracks labor, materials, contractors, and equipment against the job budget while the work runs, with change orders and progress invoices in the same system, so a job that's slipping shows up on this week's budget check, not on the closing statement. Schedule a demo to see how.