QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks integration built for the sub side of the job.
QuickBooks is a good ledger and a poor job-cost system, because the things that decide whether a job made money — the schedule of values, the pending change order, the open purchase order — are not transactions. SubMark holds those, then connects to your QuickBooks Online company in both directions: a finished draw pushes across as an invoice, and the bills your bookkeeper codes pull back as job costs.
14-day free trial, no card needed. Field crews are free and unlimited. See pricing →
- Bills and card or check purchases pull back as job costs — hourly, with auto-sync on.
- A finished draw pushes across as a QuickBooks invoice with one click.
- Retainage either stays out of the invoice or rides on it as its own line. You choose.
Where the two systems usually disagree.
The draw gets typed twice
The billing is built in one place, submitted through the GC’s portal, and then retyped into QuickBooks as an invoice so the receivable exists. Two keystrokes of the same number is how a $4,000 discrepancy survives three months.
Coded bills never make it back to the job
Your bookkeeper codes supplier bills correctly inside QuickBooks. Unless somebody exports and pastes, the job-cost report your PMs actually read never sees any of it — so labor looks like the whole cost of the job.
Retainage breaks the invoice
Bill the net check amount and the retainage you are owed is invisible in your books. Bill it gross without a retainage line and your receivables are overstated every month. Most offices pick one and live with the consequence.
A ledger cannot see committed money
A $140,000 purchase order is not a transaction until the bill arrives, so QuickBooks is right to ignore it and you are wrong to. The money is spent; only the paperwork is slow.
Nobody knows how much cost has no job on it
The real question about any job-cost number is what share of your spend got coded to a job at all. Without that figure, a clean-looking variance is just an incomplete one.
How the connection works.
One company connection, set up once, with the push direction left deliberately manual. Nothing leaves for QuickBooks because a clock went off.
- 01 Connect your QuickBooks Online company
You authorize SubMark on Intuit’s own consent page, so no QuickBooks password is ever typed into SubMark. Disconnect whenever you like, and if the authorization expires the page says so and offers to reconnect — your data is not touched.
- 02 Say how your customers are structured
Three shapes, because subs genuinely run all three: the GC as customer with each project as a job under it, one customer per project, or the GC as customer only. Pick the one your books already use instead of reorganizing them.
- 03 Import your customers
Bring your QuickBooks customers into Companies and link their jobs to the projects you already have, so the two systems are talking about the same GCs from the first push — and pulled costs know which job they belong to.
- 04 Set the invoice rules once
Let QuickBooks assign the invoice number or carry your own draw number across. Invoice the net check amount, or invoice gross with retainage as its own line. Choose the item draws bill under and the expense account PO lines bill against — both are required before anything can push, by design.
- 05 Push a draw, or a PO, with a click
A finished draw goes across as a QuickBooks invoice, one at a time, when you say so — and the draw then shows which invoice it became. A purchase order goes the same way and comes back marked as in QuickBooks.
- 06 Pull the costs back
Bills and card or check purchases come back into job costing — on demand, or hourly if you turn auto-sync on. A line lands on a project when the bill is job-coded in QuickBooks to that project’s linked job, categorized by the QuickBooks account your bookkeeper used.
- 07 Read the coverage card before you trust the number
The QuickBooks settings page, and a Home card you can add, show how much of the pulled cost is job-coded against how much is not, the percentage coded, how many lines have no job on them, and when it last synced. The uncoded pile is a list to work, not a number to argue with.
Everything above ships today and none of it is a tier you upgrade into. The core modules are on in every trade pack from setup; a few extras, like the invoices inbox, are a switch in Settings. The full list is on the product page.
In the app
Every setting the connection actually has.
Short list on purpose. These are the decisions that change what lands in your books:
- Customer structure
- GC as customer with the project as a job beneath it, one customer per project, or GC as customer only.
- Invoice numbering
- QuickBooks assigns the number, or the invoice carries your own draw number across.
- Invoice amount
- The net check amount, or gross with retainage as its own line on the invoice.
- Item draws bill under
- The QuickBooks item your draws post against. Nothing pushes until it is set, because an invoice on the wrong income account is worse than no invoice.
- Account PO lines bill against
- The QuickBooks expense account purchase orders post to. Same rule: required before a PO can be sent.
- Auto-sync hourly
- Off by default. On, the cost pull runs hourly; off, it runs when you click sync. Either way the pull is read-only against your QuickBooks records.
- Coverage card
- Job-coded against unassigned dollars, the share coded, the count of lines with no job, the last sync time, and a chip when a sync failed.
- Entered by hand
- A checkbox on a draw for offices that enter their own invoices. The books stay accurate without the connection pushing anything.
Pushes are one record at a time, by a person, with a click. Nothing is scheduled in that direction — an invoice you did not mean to create costs far more to unwind than one you chose to send. QuickBooks is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc.; SubMark is not affiliated with or endorsed by Intuit.
Straight answer
What it does not do.
A product page that only lists wins is a product page you stop trusting in week two. These are the gaps, in our own words, before you find them yourself.
- It does not pull customer payments back from QuickBooks yet. When a check lands, the payment and the retainage held are recorded on the draw in SubMark by you.
- A cost line only reaches a job if the bill is job-coded in QuickBooks. Code it to a customer with no job, or to nothing, and it arrives as unassigned — which the coverage card counts and shows you in dollars.
- The coverage figure is company-wide, not per job. It tells you how complete your pulled cost is overall. It cannot promise that this job’s number is complete.
- QuickBooks Online only. There is no Desktop connection. A push writes the invoice or purchase order, and creates or links the GC customer, the project as a job and the PO vendor if they are not already there; it never changes your chart of accounts.
- It is not an accounting system and does not want to be. Payroll, tax, reconciliation and your financial statements stay in QuickBooks, where your accountant already works.
Which trades feel this most.
Same problem, different shape. Each trade page leads with that trade's own phases, schedule of values and wording.
Electrical
Gear, wire and devices are bought on POs all year, so whether a job is healthy depends on committed cost long before any bill arrives.
HVAC / Mechanical
Equipment is ordered early and big, so one coded bill can move a job’s whole material position in a month.
Concrete
Ready-mix and rebar arrive as a stack of supplier bills, and which pour they belong to is the only thing that makes them readable.
Questions
QuickBooks: what a sub’s office actually asks.
Does SubMark replace QuickBooks?
No, and it should not. Your books stay your books. SubMark holds the job side — the schedule of values, draws, change orders, T&M tags, POs and job costing — and connects to QuickBooks Online so the same number is not typed into both.
Which version of QuickBooks does it connect to?
QuickBooks Online. You connect your company through Intuit’s own consent screen, so SubMark never sees your QuickBooks login. There is no QuickBooks Desktop connection.
How does a draw get into QuickBooks?
You push it across as an invoice with a click, one draw at a time. You decide in advance whether QuickBooks numbers it or it carries your draw number, and whether it invoices the net check amount or goes gross with retainage as its own line. The draw then records which QuickBooks invoice it became.
Do bills come back automatically?
Yes, if you turn auto-sync on — then bills and card or check purchases pull hourly. Otherwise the pull runs when you click sync. Either way, a line only lands on a project if the bill is job-coded in QuickBooks to that project’s linked job.
What happens to retainage on a pushed invoice?
It is a setting, because both answers are defensible. Invoice the net check amount and your receivable matches the check you expect. Invoice gross with a retainage line and the amount being held shows on the invoice itself; either way the invoice totals the net check. Pick the one your accountant wants and it applies to every push.
What if we do not want to connect it at all?
Everything else still works. A draw carries a checkbox for marking it entered into QuickBooks by hand, with the date, so the office can keep its own entry discipline and still see at a glance which draws have made it to the books.
Read next
QuickBooks job costing for subcontractors
What QuickBooks genuinely does well, exactly where it stops, and why a sub’s job cost always looks wrong without something in front of it.
The purchase order process for subcontractors
Committed cost is the gap between a ledger and a job-cost report. This is the PO discipline that closes it.
How to build a subcontractor WIP report
Your WIP is only as good as the cost behind it. This is what the schedule of values, the costs and the books all have to agree on.
Connect it, then look at the coverage number.
Start the trial, connect your QuickBooks Online company, and pull a month of bills. The share of your cost that is coded to a job at all is usually the most useful thing you learn in week one.
14-day free trial, no card needed. See the whole product →
$249/mo for your company, your first 3 office users included, $39/mo each after that. Field crews are free and unlimited. See what's included →
The rest of the job
Change orders
From the day the field finds the change to the day it is in the schedule of values, with an audit trail at every step.
T&M tickets
Priced in the office off your own rate lists, signed on site, and several tickets roll into one change order.
Schedule of values
One SOV per job, built from your trade’s own breakdown, locked when the first draw goes out, and approved change orders added to it automatically.
Draw tracking
Fifteen jobs, nine GCs, nine cutoff dates and nine submission methods — in one calendar and one log, with drawn, certified and received as three different numbers.
Retainage tracking
Five or ten percent of everything you have ever billed, sitting somewhere, on jobs some of which finished last year.
Daily logs
The record that wins an argument nine months later, written in two minutes by a foreman who wants to go home.
Lien waiver tracking
Which waivers went up the chain, which the GC has received, and which draw is sitting still because one of them has not.
Job costing
The overrun you can still do something about, instead of the one you find in the end-of-job autopsy.
Crew scheduling
Who is on which job on Monday, across every job — and a flag the moment the same crew is promised to two of them.
Time tracking
Hours per worker, per job, per day — signed by the worker who worked them, approved by the office, and read straight into job costing.
Safety records
Toolbox talks signed off per person, scored site inspections, and certification and COI expiries you see 30 days out instead of on the day.