Which accounting software handles job costing, retainage and AIA billing for a construction company in 2026?

Quick answer: Construction accounting software tracks money by job, not just by month. Four platforms named job costing and progress billing on pages we could read on 11 November 2026: Sage 100 Contractor, Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate, Deltek ComputerEase and Foundation. All four sell by quote, and none publishes a price.

We wrote this for 2026. If you searched for job costing software in 2025, the same four apply. The details below were read from each vendor’s page this month, and every source is linked.

What does construction accounting software do that general accounting software does not?

General accounting software answers “how did the company do this month?” Construction accounting software also answers “did this job make money, and what is it owed?” These are the six jobs it has to do.

Term	What it means in plain words
Job costing	Every cost is coded to a job, a phase and a cost code, so you can compare budget to actual on each job.
Progress billing and AIA billing	You bill a percentage of the contract as work gets done. AIA billing means pay applications on the American Institute of Architects’ standard forms.
Retainage	A share of each payment is held back until the job is done. The software must track what is held on each job and when it is released.
WIP reporting	WIP means work in progress. The report shows the value of unfinished jobs, including jobs that span several accounting periods.
Certified payroll	Payroll reports that many government-funded jobs require, with prevailing wage rates by job.
Multi-entity	Several legal companies in one system, such as a contractor and a related property or equipment company.

Which construction accounting software is best in 2026?

There is no single best pick, because the four differ on what their own pages state. The table shows what each vendor or Sage reseller page says. “Not stated” means the page we read does not mention it. It does not mean the software lacks it. Ask for a demo to confirm.

Software	Job costing	Progress and AIA billing	Retainage	WIP	Certified payroll	Multi-entity	Price
Sage 100 Contractor	Stated	Stated, including AIA formats	Release note names a retention override	Listed as project information, no report described	Stated	Not stated	Quote only
Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate	Stated	Progress billing stated, AIA in a comparison table	Contracts track “retention”	Not stated	Stated	Stated	Quote only
Deltek ComputerEase	Stated	Stated, on AIA forms	Stated	Stated	Stated	Not stated	Quote only
Foundation Software	Stated	Stated, including AIA	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated	Quote only

Deltek ComputerEase: best when retainage, WIP and certified payroll are all must-haves

ComputerEase is the only one of the four whose own page names all of retainage, WIP and certified payroll. Deltek’s ComputerEase page (read 11 November 2026) says it shows profitability by job, phase and cost code, supports progress billing on AIA forms plus unit billing, forecasts when retainage will be released, and handles union and certified payroll with prevailing wage tracking and fringe credits.

The same page does not mention multi-entity support. On price, it says only that “when you start your ComputerEase license, you only pay for the first month.” Pricing sits behind a demo request. See our Deltek ComputerEase listing for the vendor details we hold.

Sage 100 Contractor: best for estimating, accounting and project management in one system

Sage describes the product as one that “unifies estimating, accounting, job costing, and project management” in its Summer 2025 support bulletin (read 11 November 2026). The same bulletin says release 27.1 added a retention and holdback override in progress and unitary billing, plus support for the DOL WH-347 certified payroll form.

Sage reseller Cherry Bekaert’s Sage 100 Contractor page (read 11 November 2026) says you can assign costs to jobs, phases and cost codes, including direct, indirect and committed costs, and that the software has built-in support for AIA billing formats and certified payroll reporting. That page does not say how retainage works and does not mention multiple companies.

No price is published. The reseller page says cost depends on users, modules and data migration, and sends readers to a Sage professional for a quote. Sage’s own product pages returned an access-denied error to automated fetching on 11 November 2026, so we read no Sage-published figure. Compare it side by side on Deltek ComputerEase vs Sage 100 Contractor, or browse Sage 100 Contractor alternatives. Our Sage 100 Contractor listing shows pricing as quotation based.

Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate: best for several companies and property work

Cherry Bekaert’s Sage 300 CRE page (read 11 November 2026) says it offers integrated job costing, shows actual against budgeted costs across labor, materials, equipment and subcontractors, and supports progress billing, time and materials, and unit price billing. It also lists certified payroll reporting, and says it can “manage multiple companies” with inter-company transactions.

The page mentions “retention” in the contracts section but describes no retainage report, and it says nothing about WIP. Our Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate listing describes it as aimed at contractors, property managers and real estate developers.

Pricing is quote only. The reseller page says pricing depends on deployment type, number of users and selected modules. Compare the two Sage options on Sage 100 Contractor vs Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate.

Foundation Software: best for job cost reporting with built-in project management

Foundation’s accounting page (read 11 November 2026) lists detailed job costing across several projects at once, customizable progress billing worksheets based on percent complete including AIA, change order management, RFI tracking, and job cost reports that compare estimated to actual cost. It does not mention retainage, WIP, certified payroll or multiple companies, so confirm those in a demo. No price is shown, and the page points to a demo request or a phone call.

What is the best job costing software for a construction company?

Judge job costing on three things: how finely you can code a cost, whether committed costs show before the invoice arrives, and how fast you can see budget against actual. On the pages we read:

Sage 100 Contractor assigns costs to jobs, phases and cost codes, and covers direct, indirect and committed costs.
Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate compares actual to budgeted costs across labor, materials, equipment and subcontractors.
Deltek ComputerEase reports profitability by job, phase and cost code.
Foundation reports estimated against actual job cost across multiple projects.

Only the Sage 100 Contractor page we read names committed costs. Ask the others whether open purchase orders and subcontracts count against the job budget.

How does job costing work in construction accounting software?

Job costing means every dollar spent is tagged to the job it belongs to. The tag has layers, called a work breakdown structure, or WBS. It is a tree that starts with the job and ends at one line of spending.

Job and phase: the contract, then a stage of the work such as site work or framing.
Cost code: the specific work inside a phase, such as concrete footings.
Cost type: what the money bought. The usual five are labor, material, subcontract, equipment and other.

Cost codes say what the work was. Cost types say what you bought.

What is the difference between committed cost and actual cost?

Actual cost is money already spent or invoiced. Committed cost is money you have promised but not been billed for, such as a signed subcontract or an open purchase order. A job can look healthy on actuals and already be over budget once commitments count.

How are labor burden and equipment charged to a job?

Labor burden is the cost of employing someone on top of their wage: employer payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance priced on payroll, and benefits. Good software adds a burden rate to each hour as the time posts. If only gross wages reach the job, every job looks more profitable than it is.

For equipment you own, the usual method is an internal hourly rate. Each job is charged a rate per hour the machine works, which offsets its depreciation, fuel, repairs and insurance. A rate that leaves a large surplus or deficit at year end means jobs were over or under charged.

How do you read a job cost report?

A job cost report has one row per cost code and compares budget to reality.

Column	What it shows
Original budget	The estimate, split by cost code
Committed	Signed subcontracts and purchase orders
Actual to date	Invoices and payroll posted so far
Estimated cost to complete	A person’s forecast of what remains
Projected final cost	Actual plus cost to complete
Variance	Original budget plus changes, minus projected final cost

The column that matters most is the one a person fills in: cost to complete.

What is a WIP schedule, and why do contractors get it wrong?

A WIP schedule has one row per open job. It shows the contract amount, cost so far, estimated total cost, revenue earned, amount billed, and the gap between the last two. A surety (the company that issues your bonds) and your bank commonly ask for it.

Revenue earned usually comes from percentage of completion. The common version is cost to cost: costs so far divided by estimated total cost, applied to the contract price. The other method, completed contract, books nothing until the job ends. Tax rules have their own exceptions, so ask your accountant.

What are overbilling and underbilling?

These round numbers are made up to show the arithmetic, not data from any company. A contract is worth $1,000,000. Estimated total cost is $800,000 and you have spent $400,000. The job is 50 percent complete and has earned $500,000.

If you have billed	Result	What it means
$550,000	Overbilled by $50,000	You collected more than you earned. The $50,000 is a liability, because you still owe the work.
$450,000	Underbilled by $50,000	You earned more than you billed. It is an asset, but cash you have not asked for.

Overbilling turns dangerous when the job is also losing money, since the cash is already spent.

Why do WIP schedules go wrong?

The cost estimate never changes. If the estimate above rises to $900,000, the same $400,000 spent is 44.4 percent complete, and earned revenue falls from $500,000 to about $444,444. Without that update, profit looks fine until the job closes.
The schedule lives in a spreadsheet that does not tie to the ledger. Its totals should match the balance sheet, or a bank or surety notices.

How does ASC 606 apply to construction contracts and change orders?

ASC 606 is the U.S. accounting rule for revenue from customer contracts. The Financial Accounting Standards Board published it as Accounting Standards Update 2014-09 (read 11 November 2026). Its core principle: record revenue to show the transfer of promised goods or services, in the amount you expect to be entitled to.

For a contractor the last step matters most. The standard says revenue is recorded over time when, among other cases, the work creates or improves an asset the customer controls as it is built, or the work has no other use to the builder and the builder has an enforceable right to payment for work done so far. Progress is measured with an output or input method, and cost to cost is an input method.

The same text defines a contract modification as an approved change in scope or price, and says some industries call it a change order. If the owner has approved the work but the price is still being negotiated, you estimate the price change and do not wait for a signed number. So your system needs a status for “approved scope, price pending.” A change order also touches four places: the contract amount, the job budget by cost code, the schedule of values on the next pay application, and the revenue calculation. Ask each vendor to show one change order reach all four.

How does retainage work on both sides of the contract?

Retainage is a share of each payment that the payer holds back until the job meets certain conditions. The percentage is set in the contract. A contractor sits in the middle, so it deals with retainage twice.

	Retainage receivable	Retainage payable
Who holds it	The owner holds it from you	You hold it from your subcontractors
On the balance sheet	An asset you are owed	A liability you owe
Example at 10 percent	You bill $100,000 and receive $90,000. $10,000 is held.	A subcontractor bills $40,000. You pay $36,000. $4,000 is held.

Release conditions are in the contract. Common ones are substantial completion (the owner can use the building), a finished punch list (the leftover fixes), a final lien waiver and closeout documents. Your software should let you set the rate per job, or per line, because contracts differ.

What are the AIA G702 and G703 forms?

AIA is the American Institute of Architects, and its pay application forms are the ones many owners and architects expect. The AIA’s help pages describe form G702, the Application and Certificate for Payment (read 11 November 2026). The contractor uses it to ask for payment and the architect uses it to certify that payment is due. It shows work completed and stored, retainage, earlier payments, a change order summary and the payment now requested.

G703 is the continuation sheet. It holds the schedule of values, which is the contract price broken into line items such as site work, concrete and framing. AIA’s guide to completing the G702 (read 11 November 2026) lists these G703 columns: scheduled value, work completed from previous applications, work completed this period, materials presently stored, and balance to finish.

You fill in G703 first, line by line. Its totals carry onto G702, which adds the net change from change orders and the retainage, and subtracts earlier payments. Check that G702 totals reconcile with G703 and the last approved application.

What are stored materials, and what else should you watch for?

Stored materials are items you bought but have not installed, such as switchgear waiting in a warehouse. G703 gives them their own column so you can bill before they go in the wall. Once installed, the amount should move into completed work so it is never billed twice.

Edition: print the version your contract names. AIA also publishes subcontractor and cost-of-the-work variants.
Certified amount: the architect can certify a different figure than you requested, so the system should record both.

How does certified payroll work under Davis-Bacon?

The Davis-Bacon Act covers federally funded or assisted contracts above $2,000 for building or repairing public buildings and public works. The U.S. Department of Labor’s construction page (read 11 November 2026) says covered workers must get at least the locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits for the same kind of work. A prevailing wage is the rate the government has found is paid in that area for that trade. It is published as a wage determination on SAM.gov, the federal contracting site.

The Department’s page on worker protections in construction (read 11 November 2026) says contractors must keep records of hours, wages and fringe contributions, and submit certified payrolls weekly to the funding agency or recipient.

The WH-347 is the form many contractors use. The Department’s WH-347 page (read 11 November 2026) says the form is optional, and any format that meets the rules is acceptable. It records each worker’s classification, hours, pay rate, fringe benefits and deductions, and carries a Statement of Compliance, a signed statement that the payroll is accurate and workers received at least the required pay. That statement is subject to the penalties in 18 U.S.C. 1001, so the signer must know it is true.

What makes certified payroll hard to automate?

Classifications: one worker may be a laborer on Monday and an electrician’s helper on Tuesday. Each hour needs the right trade and rate.
Fringe benefits: an employer can pay fringe as cash on the check or through a plan such as health insurance. The software must credit each correctly.
Multi-state work: a wage determination is tied to a location, so rates differ by county and state.

The pages cited earlier say Sage 100 Contractor, Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate and ComputerEase handle certified payroll.

What are lien waivers, and what paperwork should the software keep?

A lien is a legal claim against a property by someone who worked on it and was not paid. A lien waiver is a signed paper giving up that claim, usually in exchange for payment. Owners collect them to prove the people below were paid. The chain runs down the contract: owner from general contractor, general contractor from subcontractors, subcontractors from suppliers.

A waiver is either conditional (effective once the payment clears) or unconditional (effective now), and either for a progress payment or for final payment. Sign an unconditional waiver only after the money is in your account. Rules differ by state. The Florida Statutes section 713.20 (read 11 November 2026), for one, gives a form for progress payments and one for final payments, and says a waiver tied to a check may be conditioned on the check being paid.

A subcontractor file usually holds the signed subcontract, a current certificate of insurance, a tax form, change orders and every waiver. Ask whether the system holds a payment when a waiver or insurance certificate is missing.

When does a contractor need multi-entity and intercompany accounting?

Many mid-size contractors run more than one legal company: an operating company that builds, an equipment company that owns the machines, and a real estate company that owns the yard. Each needs its own books.

The companies also trade with each other. The equipment company rents a loader to the operating company. These are intercompany transactions. One side books an expense and a payable, the other books income and a receivable. When reports are combined, the two halves must cancel out, called an elimination. Ask whether a transaction can post to two companies at once and stay in balance, and whether combined reports eliminate the intercompany lines. On the pages we read, only Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate says it manages multiple companies with intercompany transactions. For the other three, ask.

Where do estimating, project management and field time connect to accounting, and where do they break?

Handoff	What should pass across	Where it usually breaks
Estimating to accounting	The estimate becomes the job budget, by cost code	The estimate uses one code list and the books use another, so someone retypes the budget
Project management to accounting	Subcontracts, purchase orders and approved change orders	A change order is approved in the project system but never reaches the books, so committed cost is wrong
Field time to payroll to job cost	Hours with job, phase, cost code, trade and equipment	Late time cards, missing cost codes, overtime rules that differ from payroll

The cleanest fix is one cost code list used everywhere. Ask each vendor for a list of live integrations.

On Spotsaas, construction project management platforms include Procore, Buildertrend, Autodesk Construction Cloud, CoConstruct, Contractor Foreman and Knowify. For field reports and time capture, see RAKEN, Fieldwire and ClockShark. We did not verify which of the four accounting platforms in this guide connect to them, so confirm each link with the vendor. Side by side: Buildertrend vs Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud vs Procore and ClockShark vs RAKEN. Leaving one? See Procore alternatives.

How much does construction accounting software cost?

We could not read a published price for any of the four. ComputerEase says you pay only the first month when you start a license, and the other three direct you to a quote. Sage’s own pages blocked automated fetching on 11 November 2026, so our Sage cost notes come from the reseller pages linked above. Do not budget from a number you find in a forum post, because the cost changes with users, modules and hosting.

Ask every vendor for a written quote that lists user count, modules, data migration, training, and annual support, so the four are priced on the same basis.

How do I choose construction accounting software?

Ask for a live AIA pay application. Bill a sample job with retainage and a change order, then check the form it prints.
Run a WIP report on a job that spans two months. It should tie back to your general ledger.
Test certified payroll. If you work on government-funded jobs, confirm the form you must file, such as the DOL WH-347.
Count your companies. If you run more than one legal entity, ask how inter-company transactions are handled.
Ask who hosts it. Cloud or on-premise changes your IT work and your cost.
Plan the move. Ask what history you can bring from your current books.

What should be on a construction accounting software buyer checklist?

Bring your own data to every demo.

Test	What a pass looks like
Enter a subcontract, then an invoice against it	Committed cost shows before the invoice and drops as it is paid
Approve a change order with price pending	Budget, contract, next pay application and revenue all update
Print an AIA G702 and G703 with stored materials	Totals reconcile and match your contract’s form edition
Bill with 10 percent retainage, then release half	Receivable and payable retainage both move correctly
Run a WIP report on a two-month job	Over and under billing tie to the ledger balances
Run one week of certified payroll	Two classifications for one worker, fringe split, WH-347 or equivalent printed
Post an intercompany charge	Both companies stay in balance and the combined report cancels it

When is a general ledger plus a spreadsheet still the right answer?

It can be, for a small company. The signs are one legal entity, short jobs billed in one or two invoices, no retainage, no government-funded work, and no bank or surety asking for a WIP schedule. If that is you, a general ledger with a job-cost spreadsheet costs less.

Move to construction accounting software when any of these appear: jobs that span several months and bill by progress, retainage on either side, an owner who requires AIA forms, certified payroll, a second company, or a surety or lender that wants WIP reports.

If you stay on general accounting software for now, the options we list include QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books and FreshBooks. Larger contractors sometimes choose a general business platform such as NetSuite, Sage Intacct or Acumatica. We have not verified retainage, WIP or AIA billing on any of them, and NetSuite and Sage Intacct pages blocked automated reading on 11 November 2026, so no price is given. Compare NetSuite vs Sage Intacct, QuickBooks vs Sage Intacct or Acumatica vs NetSuite, or see QuickBooks alternatives, Deltek ComputerEase alternatives and Sage 300 Construction and Real Estate alternatives.

Can a small contractor use general accounting software instead?

Some very small contractors run on general accounting software and a spreadsheet. We have not verified retainage, WIP or AIA billing on those platforms, so check each before you rely on it. Our guide to the best accounting software for small business lists the general options with prices read from vendor pages, and the accounting software category shows more. The construction management software category lists the job-focused platforms.