Buildertrend runs your builds. It does not run your books. This is everything a custom home builder or remodeler needs to keep Buildertrend and QuickBooks in agreement, get job costs you can trust, and stop guessing whether the job actually made money. Guides, fixes, and done-for-you help, all in one place.
Buildertrend is one of the most popular construction management platforms in the country, and for good reason. It runs estimates, scheduling, daily logs, selections, change orders, the client portal, and project-level budgets in one place. What it is not is your accounting system. Buildertrend has financial features, but it is not a general ledger, it does not reconcile your bank, and it does not produce tax-ready financial statements. That job belongs to QuickBooks and to whoever keeps your books. This hub exists to cover that handoff, the place where most builders lose money, in real depth.
On the money side, Buildertrend handles job budgets, estimates, purchase orders, bills, owner invoices and progress draws, online client payments, lien waivers, and a budget-vs-actual view for each job. It is genuinely useful, and for a lot of builders it is the first time job costs have lived anywhere other than a spreadsheet. If you want the full breakdown of what those features do and where they stop, start with does Buildertrend have accounting.
Buildertrend does not keep a general ledger, reconcile your bank and credit card accounts, run payroll tax filings, file sales and use tax, or produce a profit and loss statement and balance sheet you can hand to a lender, a surety, or the IRS. Those are accounting-system jobs. Try to run a construction business on Buildertrend alone and you end up with project data that looks right and books that are not there. The cleanest way to see the split is the head-to-head: Buildertrend vs QuickBooks.
The standard, correct setup is Buildertrend connected to QuickBooks Online. Buildertrend runs the build and pushes the financial activity into QuickBooks, where the actual books live. Done right, your estimates, invoices, bills, and payments flow into QuickBooks and land on the correct job and cost code, so your job costing is real and your financials are accurate. Done wrong, the two systems disagree and your reports cannot be trusted. We walk through the connection step by step in how to sync Buildertrend to QuickBooks.
Two failure points show up again and again. The first is the sync itself: duplicate transactions, change orders that never post, portal payments that do not match the bank, and costs landing on the wrong job. The second is job costing: labor that is never allocated, costs that are not coded, and a budget-vs-actual report that looks authoritative but is not real. We cover both in depth in sync not working and Buildertrend job costing.
If you are still deciding how your tools fit together, start with the Decide guides below. If your sync is broken or your job costs are wrong, jump to Fix & Operate. And if you would rather hand the whole thing to a team that does this every day for builders, the Work With Us options cover done-for-you bookkeeping, accounting and tax support, and the QuickBooks integration, all part of our broader construction systems and integrations service. FinTruction is based in Coppell, Texas, and works with custom home builders, remodelers, and residential general contractors across the United States.
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Done-for-you bookkeeping for Buildertrend builders: clean books, accurate job costs, monthly close, and numbers you can actually bid from.
Read more →Beyond bookkeeping: tax strategy, WIP-based financials, and advisory built around how Buildertrend custom builders actually run.
Read more →We fix the sync so estimates, change orders, allowances, and portal payments flow into QuickBooks cleanly and post to the right cost codes.
Read more →What Buildertrend actually does on the money side, what it does not, and whether you still need QuickBooks alongside it.
Read more →They solve different problems. Here is where each one wins and why most builders end up running both, connected.
Read more →The plan price is only part of it. The full cost of running Buildertrend includes the bookkeeping no one mentions up front.
Read more →A step-by-step walkthrough of connecting the two, mapping cost codes, and avoiding the setup mistakes that break job costing.
Read more →The most common reasons Buildertrend and QuickBooks fall out of sync, and how to clear duplicates, mismatches, and failed pushes.
Read more →How to get accurate budget-vs-actual and WIP out of Buildertrend instead of job-cost reports you cannot trust.
Read more →No. Buildertrend manages the build, estimates, scheduling, change orders, and client communication, but it is not a general ledger or tax-ready accounting system. Most builders run Buildertrend connected to QuickBooks, where the actual books, financial statements, and tax filings live. See our guide on whether Buildertrend has accounting for the full breakdown.
Buildertrend tracks budgets and costs on each job, but it does not reconcile your bank accounts, categorize every transaction, manage payroll liabilities, or produce tax-ready financials. A bookkeeper who knows Buildertrend keeps the build data and the books in agreement so your job-cost reports are actually correct.
Usually a mapping or sync problem: estimates flatten into one line, change orders post twice or not at all, portal payments do not match deposits, or costs land on the wrong cost codes. Our troubleshooting guide covers the common causes and fixes.
Buildertrend is a construction project management platform. It handles estimating, scheduling, daily logs, selections and allowances, change orders, document storage, the client communication portal, owner invoicing, and project-level budget tracking. It has financial features, but it is a project management tool first, not an accounting system. See our guide on whether Buildertrend has accounting for the full picture.
Buildertrend can track job costs through budgets, cost categories, purchase orders, bills, and a budget-vs-actual report. The catch is that the numbers are only as good as the inputs. If labor is not allocated, costs are not coded to the right category, or Buildertrend and QuickBooks disagree, the job-cost report looks right but is not. Our Buildertrend job costing guide covers how to get numbers you can trust.
Buildertrend pricing is tiered and quote-based, and it changes over time, so always confirm current pricing directly with Buildertrend. More important for most builders is the total cost of ownership, which includes the QuickBooks subscription and the bookkeeping you still need. Our Buildertrend pricing guide breaks down the structure and the costs builders forget to budget for.
No. FinTruction is based in Coppell, Texas, and works with custom home builders, remodelers, and residential general contractors across the United States. Buildertrend bookkeeping and QuickBooks integration are handled remotely.
Real results from builders and contractors we have helped untangle their books and systems.
They didn’t just record transactions and call it a day. They built a custom chart of accounts around how a remodeling company actually runs, did a full catch-up on years of bookkeeping inside QuickBooks Online, and now stay on top of my monthly bookkeeping and payroll. Every step, they broke it down in simple terms instead of burying me in accountant talk.
FinTruction rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, with real job costing, work in progress, and retainage. They didn’t just hand me reports and disappear; they walked me through my numbers until I understood them.
Sahil and his team handle the bookkeeping and job costing for my painting business. They cleaned up my books and set up integrations that give me accurate, timely job costing with solid weekly data. Reliable, detailed, and genuinely invested in getting the numbers right.
FinTruction is the only bookkeeping team we’ve found that truly understands construction accounting and WIP reporting. They aligned our income and costs across 21 jobs and gave us full, monthly transparency. Fast, accurate, and an indispensable partner.
When I came to FinTruction I had no financial structure. No job costing, no WIP tracking, books behind. They did a full cleanup and rebuilt job costing and WIP tracking in QuickBooks. Now I know what’s billed, what’s owed, and where every job stands.
A couple of minutes from a contractor we support, sharing what working with FinTruction has been like and what changed once their numbers finally made sense.
Tell us how you run Buildertrend and where the numbers fall apart. We will show you exactly what is broken and how we would fix it, no obligation.
