QuickBooks for Electrical Contractors: A Complete Guide

What is QuickBooks for Electrical Contractors?

Electricians use QuickBooks to centralize their financial data and generate financial reports, including profit and loss statements, cash flow, and balance sheets.

For example, creating an invoice in QuickBooks will automatically adjust your revenue for that month to include the amount you invoiced for. Similarly, you can enter expenses, billable hours, mileage, and other costs to keep tabs on the financial health of your business and stay on top of taxes.

You can manually input financial information into QuickBooks or connect it to your business bank account to automate income and expense tracking.

However, QuickBooks isn’t explicitly designed for electrical contractors, so using it with other tools to track projects is ideal.

Which QuickBooks Features Are Important for Electricians?

QuickBooks has powerful financial reporting and tax features for accounting, but electrical contractors tend to use some key features:

• Billing and estimates: Estimate electrical work by selecting a product or service in QuickBooks, then automatically convert it to an invoice once work is complete. You can set up QuickBooks to automatically calculate and track all sales tax.

• Payments: Accept credit cards, ACH payments, or other methods like Apple Pay and PayPal, and send customers a link for easy online payments.

• Expense tracking: You can track expenses automatically and allocate them to projects to track the cost of goods sold.

• Mileage tracking: QuickBooks automates mileage tracking on your phone’s GPS so you can ensure all your project expenses are accounted for.

• Reporting: Electricians can easily track cash flow and profit-and-loss statements with QuickBooks.

• Touchless Integration:  Using ServiceTitan and Quickbooks Online, you can automate transaction processing and automatically export the corresponding Journal Entries to your accounting software, eliminating the need to batch, post, and export. Learn more about how this feature saves incredible amounts of time.

You might also need other features depending on what type of electrical work you typically do and whether or not you have employees. For example, if you have a large business or do commercial work, you’ll probably also benefit from inventory management and project accounting tools.

Which QuickBooks Pricing Plan Is Best for Electricians?

Choosing a pricing plan that’s right for you will depend on the size of your business, your other software, and the features you need. 

If you’re a solo electrical contractor, the basic plan might work for you, but larger electrical contractors with multiple techs will likely need a more robust plan.

Most QuickBooks plans include income and expense tracking, invoices, and tax reporting features.

QuickBooks Online has four main pricing plans:

• Simple Start: $17.50 per month for basic accounting, transactions, and expense reporting features (limited to one user).

• Essentials: $32.50 per month for everything in Simple Start, plus time tracking features and multiple currencies (limited to 3 users).

• Plus: $49.50 per month for everything in Essentials, plus inventory, project profitability tracking, and financial planning features (up to 5 users).

• Advanced: $117.50 per month for everything in Plus, with workflow automation and other advanced features (up to 25 users).

If you need access for more than 25 users, the Desktop version starts at $1,922 a year—and it has some critical workflow differences that we’ll explain in detail below. 

Which Version of QuickBooks is Best for Electrical Contractors?

QuickBooks has two main versions: Desktop and Online. They have very similar features but different workflows.

QuickBooks Online is a good fit for smaller contractors. It’s cloud-based and user-friendly, so you can access it from any device and connect it to Intuit’s mobile apps for easier expense reporting, mileage tracking, and more.

QuickBooks Online also lets you share your information with an accountant without paying for an additional seat.

Apart from the main plans, QuickBooks Online offers several standalone products, such as QuickBooks Time and QuickBooks Contractor Payments. These are less expensive options if you need a few key features.

QuickBooks Desktop is more common for larger electrical contractors. It stores data locally, so you can only access it from the computers it’s installed on—but you can add unlimited users.

Experienced bookkeepers might prefer the Desktop workflow, especially because it lets you export data directly into TurboTax (which is also owned by Intuit).

Larger electrical contractors can purchase a Contractor Enterprise plan for Desktop with more sophisticated project management features. 

However, electrical contractor software with QuickBooks integration can also access business management and field service management tools that QuickBooks doesn’t have.

Can QuickBooks Be Integrated with Electrical Contractor Software?

Yes, QuickBooks can be integrated with electrical contractor software.

Electrical contractors integrate QuickBooks with ServiceTitan to automate data transfer between their existing accounting tools and ServiceTitan’s comprehensive, all-in-one software.

The integration updates QuickBooks automatically with relevant data. You can even track transactions from the job site with ServiceTitan’s Field Service Management software. 

Techs can make transactions in the field with the mobile app, and that real-time data will be fed back into QuickBooks right away rather than relying on manual data entry after a visit. This helps ensure all project data is accurate, complete, and up-to-date.

For example, when an electrical technician invoices a customer in the field, an accounts receivable entry in QuickBooks is automatically created.

Customers can pay from the mobile app or via an online payment link. Each payment the customer makes is recorded in your chart of accounts, so you have a complete and accurate audit trail for each transaction.

You can also use ServiceTitan’s Electrical Accounting software to balance your books, as it’s connected to all your business information, from your CRM and project data to timesheets and inventory.

Below are some of ServiceTitan’s key accounting features:

Estimates and invoices

QuickBooks can generate estimates, but it’s not particularly handy when assessing a job in the field. ServiceTitan’s estimating app lets techs access pricebooks, labor costs, and even pre-built good-better-best estimates from their mobile device.

This helps them build accurate, professional estimates that customers can choose from. Customers can approve on the spot or receive invoice and payment links via email.

You can generate recurring invoices for larger projects, set payment terms, and apply promotions and discounts. If you want a quick template for invoicing, get started with ServiceTitan’s customizable electrical service invoice template.

Payroll and timesheets

Once a job starts, your techs can track time and sign off on timesheets from their mobile phones with ServiceTitan’s Payroll software.

If you have performance pay policies like commissions and bonuses, you can also configure ServiceTitan to calculate them automatically. This helps ensure every dollar counts towards your project cost so you can keep projects profitable.

Inventory management

ServiceTitan’s inventory management features allow you to track inventory levels, perform inventory audits, and place purchase orders in one place. 

You can even set up automatic replenishments based on preferred stock levels in each truck and warehouse. When inventory counts fall below your specified amount, ServiceTitan will prompt you to create a purchase order so you never have to worry about running out of supplies.

Service agreement and project tracking

When working on larger service agreements and projects, it’s vital to track the pipeline as you go. ServiceTitan’s Job Costing software lets you view all past invoices, project progress, and financial information in one place.

ServiceTitan’s Project Tracking software can help you keep projects on budget and schedule with a centralized information hub for large commercial jobs.

You’ll see real-time financials alongside billing and expense budgets, which will help you make more informed decisions and maintain healthy profit margins at every project stage.

Reporting

ServiceTitan comes with comprehensive reporting features, including the ability to view journal entries, set accounting periods, and export transactions for your financial records.

Reports are highly customizable, and you can use your financial data to create dashboards and regular reports that you can send out to key team members automatically.

All this information is consolidated in ServiceTitan so that you can get a bird’s eye view of your entire business alongside your financial data.

Streamline Your Business Processes with ServiceTitan

Your finances are the pulse of your business. Monitoring them with software will ensure your electrical contracting business stays healthy and profitable over the long term.

With ServiceTitan’s all-in-one platform, you can do even more. From marketing to scheduling and dispatch to customer support, you’ll be able to see the financial health of your business in the context of all its other moving parts.

If you’re already using QuickBooks, you can add these features to the processes you’re already using for a more comprehensive look at the state of your electrical contracting business.

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive electrical business software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and achieve growth. Our award-winning, cloud-based platform is trusted by more than 100,000+ contractors across the country.