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expense management Software for construction businesses

Subcontractor expense management


Knowify simplifies the expense management process for your entire organization. Capture your team’s expenses in real-time from the office or the job site and tie them automatically to the project budget with best-in-class job costing tools.

Abstraction of a budget breakdown (materials, labor, equipment, subs | Electrical industry | Knowify
Project management + expense management

Manage expenses while you execute, not after the fact

Knowify blends financial management and project management so you can track expenses when they’re incurred, helping you stay organized and error-free.  

  • Create detailed budgets that update as you incur and log expenses so you get real-time visibility on your actual project costs against your plan. 
  • All cost data syncs with QuickBooks Online so you and your accountant have access to the full financial picture for every project.
View of our Plan & Tack section where users can track subcontractors costs | Subcontractor management | Knowify features
View of submitting an expense via our smartphone app | Job costing | Knowify features
Set specific spend permissions and approve purchases in seconds

Keep teams accountable and projects on-budget

Knowify helps you prevent unnecessary purchases and unexpected costs. 

  • Control who and what can be purchased with customizable purchase limits and permissions. 
  • Approve or deny purchases in a few clicks by seeing all pending purchases in one central view. 
  • Better manage your team’s purchasing ability with Knowify’s mobile app. Easily log purchases made with cash, corporate cards, or personal cards.
See a full history of purchases by project, vendor, or employee

Detailed expense reporting for your records

Knowify’s reporting ensures you can always access the expense records you need. 

  • Quickly see all of your purchases using Knowify’s built-in reports, or export them to Excel as needed. 
  • Easily find the expense you’re looking for with filters for subcontractors, reimbursements, flexible spending, and more. 
  • Never wonder again with reports that show you the full purchase order details, like the purchaser, approver, and date of submission.
Subcontractor management and reporting | Features | Knowify
Abstraction of two pills for Knowify and QuickBooks and different sync status between the two: syncing, synced, paused, error | Knowify + QuickBooks bunle
the strongest QuickBooks integration in construction

Keep finance teams and project managers in sync

Knowify’s QuickBooks integration was built in partnership with the team at Intuit to offer the most powerful user experience in the construction industry. 

  • A real-time two-way sync means every member of your team can work in whichever platform they’re best suited.
  • Project managers and contractors can log their work in Knowify, and see it reflected in QuickBooks immediately.
  • Finance teams can manage purchases, expenses, and more directly in QuickBooks, and see that information applied against the project for job costing purposes in Knowify.

“I noticed I was way over budget and it didn’t make sense. So I looked into it further on Knowify, and discovered that my guys had done extra work.”

Matt Curatola
Founder, MPC Plumbing and Heating

Build your business with confidence

Take the pain out of your purchase order management process – try Knowify free for 14 days, and experience next-level business control and organization for yourself.

FAQs

How do you keep track of construction expenses?  

The best way to keep track of construction expenses and construction project costs is with job costing software. Job costing software like Knowify allows you to build a budget of estimated costs and then track your actual costs against your budgeted costs as you work on a project. 

It’s best to create a detailed budget that divides your project into phases, as well as cost categories under each phase. Typical cost categories include materials, equipment, labor, and subcontractors. You then use purchase orders, invoices, time cards, etc. to track your actual costs by category and type so you have detailed information about how you’re tracking against your initial budget.  

What is the biggest expense in construction?  

Typically, labor is the largest expense on a construction project. Labor costs often range from 40-50% of the total project budget. Labor costs do not only include wages, they also include labor burden which are costs like employment taxes and benefits. It’s important to track your fully loaded labor costs on projects so you don’t go over budget on labor.

Knowify helps you track your labor costs, including labor burden, by letting you set up detailed labor rates for each individual employee or type of employee (Ex: foreman vs. laborer). You can then schedule employees to an entire project or just a project phase. If you use the Knowify mobile app for time tracking, or one of our integrated payroll partners, labor costs will automatically be applied to each project, and/or phase, giving you very accurate labor cost numbers.