Can I use Obra and QuickBooks together?

Yes, and that is the most common setup. Obra captures costs and income per project as they happen; you export CSVs for your bookkeeper, who records them in QuickBooks at the level the books need. Nothing is typed twice by the person on site.

Does Obra replace QuickBooks?

No. Obra is not accounting software: it does not file taxes, run payroll or produce a general ledger. It replaces the spreadsheet, the glovebox of receipts and the QuickBooks Plus subscription bought only for Projects.

Is QuickBooks job costing good enough for a small contractor?

It can be, if one disciplined person tags every bill, invoice and expense to a project and your costs arrive as bills rather than field receipts. Our QuickBooks guide walks through the setup that gives it the fairest chance.

Obra vs QuickBooks Online for job costing: keep the accountant happy, know the job

QuickBooks runs your books; Obra runs the job. Where QuickBooks Projects is enough, where it isn't, and how small crews use both without double entry.

The short version

QuickBooks Online is accounting software with a job-costing feature; Obra is job-costing software that hands your accountant clean exports. If your costs arrive as receipts from a crew in the field — often over WhatsApp, often in Spanish — Obra captures them and QuickBooks keeps the books. If one person in an office already tags every bill to a project in QuickBooks Plus, you may not need anything else.

Obra is the better fit when

Costs show up as receipts from people on the job site, not as bills at a desk
Your crew speaks Spanish, English or both, and nobody wants another login
You want to see each project's cash collected, recorded cost and forecast today, not at month end
You are paying for QuickBooks Plus mainly to unlock Projects

QuickBooks Online is the better fit when

One bookkeeper or owner enters every bill and invoice and already tags projects
You need the general ledger, payroll, sales tax filing and invoicing in one place
Your accountant works inside your QuickBooks file and wants job data there too
Jobs are few, long and mostly paid by invoice rather than by receipts

Side by side

What you're comparing	Obra	QuickBooks Online
Starting price	Free for one active project; Pro is $12 per user per month or $120 per year.	Project profitability needs the Plus plan or higher — over $100 a month list price, five users included.
What it is	A per-project ledger: income, expenses, receipts, change orders, forecasts, close.	General-ledger accounting with invoicing, payroll add-ons and a Projects feature.
Receipts from the job site	WhatsApp, email or photo. Scanned into a draft, confirmed by a person.	Receipt snap and email forwarding by a QuickBooks user on a paid seat.
Who can capture a cost	Anyone you invite as a submitter — a foreman, a sub — without seeing the project's finances.	Users on the plan's seat count; Plus includes five.
Change orders	Logged per project with date, amount and attachment; the original contract value stays visible.	Handled through estimates and progress invoicing; no dedicated change-order record.
Forecasting a job's final cost	Built in: expected final cost, expected margin, never below what is already recorded.	Project profitability report of actuals; forecasting is a spreadsheet exercise.
Invoicing, payroll, taxes	Not included. Obra records income and payments; your accountant keeps the books.	Core strengths, with payroll and payments as paid add-ons.
Languages	English and Spanish, in the app and on WhatsApp.	English-first product; check current language options for your region.
Getting your data out	CSV of anything, or the whole organization as a ZIP, anytime.	Reports export to Excel; full migration usually needs an accountant or a tool.

Facts about QuickBooks Online checked on September 1, 2026. Prices and plan names change; check the vendor's own site before you buy, and tell us at support@tryobra.com if something here is out of date.

You probably already pay for QuickBooks Online. Your accountant likes it, your invoices come out of it, and somewhere in the menu is a Projects feature that promises to show the profit on every job. So the honest question is not "QuickBooks or Obra" — it is "where should each job's costs live, and who is going to put them there?"

Where the two products actually differ

QuickBooks is built around the general ledger. Every job cost is a line on a bill or an expense, tagged to a customer and project, entered by someone with a QuickBooks login. That is exactly right for the books, and exactly wrong for a foreman standing at the lumber counter with a receipt in his hand and no laptop.

Obra is built around the project. A receipt photographed on site, forwarded from an inbox or sent to Obra's WhatsApp number becomes a draft with the amount, date, vendor and category already read, waiting for a person to confirm it. The project's numbers update the moment it is confirmed: cash collected, recorded cost, what is left, and a forecast of where the job will land.

The receipts problem

The reason QuickBooks job costing fails quietly for small crews is not the reports. It is that the costs never make it in. QuickBooks' receipt capture works — for a QuickBooks user, on a paid seat, who remembers to snap the receipt and pick the project. The people who actually hold the receipts are rarely those users.

Obra treats that as the whole problem. Submitters — a foreman, a subcontractor — capture expenses from their own phone without seeing the project's finances. A reviewer approves them into the ledger. Nothing is saved without a person looking at it, and every entry remembers whether it came from WhatsApp, email or typing.

What you give up

Obra will not invoice your clients, run payroll or file sales tax, and it does not pretend to be a general ledger. Your accountant still needs QuickBooks, Xero or whatever they trust. What changes is what they receive: clean CSVs of every project's income and costs, categorized and dated, instead of a shoebox in December.

Price, plainly

QuickBooks unlocks Projects on the Plus plan, which lists above $100 a month and includes five users. Obra is free for one active project and $12 per user per month for Pro — a three-person crew pays $36. Many contractors keep a cheaper QuickBooks tier for the books and let Obra do the job costing.

Questions people ask

Can I use Obra and QuickBooks together?: Yes, and that is the most common setup. Obra captures costs and income per project as they happen; you export CSVs for your bookkeeper, who records them in QuickBooks at the level the books need. Nothing is typed twice by the person on site.
Does Obra replace QuickBooks?: No. Obra is not accounting software: it does not file taxes, run payroll or produce a general ledger. It replaces the spreadsheet, the glovebox of receipts and the QuickBooks Plus subscription bought only for Projects.
Is QuickBooks job costing good enough for a small contractor?: It can be, if one disciplined person tags every bill, invoice and expense to a project and your costs arrive as bills rather than field receipts. Our QuickBooks guide walks through the setup that gives it the fairest chance.

Free download

Not ready for an app? Start with our free Excel template.

A ready-made spreadsheet to track costs and income per project — with categories and the totals already set up.