Ops & Supply

How to cost contractor jobs and change orders as Construction and Contractor Founders

Ops & SupplyFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're running three jobs simultaneously and your cost-to-complete lives in a spreadsheet you updated two weeks ago. QuickBooks has the invoices but not the job codes. Buildertrend or CoConstruct has the schedule but not what you've actually paid subs. Change orders get signed on-site and never make it into the system until the owner disputes the final invoice. You find out a job went negative after you've already cut the last sub check. You don't have a controller — you have Saturday mornings and a pile of receipts. The number you actually need — gross margin by job after every approved change order — takes two hours to assemble and is stale the moment you finish it.

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Ops & SupplyFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live job cost dashboard that pulls bank transactions from Plaid and invoice data from QuickBooks into a single view, broken down by job number, so you know which projects are over budget before the final draw.

An automated change order tracker that monitors your project management tool via browser automation and flags any CO that's been submitted but not yet signed — with a running impact on the original contract value.

A weekly cash-flow snapshot that maps this month's AR (outstanding draws and invoices) against committed sub costs and projected payroll, so you know whether next month is tight before it arrives.

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Project Management Transaction Insights Runway Analysis

Data sources & config

Starch connects directly to QuickBooks (scheduled sync — invoices, bills, vendor payments, journal entries) and Plaid (scheduled sync — bank transactions and balances). For Buildertrend, CoConstruct, or similar field management software, Starch automates those platforms through your browser — no API needed. QuickBooks and Plaid data refreshes on a schedule and lives in Starch; field software data is pulled on demand via browser automation each time your dashboard runs.

Prompts to copy

Build me a job cost tracker with columns for job name, original contract value, approved change orders, total revised contract, costs to date, committed costs, and projected margin. Pull transaction data from my connected QuickBooks and Plaid accounts. Flag any job where projected margin has dropped more than 5 points from the original bid.

Show me all transactions from my Plaid accounts in the last 90 days grouped by job number or vendor name. Highlight any vendor I've paid on a job where I don't have a corresponding signed subcontract or lien waiver on file.

Build me a monthly runway view that combines my QuickBooks AR balance, open draws by job, and committed sub costs for the next 60 days. Tell me if my current cash position covers payroll for the next two pay periods.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect QuickBooks to Starch (scheduled sync). Starch will pull your invoices, bills, vendor payments, and journal entries automatically — this is the backbone of your actual-cost-by-job view.

2 Connect your business checking and draw accounts via Plaid (scheduled sync). Every transaction categorized by vendor and amount shows up in Starch within hours of posting, not at month-end.

3 If you use Buildertrend, CoConstruct, or another field management platform, Starch automates that site through your browser — log in once and Starch pulls job budgets, change order logs, and schedule data without any API required.

4 Use the Transaction Insights app to get a baseline spending picture: which vendors are getting paid on which jobs, what's recurring, and where you've had unusual charges in the last 90 days.

5 Tell Starch to build your job cost dashboard in natural language — include the fields that matter to your business (original contract, approved COs, revised contract, cost to date, cost to complete, projected margin). Starch assembles the surface from your connected data.

6 Add a change order status layer: prompt Starch to pull all open change orders from your field software via browser automation and surface any that are submitted but unsigned, along with their dollar impact on the job total.

7 Set up a weekly automation: every Monday morning, Starch pulls updated job costs from QuickBooks and Plaid, checks your field software for new COs or closed-out line items, and sends you a Slack message with any job where projected margin has moved more than 5 percentage points since last week.

8 Use the Project Management app to track internal punch list items and closeout tasks by job — so your cost data and your task list live in the same place, not across three different tools.

9 Build a subcontractor commitment tracker: prompt Starch to create a view of every sub on each active job, their contracted amount, what's been invoiced to date, and what's remaining — flagging anyone whose invoices are approaching their contract ceiling before the work is done.

10 Connect your AR: tell Starch to pull open invoices from QuickBooks and map them against expected draw dates by job, then surface whether your projected collections in the next 30 days cover your committed sub costs and payroll.

11 At job closeout, prompt Starch to generate a final job profitability summary: original bid vs. final contract (after all COs), total cost by category (labor, materials, subs, equipment), and gross margin — formatted to paste directly into your investor or owner report if needed.

12 As you build more jobs, fork and customize your dashboard — add a job-type breakdown (new construction vs. remodel vs. service), a by-superintendent view, or a historical margin trend by project type so your next bid is informed by what you actually made on the last one.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

Ridgeline Contracting — April 2026 job cost close

Sample numbers from a real run

Job 2401 — original contract	284,000
Approved change orders (3)	31,500
Revised contract value	315,500
Costs to date (QuickBooks + Plaid)	261,200
Committed sub costs remaining	28,400
Projected final cost	289,600
Projected gross margin	25,900
Original bid margin (target)	42,600

It's the first week of April and Job 2401 — a 2,800 sq ft custom build that's been running since October — is approaching final draw. Starch pulled QuickBooks bills and Plaid transactions overnight and surfaced a problem: three change orders totaling $31,500 were approved on-site and added to the Buildertrend log (pulled via browser automation), but only one was invoiced to the owner. The other two are sitting as unsigned PDFs in Dropbox. Without Starch catching this, Ridgeline would have closed the job with $21,000 in completed work that never got billed. Even after getting those COs invoiced, the job's projected margin is $25,900 — well below the $42,600 target on the original bid. Starch's transaction breakdown shows the gap: framing lumber ran $11,400 over estimate (spotted via Plaid transactions to the lumber yard), and the HVAC sub billed two additional mobilization charges that weren't in the subcontract. Now the owner knows which cost categories to tighten on the next bid, before the job is just a feeling about whether it went okay.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Gross margin by job after all approved change orders — the number that tells you whether you're actually making money on a project type

Change order capture rate — what percentage of approved COs are billed to the owner vs. sitting unsigned in a folder

Cost-to-complete variance — how far off your original estimate are you when you're 80% through a job

Days sales outstanding on open draws — how long between submitting a draw request and cash hitting the account

Sub commitment utilization — for each active job, how much of each subcontract has been invoiced vs. how much work is done

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Procore

Built for commercial GCs with a dedicated PM staff — licensing starts in the thousands per month and assumes you have someone whose full-time job is keeping the data current. Starch is built for the owner who is also the PM.

QuickBooks alone

QuickBooks tracks what you've paid but not what you've committed or what's still in the field — you need to manually reconcile job costs from outside the system, which is exactly the Saturday-morning problem Starch replaces.

Buildertrend or CoConstruct alone

Good for scheduling and client communication but the financial reporting is limited and doesn't connect to your actual bank transactions or AR aging without manual exports.

Excel job cost spreadsheet

Free and fully flexible, but stale the moment you close it — Starch gives you the same structure with live data from QuickBooks and Plaid updating it automatically.

Hiring a part-time controller

A controller who knows construction costs $50–80/hr and is typically 2–4 weeks behind on job cost reports — Starch builds the same reports from your live QuickBooks and Plaid data on demand.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — project management, transaction insights, runway analysis all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

My project data lives in Buildertrend — do you have a direct integration?

Starch automates Buildertrend through your browser — no API needed. You log in once, and Starch can pull job budgets, change order logs, and schedule data directly from the interface you already use. The same approach works for CoConstruct, Procore, or any other web-based field management tool.

Will Starch show me job costs by QuickBooks class or job code?

Yes. Starch syncs your QuickBooks data on a schedule — including invoices, bills, vendor payments, and journal entries. When you build your job cost dashboard, you tell Starch which fields to use as job identifiers (class, customer, job code) and it groups costs accordingly. If your QuickBooks job coding is inconsistent, Starch can help you flag transactions that are missing a job assignment.

QuickBooks has a P&L report — why do I need Starch?

QuickBooks P&L shows you what happened. Starch combines that with your Plaid bank transactions, your field software data (via browser automation), and your AR aging to show you what's about to happen — which job is about to go over, which draw hasn't been collected, which sub is close to their contract ceiling. The QuickBooks report view is the rearview mirror; Starch is the dashboard.

I'm not SOC 2 certified — is Starch secure enough for my financial data?

To be straightforward: Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. That's on the roadmap. For a small GC connecting QuickBooks and a business bank account, this is worth knowing. Starch uses encrypted connections and standard OAuth for all integrations, but if your bonding company or a large commercial client requires SOC 2 certified tools in your stack, we'll tell you that honestly upfront.

Can Starch track which subcontractors have current COIs and which ones have expired coverage?

Yes — describe it and Starch builds it. You could prompt: 'Build me a subcontractor compliance tracker with columns for sub name, trade, COI expiration date, current job assignments, and a status flag for expired or expiring-within-30-days coverage.' If your COIs are stored in Dropbox or Google Drive, connect those from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries them live. If they're attached to emails, Starch syncs your Gmail on a schedule and can pull expiration data from attachments.

What if I want to track bids and follow-up calls, not just active jobs?

Use the Project Management app for this — create a pipeline of open bids with columns for job name, bid amount, submission date, follow-up status, and decision date. You can tell Starch: 'Create a task for me to follow up on the Hendricks kitchen remodel bid by Thursday' and it creates the task, assigns it, and sets the due date without a form. Your bid pipeline and your active job costs live in the same place.