For Construction Contractors

Accounting Software for Construction Contractors: Job Costing, 1099-NEC, and Equipment Depreciation in One Desktop App

If you run a construction company, your books look nothing like a retail shop's. Every job is its own profit center. Material receipts pile up in the truck. You pay a rotating crew of subs who all need 1099-NECs in January. You buy a $42,000 skid steer and need to know whether to Section 179 the whole thing, take bonus depreciation, or spread it over seven years. And your CPA wants clean numbers, not a shoebox. FreshLedger Pro is a Windows desktop accounting system built for exactly this kind of business: a real double-entry general ledger with class-based job costing, integrated payroll with 1099-NEC support, and a full MACRS depreciation module including Section 179. It is a one-time $799 purchase, not a monthly subscription, and your CPA gets a free Accountant Edition so you can hand over a real company file at year-end instead of exporting reports.

Buy FreshLedger Pro — $799

Why FreshLedger fits Construction Contractors

Construction accounting is mostly about answering one question on every job: did we make money on this one? FreshLedger Pro is built around that question. Here's how the feature set maps to what a contractor actually does day to day. Job costing with class tracking. Every transaction - a material invoice, a sub payment, a payroll check, a fuel receipt - can be tagged to a job (class). Run a Profit & Loss by Class and you see gross margin per job, not just for the company. You can split a single Home Depot receipt across three jobs on one bill entry. 1099-NEC for subcontractors. Flag any vendor as 1099-eligible, enter their TIN and address once, and FreshLedger tracks year-to-date payments automatically. In January, print 1099-NECs and the 1096 transmittal on pre-printed forms, or generate the IRS e-file submission. The $600 threshold is enforced so you aren't filing forms you don't owe. Equipment depreciation with Section 179 and MACRS. The fixed-asset module handles 5-year (vehicles, computers), 7-year (most construction equipment), and 15-year (land improvements) MACRS classes with half-year and mid-quarter conventions per IRS Pub 946. You can elect Section 179 expensing up to the annual cap, layer bonus depreciation on top, and the system produces the depreciation schedule your CPA needs for Form 4562. Integrated payroll for W-2 crew. Run weekly payroll, allocate labor hours to jobs, and the labor cost flows into job costing automatically. Form 941 quarterly and Form 940 annual worksheets are generated from the same data, along with W-2s in January. Accountant Edition handoff. Your CPA installs the free Accountant Edition, opens your file directly, makes adjusting journal entries, and sends it back. No "export to PDF and email me a backup" loop.

How you'll actually use it

Workflow 1: Bidding and tracking a kitchen remodel. You create a new Job (class) called "Henderson - Kitchen Remodel" with a $48,000 contract value. As work proceeds, you enter material bills from your lumber yard and tile supplier coded to that class. When your framing sub sends an invoice for $3,200, you enter it as a bill to a 1099-flagged vendor, coded to the same class. Your two W-2 carpenters log 60 hours each on this job during payroll entry, so their wages plus employer payroll taxes are allocated to the job automatically. At any point you run Profit & Loss by Class, filter to Henderson, and see contract revenue, direct materials, sub labor, and burdened W-2 labor with a live gross margin. Workflow 2: Buying a used excavator in October. You purchase a $58,000 used Kubota excavator. In the Fixed Asset module you enter the asset, set MACRS 7-year class with half-year convention, and elect Section 179 for $58,000 (assuming you're under the annual cap and have enough taxable income). FreshLedger posts the depreciation journal entry, tracks the basis for future sale, and includes the asset on the Form 4562 worksheet your CPA pulls into the return. If the mid-quarter convention is triggered because more than 40% of your year's asset additions land in Q4, the software flags it and recalculates. Workflow 3: January 1099-NEC run. You open the 1099 Wizard, which lists every vendor flagged as 1099-eligible with their YTD non-employee compensation. Vendors under the $600 threshold are excluded automatically. Review the list, confirm TINs, then print recipient copies on pre-printed NEC forms and generate the IRS e-file. The 1096 summary prints from the same screen.

Industry-specific accounting handled

A few accounting concepts matter more in construction than in most industries, and FreshLedger Pro is built around them. Job costing vs. project accounting. True job costing means every direct cost - material, sub labor, W-2 labor with burden, equipment time - hits a specific job in the general ledger, not a spreadsheet on the side. FreshLedger uses class tracking on every transaction line to accomplish this. Completed contract vs. percentage of completion. Smaller contractors (under the IRS gross receipts threshold, currently $30M averaged over three years) can use the completed contract method. Larger or long-duration jobs may require percentage of completion under IRC Section 460. FreshLedger supports either - you choose how to recognize revenue when you invoice or close the job. 1099-NEC vs. 1099-MISC. Since 2020, non-employee compensation moved from 1099-MISC Box 7 to its own form, 1099-NEC. Rent paid to a landlord still goes on 1099-MISC. FreshLedger tracks both. Depreciation choices. Heavy equipment is generally 7-year MACRS property; pickup trucks over 6,000 lbs GVW are 5-year and may qualify for Section 179 with the SUV cap; trailers are 5-year. Land improvements (paving, fencing) are 15-year. The half-year convention applies unless mid-quarter is triggered. Section 179 has an annual dollar cap and a taxable-income limitation; bonus depreciation is phasing down (80% in 2023, 60% in 2024, 40% in 2025). FreshLedger applies the right rules per asset.

The pricing math for Construction Contractors

FreshLedger Pro is $799 one-time. The optional payroll tax table update is $99/year and is only needed if you run payroll - it keeps federal withholding tables, Social Security wage base, and state tables current. If you don't run W-2 payroll (sub-only shop), you can skip the update entirely. Compare to a typical construction-focused SaaS package at roughly $90-$200/month plus per-user fees: a mid-tier subscription runs $1,500-$2,400 per year, every year. A three-truck contractor running FreshLedger with payroll updates spends $799 up front and $99/year after - roughly $1,200 over five years versus $7,500-$12,000 on subscription. Your CPA's Accountant Edition is free, so there's no add-on seat to budget for at tax time.

Where FreshLedger is NOT the right fit

FreshLedger Pro is not the right tool for every contractor. If you have a project manager in the field who needs to enter time and material from a phone on the jobsite, there is no native mobile app - field entry happens on paper or in a separate tool and gets keyed in at the office. If your bookkeeper and your office manager both need to be in the file at the same time, the single-user file lock will frustrate you. If you want bank transactions to flow in automatically every morning, FreshLedger does not have live bank feeds - you'll download a CSV, OFX, or QBO file from your bank's website and import it (typically a 10-minute weekly task). And it's Windows-only; Mac users run it in Parallels or a VM. Finally, it's real double-entry accounting, so the learning curve is steeper than an invoice-only app.

Ready to own your books?

One-time-purchase accounting software with built-in payroll, full depreciation handling, and a free Accountant Edition for your CPA.

Buy FreshLedger Pro — $799

One-time purchase. No subscription. Free Accountant Edition included.

Frequently asked questions

Can FreshLedger Pro handle AIA-style progress billing and retainage?
FreshLedger supports progress invoicing - you can invoice a percentage of contract value across multiple draws against the same job, and the system tracks contract value, billed-to-date, and remaining. Retainage can be handled by posting the retained portion to a separate Retainage Receivable account on each draw and releasing it on final billing. It does not produce the AIA G702/G703 forms in their exact published format; if your GC requires those specific forms, you'd fill them in separately using the numbers FreshLedger gives you on the job report.
How does FreshLedger track labor cost per job, including payroll taxes and workers' comp?
When you run payroll, each employee's hours can be split across multiple jobs (classes). Gross wages allocate to the jobs proportionally, and you can configure burden rates - employer FICA, FUTA, SUTA, workers' comp, and benefits - to allocate alongside wages automatically. The result is a fully burdened labor cost on each job's P&L, not just gross pay. Workers' comp rates can be set by job class code, which matters if you have employees doing both office work and field work at different comp rates.
What does the equipment depreciation module actually produce at tax time?
It produces a Form 4562-ready depreciation schedule listing each asset, its date in service, basis, MACRS class life, convention (half-year or mid-quarter), method (200% DB, 150% DB, or straight-line), prior accumulated depreciation, current-year depreciation, and Section 179 / bonus elections. Your CPA uses this directly to complete Form 4562 and the depreciation lines on Schedule C, Form 1065, or Form 1120-S. The schedule also tracks adjusted basis for when you eventually sell or trade the equipment, which matters for Section 1245 recapture.
If I pay subs by check and by Zelle, will 1099-NEC tracking still be accurate?
Yes, as long as you enter every sub payment in FreshLedger - whether it's a printed check, a handwritten check coded into the system, or a Zelle transfer recorded as a bank withdrawal. Note that payments made via credit card or third-party networks like PayPal Business are reported by the processor on 1099-K and should be excluded from your 1099-NEC totals. FreshLedger lets you flag payment method per transaction so the year-end 1099-NEC report excludes card-network payments automatically.
I have three jobs running and an office manager doing data entry. Can two of us use it at once?
No - the company file is single-user at a time. One person has it open in read/write mode; others would need to wait or use a read-only export. For most small contractors this isn't a real problem because data entry happens at the office in batches, but if you genuinely need two people in the file simultaneously every day, FreshLedger Pro isn't the right fit and you should look at a hosted or multi-user product. The free Accountant Edition does let your CPA work on a copy and merge changes back, which covers the most common second-user scenario.