Neither one, not out of the box. Jobber and Housecall Pro both sell a job-costing feature that tells you a job's profit, but on both platforms it sits one paid plan above the entry tier, it lives inside the field app, and neither platform's QuickBooks Online sync carries that profit number into QuickBooks at all. Jobber's own pricing page gates Job Costing behind the Grow plan; Housecall Pro's own pricing page gates it behind Essentials. Below is what each vendor's own docs say their job-costing feature actually tracks, what their QuickBooks sync actually moves, and the one gap both of them leave open.
This isn't a "which platform is better" piece. Jobber and Housecall Pro both do scheduling, dispatch, and invoicing well, and this blog already has an honest comparison of small-shop platform options that covers the wider buying decision. This one is narrower, and it's the question a lot of owners actually type into a search bar at 11pm: once you've picked one of these two, does it actually tell you what a job made, or does that number still live somewhere else.
What does Jobber cost, and which plan actually includes job costing?
Jobber runs four plans, and Job Costing isn't on the cheapest two. Per Jobber's own pricing page (checked at the time this was written; verify current pricing on Jobber's site), the tiers are Core at $21/mo billed annually ($49/mo month-to-month), Connect at $70/mo annually ($139/mo month-to-month), Grow at $105/mo annually ($199/mo month-to-month), and Plus at $280/mo annually ($499/mo month-to-month).
Job Costing itself, described on that same pricing page as tracking "profitability with job costing," first appears on the Grow plan. Automated Job Costing, which captures line-item and expense data with less manual entry, is a Plus-only feature. A shop on Core or Connect, meaning anyone paying under $105/mo annually, has no job-costing screen in Jobber at all.
What does Housecall Pro cost, and which plan actually includes job costing?
Housecall Pro runs three plans, and job costing shows up on the middle one. Per Housecall Pro's own pricing page (checked at the time this was written; verify current pricing on Housecall Pro's site), Basic runs $59/mo billed annually, Essentials runs $149/mo billed annually, and MAX runs $299/mo billed annually.
The Essentials tier description states it lets a shop "track and report the costs associated with each job," and that same tier is where QuickBooks Online sync first appears. A shop on the $59/mo Basic plan gets online booking, invoicing, payments, and dispatch, but no job costing and no QuickBooks sync.
What does Jobber's job costing feature actually track on a job?
Three things: labor, materials, and expenses, with profit calculated as revenue minus total cost. Per Jobber's own Job Costing help article, labor cost comes from each employee's hourly labor rate (meant to include wage, benefits, and taxes) multiplied by their timesheet hours on that job; material cost comes from line-item unit costs; expenses are whatever gets logged directly against the job.
The same article documents real limitations worth knowing before trusting the number. A labor-rate change "will apply to their future time sheet hours, not any past time sheets," so old jobs don't get recalculated. If a job has both a line-item cost on a quote and a logged expense for the same cost, Jobber's own docs admit it "currently counts both against your profitability," a double-count that can understate margin. And "reporting is not available for job costs on recurring jobs," so a maintenance-plan customer's profitability doesn't show up in the job-costing report at all.
What does Housecall Pro's job costing feature actually track on a job?
Five cost categories, with a profit-margin formula on top. Per Housecall Pro's own Job Costing set-up guide, it tracks labor (a "fully loaded rate," meaning base hourly pay plus employer-paid taxes, insurance, and benefits, multiplied by time on the job including travel time), materials, miscellaneous expenses like permits or parking, commissions, and service line-item unit costs. Per Housecall Pro's own Job Costing Reports article, profit margin is defined as gross profit divided by job revenue, where gross profit is revenue minus all of those cost categories combined.
The same set-up guide flags a limitation that matters for accuracy: "adding or updating an employee's labor rate after the fact will not retroactively update the labor costs" already calculated on past jobs. A shop that raises pay rates mid-year and doesn't re-check old job-costing reports is looking at numbers built on stale labor cost.
Does Jobber's QuickBooks sync carry that job-cost number into your books?
No. Per Jobber's own QuickBooks Integration FAQ, the sync moves clients, products and services, invoices, payments, and timesheets, one-way, from Jobber into QuickBooks Online. Job costing isn't on that list, and per Jobber's own items-sync article, the timesheet sync moves total hours per team member, not a labor cost tied to a specific job.
There's a subtler wrinkle here too. The same Job Costing help article states that after an initial, one-time cost import from QuickBooks Online, "Jobber becomes the source of truth for costs," meaning whatever Jobber's job-costing screen shows from that point forward can drift away from what QuickBooks shows, with nothing in Jobber's own docs describing an ongoing two-way reconciliation between the two numbers.
Does Housecall Pro's QuickBooks sync carry that job-cost number into your books?
No. Per Housecall Pro's own help article on syncing to QuickBooks Online, the integration moves invoices, payments, new customer records, and new price book items, one-way, from Housecall Pro into QuickBooks Online. Job costing and labor costs don't appear anywhere in that list of what syncs, and the same article notes that estimates never transfer to QuickBooks Online at all, and that anything deleted or canceled in Housecall Pro has to be deleted separately, by hand, in QuickBooks.
So a shop can build a fully loaded labor-rate job-costing report inside Housecall Pro's Essentials plan, and none of the labor cost, materials cost, or resulting profit number in that report ever reaches the QuickBooks file the CPA actually opens.
What's the job-costing gap Jobber and Housecall Pro actually share?
Both platforms compute a per-job profit number from data entered inside the field app itself, timesheets, labor rates, line items, and that number never lands in QuickBooks, the one place a shop's actual books, tax return, and CPA all live. That's the same structural gap this blog documented across ServiceTitan, Buildertrend, and Service Fusion in a companion post on QuickBooks sync gaps: it's an industry-wide pattern, not a Jobber or Housecall Pro problem specifically.
The QuickBooks feature actually built to hold job-level labor cost inside QuickBooks itself is QuickBooks Online Projects, and per Intuit's own help documentation, it requires the Plus or Advanced plan. Neither Jobber's nor Housecall Pro's own integration docs describe automatically feeding time entries or labor cost into a QuickBooks Online Project, so even a shop paying for Projects still has to build that bridge by hand.
| Category | Jobber | Housecall Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Job costing (in-app) | Labor (timesheets x hourly rate), materials (line items), expenses; profit = revenue − costs | Labor (fully loaded rate x time incl. travel), materials, misc. expenses, commissions, service line items; profit margin = gross profit ÷ revenue |
| QuickBooks Online sync depth | One-way: clients, products/services, invoices, payments, timesheet hours only, no job costing | One-way: invoices, payments, new customers, new price book items only, no job costing, no estimates |
| Plan where job costing unlocks | Grow, $105/mo annual ($199/mo month-to-month)* | Essentials, $149/mo annual* |
| Mobile field use (confirmed) | Clock in/out, job details, quotes, auto invoices, photos, customer texts | Clock in/out, job/customer details, card/check/financing payment, offline schedule access |
*Pricing changes; verify current figures on each vendor's own pricing page before deciding. Both platforms put job costing one paid tier above their base plan, and neither one's QuickBooks Online sync carries that number into the books your CPA and your bookkeeper actually work from.
What actually closes that gap for a small crew running Jobber or Housecall Pro?
A layer that checks the field app's job-costing number against the real QuickBooks general ledger, computing burdened labor cost the same way every time instead of trusting whichever screen happens to be open. Top Builder AI/OS closes this specific gap through a done-for-you Teardown/Install engagement, not a piece of software a contractor signs up for and connects alone. It's a human-delivered install that reconciles whichever field platform a shop already runs, Jobber, Housecall Pro, or ServiceTitan, against its actual QuickBooks books, and every dollar it produces comes from deterministic, tested computation, never a guess.
- No shipped self-serve fixer for Jobber or Housecall Pro today. This is a sourced method delivered as a configured install against a shop's real data, not existing software you sign up for.
- No invented numbers. Every pricing, feature, and sync claim above traces to that vendor's own current pricing page or help documentation, opened directly.
- No specific integration claimed that isn't verified. This post names what Jobber's and Housecall Pro's own docs say syncs and doesn't; it doesn't claim a live, self-serve connection to either platform exists today.
- A person approves every number. Nothing described here auto-edits a shop's books, labor rates, or job records.
Every pricing figure and feature claim above traces to that vendor's own current pricing page or help center article, opened directly: Jobber's pricing page, its QuickBooks Integration FAQ, its items-sync article, and its Job Costing help article; Housecall Pro's pricing page, its QuickBooks sync article, its Job Costing set-up guide, and its Job Costing Reports article; and Intuit's own QuickBooks Online Projects documentation. Where a vendor's own mobile-app page didn't document a capability (in-field material or job-cost entry, for either platform), we said so rather than assume it exists. SaaS pricing changes; the figures above reflect what each vendor's page showed at the time this was written.
Want to see what your own Jobber or Housecall Pro numbers actually show?
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