Every price on this page was read directly from the vendor’s own pricing page on August 23, 2026. Contractor software pricing changes often, and several vendors run limited-time promotions — confirm the current number on the vendor’s page before you buy.
Electrical contractors get paid three different ways, and most billing software is only good at one of them.
- Flat-rate service billing — panel swap, ceiling fan, EV charger install. Priced from a book, collected on site, done.
- Time and materials — troubleshooting, service agreements, the “while you’re here, can you look at…” work. Billed after the fact against logged hours and a materials list, which is exactly where money leaks.
- Progress billing on contract work — a schedule of values, monthly pay applications, change orders, and retainage held until closeout.
If you do all three, you need software that does all three, and that narrows the field fast. Below is what each option actually costs, read from the vendors’ own pricing pages today.
Billing software for electrical contractors, compared
| Tool | Entry price | Billing basis | Users included | Strongest at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online | $38/mo | Monthly | 1 | The accounting layer everything else syncs to |
| Jobber | $29/mo | Annual ($49/mo month-to-month) | 1 (“Just me” band) | Fast service invoicing and getting paid on site |
| Contractor Foreman | $49/mo | Annual only ($588/yr); no month-to-month | 1 | Cheapest route to progress billing features |
| Housecall Pro | $79/mo | Monthly (Electrical pricing path; no annual rate shown) | 1 | Flat-rate service billing at volume |
| Knowify | $99/mo | Billed yearly ($149/mo monthly) | 1 | Contract and AIA-style progress billing |
| Service Fusion | Not published | — | — | — |
| ServiceTitan | Not published | — | — | Large service operations |
All prices read from each vendor’s own pricing page on August 23, 2026. Watch the billing basis column: Contractor Foreman has no month-to-month plan, and two vendors publish no prices at all.
Best for time-and-materials work: Knowify
Knowify is not an affiliate partner of ours, and it is the tool we would put first for an electrical contractor whose billing pain is contract work rather than service calls. Its plan descriptions are built around bidding, executing, and invoicing fixed-price and AIA jobs — that is Knowify’s own framing on its pricing page, and it is unusual at this price point.
What it costs (read August 23, 2026): Core includes 1 user at $99/mo billed yearly, or $149/mo billed monthly. Advanced includes 10 users at $329/mo yearly or $399/mo monthly and adds job costing. Enterprise is quote-only.
The seat cliff is the thing to plan for. Knowify publishes no per-additional-user rate between the 1-user Core plan and the 10-user Advanced plan. If your office is two or three people, you are looking at a jump from $99 to $329 a month with nothing in between. Ask about it directly rather than assuming a middle option exists.
Skip it if: you are purely residential service. You will be paying for pay-application machinery you never open.
Best for high-volume service invoicing: Jobber and Housecall Pro
These two solve the same problem — get the invoice out the door before the tech leaves the driveway — and pick between them mostly on price and interface.
Jobber, read August 23, 2026: on the “Just me” band, Core is $29/mo billed annually or $49/mo month-to-month, Connect is $99/$139, and Grow is $149/$199. Step up to the 2–5 people band and Core is no longer offered — Connect is $149/mo annual or $199/mo monthly and Grow is $229/$299, both including 5 users. A promotion was running when we checked, advertised as up to 40% off and ending August 31, 2026, which discounts the first 12 months of an annual plan; the figures above are the revert rates.
Housecall Pro, read October 7, 2026 on the HVAC and Plumbing pricing paths: Teams plans run Essentials $299/mo with 5 users and Max $649/mo with 8 users; Individual plans (1 user) run Basic $79, Essentials $229 and Max $349 per month. The landing page shows lower prices (from $59/mo) before you pick an industry, so check the price you are shown after the questionnaire.
Count your logins before you pick a tier. On the Teams view, Essentials includes 5 users and adds more at $100/mo each; Max includes 8 and adds more at $75/mo each. An eight-login shop pays $599/mo on Essentials (5 included plus 3 × $100) against $649/mo on Max, so the decision usually comes down to whether you need Max’s extra features.
Skip both if: your revenue is commercial contract work. Neither is built for a schedule of values.
Cheapest path to progress billing: Contractor Foreman
Contractor Foreman is a non-affiliate and the budget answer for an electrical contractor who needs project-style billing without a project-style price.
What it costs (read August 23, 2026): Basic $49/mo for 1 user, billed as $588 annually at renewal. Standard $105/mo for up to 3 users ($1,264/yr). Plus $166/mo for up to 8 ($1,997/yr). Pro $221/mo for up to 15 ($2,654/yr). Unlimited $332/mo for unlimited users ($3,984/yr). The page offers annual and quarterly terms only — there is no month-to-month plan, so the monthly figures are an annualized rate.
The real comparison: Contractor Foreman Standard at $105/mo for three users versus Knowify Core at $99/mo for one. If you need three people in the system and progress billing, Contractor Foreman is materially cheaper. Whether it is better depends entirely on whether your team tolerates a denser interface.
Skip it if: you cannot commit for a year.
The layer underneath all of it: QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is not an affiliate partner of ours — we cover it because most electrical contractors end up running it regardless of what field platform they choose. Nearly every tool on this page markets a QuickBooks sync, which tells you what the default is.
What it costs (list prices read August 23, 2026): Simple Start $38/mo with 1 user, Essentials $75/mo with 3 users, Plus $115/mo with 5 users, and Advanced $275/mo with 25 users. A “90% off for three months” promotion was live when we checked, with the page banner stating it ends August 27, 2026. Budget from the list price, not the promotional one — the discount runs three months and the renewal does not.
The important limitation: QuickBooks will invoice. It will not dispatch, it will not carry a flat-rate price book to a truck, and its handling of progress billing and retainage is thinner than the purpose-built tools above. The common setup is a field platform for the work and QuickBooks for the books, syncing between them. Trying to run an electrical contracting business on QuickBooks alone works right up until it does not, and the failure mode is unbilled T&M.
The two that will not tell you what they cost
ServiceTitan publishes four tier names — Starter, Essentials, The Works, and Enterprise — and no dollar figures. It is built for large residential service organizations and is a real answer at that size, but you cannot compare it from a web page.
Service Fusion renders its Starter, Plus, and Pro tier names and, when we loaded the page on August 23, 2026, no prices whatsoever. We are not going to estimate them for you.
Where electrical contractors actually lose billing money
Software choice matters less than these four habits, and no platform fixes them for you:
- Unbilled time and materials. The single largest leak in electrical service work. If a tech logs three hours and a materials list and nobody turns it into an invoice within a week, you will not chase it. Whatever you buy, the T&M-to-invoice step has to be one action, not a data-entry job for the office on Friday.
- Unsigned change orders. On contract work, verbal changes become free work. Your billing tool should refuse to let a change proceed without a signature attached.
- Retainage nobody tracks. Ten percent held across four jobs is a real number sitting on someone else’s balance sheet. If your system does not report it, you will forget to collect it.
- Payment friction on site. Every day between finishing the work and getting paid is a day the invoice can be disputed. On-site card capture is worth more than most feature comparisons suggest.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best billing software for a one-truck electrician?
Of the tools that publish a price, Jobber Core at $29/mo billed annually is the cheapest real option, with QuickBooks Online Simple Start at $38/mo underneath it for the books. If you are not ready to pay for anything yet, start with our free contractor invoice template and upgrade when the admin time hurts more than the subscription.
What is time and material billing software?
Software that lets a technician log hours and materials against a job in the field and turns that record into an invoice without re-keying it. The test is whether the field entry and the invoice are the same record. If your crew writes hours on a paper ticket that the office types in later, you do not have T&M billing software — you have a filing system.
Do I need AIA billing as an electrical contractor?
If you sub to general contractors on commercial jobs, yes — G702/G703 pay applications are usually how you get paid. Of the tools here, Knowify is the one explicitly built around that workflow. If you are residential service only, you can ignore it entirely.
Can I use QuickBooks alone?
For invoicing and books, yes. For dispatch, flat-rate pricing, field T&M capture, and retainage tracking, no. Most electrical contractors run a field platform alongside it rather than instead of it.
Which of these is cheapest overall?
It depends entirely on seat count, which is why every price above is quoted with the number of users it includes. Below three users, Jobber and QuickBooks are cheapest. Above eight, flat-rate models like Contractor Foreman Unlimited at $3,984/year start winning.
Related reading
- Best Software for Electrical Contractors — the pillar this spoke sits under.
- Accounting Software for Electrical Contractors
- Best Billing Software for Contractors — the general-trade version of this comparison.
- Best Invoicing Software for Contractors
- Free Contractor Invoice Template
- Contractor Software Pricing — our running, source-linked price reference.
Sources
- Knowify pricing — knowify.com/pricing/ (read 2026-08-23, both toggle states)
- Jobber pricing — getjobber.com/pricing/ (read 2026-08-23)
- Housecall Pro pricing — housecallpro.com/pricing/ (read 2026-08-23)
- Contractor Foreman plans — contractorforeman.com/plans/ (read 2026-08-23, annual tab)
- QuickBooks Online pricing — quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing/ (read 2026-08-23)
- ServiceTitan pricing — servicetitan.com/pricing (read 2026-08-23)
- Service Fusion pricing — servicefusion.com/pricing/ (read 2026-08-23)
Affiliate disclosure
Augmented Trades participates in affiliate programs and may earn a commission when you sign up for a product through some of the links on this page. Non-affiliate tools on this page are linked directly and earn us nothing. We recommend by fit, not by commission. Read our full affiliate disclosure.
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Michael is the founder of Augmented Trades, an independent site that compares AI and software tools for trade contractors on published pricing, contracts, and real feature limits. Tools are recommended on fit for your shop — affiliate partnerships never decide coverage.