Why Ledgerline
One system. The whole back office.
Job cost, union payroll, certified reporting, AIA-style billing, retention, and the field — in one place, sharing one ledger. Not a payroll app bolted to accounting bolted to a spreadsheet.
What you are really running today.
Most specialty subs run three or four tools that don't know about each other: books in one, the pay run in another, certified payroll by hand, billing in a spreadsheet, and the field on paper. Every seam is a reconciliation and a place for the number to be wrong. Here is where each option lands, category by category — no names, because the gaps are the category's, not one vendor's.
Job costing
- QuickBooks + spreadsheets
- Misses 15–25% of true cost
- Payroll-layer SaaS
- Not its job
- Legacy construction ERP
- Yes — after month-end
- Ledgerline
- Native, live, fully burdened
Union payroll
- QuickBooks + spreadsheets
- Bolt-on service
- Payroll-layer SaaS
- The pay run only
- Legacy construction ERP
- Yes — its strong suit
- Ledgerline
- Ratecards, fringes, garnishments
Certified payroll reporting
- QuickBooks + spreadsheets
- By hand in Excel
- Payroll-layer SaaS
- Partial
- Legacy construction ERP
- Yes — behind add-on modules
- Ledgerline
- The report suite, native
AIA-style billing
- QuickBooks + spreadsheets
- No
- Payroll-layer SaaS
- No
- Legacy construction ERP
- Yes — per module
- Ledgerline
- SOV, progress, retention
Retention
- QuickBooks + spreadsheets
- Tracked by hand
- Payroll-layer SaaS
- No
- Legacy construction ERP
- Yes
- Ledgerline
- Held and released natively
Field apps
- QuickBooks + spreadsheets
- No
- Payroll-layer SaaS
- Timecards only
- Legacy construction ERP
- Add-on, dated
- Ledgerline
- Timecards, daily reports, phone
General ledger
- QuickBooks + spreadsheets
- Yes — separate from job cost
- Payroll-layer SaaS
- No
- Legacy construction ERP
- Yes
- Ledgerline
- One ledger with job cost
Per-seat pricing
- QuickBooks + spreadsheets
- Per seat
- Payroll-layer SaaS
- Per employee, per month
- Legacy construction ERP
- Per seat + modules
- Ledgerline
- No per-seat meter
| QuickBooks + spreadsheets | Payroll-layer SaaS | Legacy construction ERP | Ledgerline | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Job costing | Misses 15–25% of true cost | Not its job | Yes — after month-end | Native, live, fully burdened |
| Union payroll | Bolt-on service | The pay run only | Yes — its strong suit | Ratecards, fringes, garnishments |
| Certified payroll reporting | By hand in Excel | Partial | Yes — behind add-on modules | The report suite, native |
| AIA-style billing | No | No | Yes — per module | SOV, progress, retention |
| Retention | Tracked by hand | No | Yes | Held and released natively |
| Field apps | No | Timecards only | Add-on, dated | Timecards, daily reports, phone |
| General ledger | Yes — separate from job cost | No | Yes | One ledger with job cost |
| Per-seat pricing | Per seat | Per employee, per month | Per seat + modules | No per-seat meter |
The depth is real in the legacy column. What you're buying from us is the same depth — on a modern web system your foreman will actually use, without the per-seat meter.
The checklist — for us or anyone else.
Evaluate every system you look at — including ours — against the same six questions. The answers, not the demo polish, are what tell a controller which system survives an audit and a close.
01
Are certified payroll and union reporting native, or an add-on?
An add-on is a second system to reconcile — and a second place the numbers drift.
02
Is job cost live, or does it wait for month-end?
Cost you see at closeout is a post-mortem. Cost you see in week one is a decision.
03
Is labor fully burdened in job cost, or raw wages?
Raw wages understate the job by the whole burden load — the number looks fine until it is not.
04
Will your foreman actually use the field app?
Field data is only worth what gets entered. A tool the crew avoids is a spreadsheet with extra steps.
05
What does adding 20 field users cost?
Per-seat pricing meters the one thing you want more of — data from the field.
06
Who migrates your history, and how is it proven correct?
A migration nobody reconciles is a guess. Ask who ties the new books to the old, to the penny.
Bring this list to every demo. We'll answer all six on ours.
Payroll tools stop at the pay run.
A payroll-layer tool is genuinely good at one thing: cutting the check. But the pay run is the start of the accounting, not the end of it. Those wages, fringes, and burden have to reach the job, hit the general ledger, and feed the certified reports — and a payroll app hands you a file to carry into a second system and reconcile.
Every one of those hand-offs is where the true cost of a job quietly drifts from what the books say. Keep it in one system and the drift has nowhere to happen: the same posted payroll is the job cost, the ledger entry, and the certified line — entered once, in the field.
Field entry
Timecard
entered in the field
What the current process costs — before you buy anything.
55 min/ report
Certified payroll assembled by hand — plus 3–5 hr per project each week.
DOL; practitioners
$19.5–45.5K/ yr
Compliance admin across five public projects.
industry data
$85K–947K+ debarment
Davis-Bacon penalty exposure, plus 3-year debarment.
DOL
15–25%of job cost
True job cost that QuickBooks-class books miss.
industry data
Typical specialty-sub net margin runs about 5% — so one compliance failure can equal years of profit. (industry data)
Fifty years of books stand behind it.
This is not a startup's first guess at construction accounting. It is the working system of a 90-year-old union wall-and-ceiling contractor in Southern California, rebuilt — and the rebuild had to tie to the penny against decades of real books before anyone was allowed to switch.
1932
Into the trade — a union wall-and-ceiling contractor.
1975
First in-house payroll ERP, written for real jobs.
2026
Rebuilt on modern web — penny-exact against the old books before anyone switched.
- 500 paychecks a week
- $40M receivables
- $11M retention
- 3,300+ jobs in the system
The whole story — built by the trade, not for it.
No per-seat meter.
Legacy construction ERP has the depth — behind per-seat pricing that punishes you for putting more foremen on the system, which is exactly backwards. Field data is worth the most when everyone in the field is entering it.
A flat platform fee, everything on every plan, no modules to unlock. Add the crew. See how pricing works.
Modern web, on a phone, on your servers if you want.
The depth of legacy ERP without the 1999 UI: it runs in a browser and on a foreman's phone. Permissions are role- and project-scoped, so a foreman sees only his jobs. It is built on the Frappe open-source platform and can run in managed cloud or self-hosted — your data location is a choice you make, not one made for you.
For the champion
Selling this inside?
Print the one-page brief for the person who signs, or send them the checklist.
See the whole back office in one place.
One walkthrough covers job cost, payroll, compliance, and billing — because it is one system, not four demos.
45 minutes on your real workflows. See how pricing works.