Project accounting & job costing

Project accounting software that shows a job's profit while it's running

Not after it's finished. Zaccount puts every cost on the job the moment it's incurred, keeps the budget beside it, and recognises revenue as the work is done — in the same system as your accounts.

The problem with job costing today

No cost allocation
Costs reach the job late or land on the wrong one — bills keyed in weeks later, stock taken from the store without a record, one courier bill for five jobs charged to whichever job someone remembers. You find out a job lost money after it’s finished.
Budgets keep changing
Variations are agreed on site and the original budget is quietly overwritten. Nobody can see what changed, when or why — and the job costs end up rebuilt in a spreadsheet that never quite agrees with the ledger.
Revenue wrongly recognised
Revenue is booked when it’s billed, not when it’s earned. A big deposit makes this month look great and next month terrible — and the auditor adjusts it at year-end.

How Zaccount fixes it

Job costing as it happens
- Supplier bills tagged to a project post straight to the job.
- Stock issued from your store to a job is costed and lands on it immediately.
- Expense claims from your staff carry the job they were spent on.
- Shared costs are split across jobs with a Cost Adjustment, line by line — each line tied to the entry it came from, so nothing is moved twice.
Budget beside actual, always
Each project carries its budget. Revise Budget keeps every change with its history, so you can see what the job was sold at and what it's running at now. Your Projects page shows billed, cost to date and the margin, job by job.
A job whose costs run past its budget is flagged and held back from revenue recognition until the budget is revised — so profit is never overstated on a job going wrong.
Revenue recognised as the work is done
Billing goes to Deferred Income and costs build up in work in progress. Revenue recognition runs by percentage of completion — revenue and cost of sales recognised together, for the chosen projects, on the date you choose. Completion is measured by cost incurred against the budgeted cost — the cost-to-cost method under SFRS(I) 15. Your profit follows the work, not the invoices, and each project keeps its recognition history.

Meet Zac, your AI Accountant

Contracts to projects. Upload a signed contract — Zac reads the deposit clause and the signatures, sets up the project and drafts the deposit invoice.
Bills on the right job. Zac drafts supplier bills from your PDFs and photos, and charges them to the job you name.
Ask anything. “Which jobs are over budget?” “What’s left to bill on PRJ26-0011?”

Built for project businesses

Construction, M&E, renovation and engineering, event management, consultancies — any company that quotes, wins and delivers projects. Quotations become projects, purchase orders can be raised for a project, and every document stays linked to the project it belongs to.

Consultants' time on projects, or billing by the hour? Tell us how your team records time, and we set Zaccount up around it.

Frequently asked questions

How is revenue recognised?

By percentage of completion: billing is held in Deferred Income and costs in work in progress, then recognised together as the job progresses. Completion is measured by cost incurred against the budgeted cost — the cost-to-cost method under SFRS(I) 15.

Can one bill be shared across several jobs?

Yes — a Cost Adjustment splits it line by line, each line capped at what’s left of the original entry.

What happens when the budget changes?

Revise Budget records the new figure and keeps the history; the budget can’t be set below the cost already spent.

How are variations handled?

A variation order becomes its own quotation and project, linked to the original, so its revenue and cost stay clear.

See every job's profit while it's running

A 10-minute live demo on sample projects — bring your questions.