Accounting software for contractors have several basic functions. Using this program, contractors can pay bills, print out checks, and monitor revenues and expenses, and it enables them to create invoices, estimates, and reports. It also has tools to manage the payroll of the company and monitor employee time. In addition, these tools can be used to set billing rates by employee type, skill level, or position.

Apart from the said functions, a contractor accounting program has a job costing module that summarizes job costs & profits. This module also prints job costing reports such as work status & project cost estimation. Other significant features of the software are used in tracking and printing change orders on estimates and in monitoring the status and expiration of subcontractor liability & insurance for workers.

With regard to cost, accounting programs for contractors are generally more expensive than other types of programs. Their prices can go from $200 to $400. This depends partly on the network capability of the software. A contractor accounting program which can provide access to multiple users through a network-based configuration is more expensive than the same type of application that can support single user access only.