What is Knowify Software and How Can it Benefit Your Contractor Accounting?
Using specialized software designed specifically for contractors, such as Knowify Software, can significantly improve efficiency and productivity within your business. Pairing this software with something like QuickBooks for accounting helps provide a full financial picture.
We’ve previously discussed dispatching and invoicing software like Housecall Pro and ServiceTitan. Those are great solutions for many smaller service businesses, but if your company manages larger, more complex projects, Knowify software is built specifically for those needs.
When we say “complex projects,” we’re talking about:
multi-month commercial jobs
government contracts
projects with multiple phases
AIA billing requirements
Other work that goes far beyond a typical dispatch-and-invoice workflow.
Knowify is best described as a project management platform built specifically for contractors. While the software now includes more traditional dispatching features. It’s strength has always been helping contractors manage large projects from estimating through completion.
The Estimating Process
Every successful project starts with an accurate estimate, and Knowify provides a structured process to help you build one.
You can create detailed estimates by adding labor, materials, equipment, subcontractors, and miscellaneous costs. The software guides you through each step while allowing you to customize the estimate to fit the project’s specific needs.
For projects with specialized billing requirements, such as AIA billing. Knowify allows you to build those requirements into the estimate from the beginning.
Once the estimate has been approved, it becomes the foundation for the entire project. Rather than starting over, divide the project into phases or billing segments. Track each one independently.
Breaking the Project into Phases
Large commercial projects are rarely completed all at once. Instead, they’re broken into multiple phases, each with its own budget, labor requirements, and materials.
Knowify allows you to create these project segments while assigning costs. Estimated labor hours, material costs, subcontractor expenses, and any additional miscellaneous costs to each phase.
This gives a clearer view of where your money is spent during the project. It also avoids tracking one large contract as a whole.
Accurate Job Costing
Estimating is only valuable if you can compare it against what actually happens on the job.
Knowify makes this possible by allowing technicians to clock in and out directly against specific projects, giving you accurate labor costs in real time.
Because Knowify integrates both ways with QuickBooks Online, you can assign bills, expenses, vendor costs, and other job costs. This creates accurate job costing while helping you monitor profitability throughout the project instead of waiting until it’s complete.
Reporting and Work-in-Progress Billing
One of Knowify’s biggest strengths is its reporting capabilities.
The software includes clean, easy-to-read financial reports along with multiple Work-in-Progress (WIP) reporting options. These reports give contractors valuable insight into project profitability, project completion status, and overall financial performance.
Having this information readily available allows business owners to make informed decisions before small issues become expensive problems.
In Progress Projects:
Another benefit that many invoicing software programs do not succeed at is the ability to do a seamless change order.
When a project changes, you do not want to recreate your estimate or lose track of additional work. With Knowify, you can create a change order directly from the existing project, build it out just like the original estimate, and send it to the customer for approval. Once approved, it is automatically incorporated into the project, allowing you to keep a complete record of every change made throughout the job.
This creates a much cleaner process for both your team and your customer while ensuring your financial reporting stays accurate.
Client Communication and Project Management
Knowify also provides several tools that improve communication throughout the life of a project. Clients can access a dedicated portal where they can view project progress, review invoices, and stay informed on what is happening without needing constant updates from your office.
Internally, your team benefits from daily logs, improved scheduling, dispatching capabilities, and organized work orders. These features help keep everyone on the same page and reduce communication gaps between the office, the field, and your customer.
For contractors managing projects over several months, these organizational tools can significantly improve efficiency.
Prevailing Wage and Commercial Projects
One area where Knowify truly stands out is its support for prevailing wage requirements.
Many large commercial and government projects require contractors to comply with prevailing wage regulations and maintain detailed labor records. Managing these requirements manually or through software that was designed primarily for residential service work can become difficult very quickly.
Knowify was designed with these larger commercial projects in mind, making it much easier to manage prevailing wage requirements while keeping project costs and labor organized.
If your business primarily handles multi-month commercial construction company projects rather than one-day service calls, this functionality alone can make Knowify a valuable investment.
QuickBooks Integration
Like many of the software solutions we recommend, Knowify offers a two-way integration with QuickBooks Online. Bills, expenses, labor costs, and other financial information can flow between the two systems, reducing duplicate data entry while providing more accurate job costing.
For many of our clients, we typically recommend pairing Knowify with QuickBooks Online Advanced. While it is a larger investment than many traditional dispatching platforms, it provides the flexibility and reporting capabilities that growing commercial contractors often need.
As of the recording of this video, QuickBooks Online Advanced with up to 10 users is approximately $329 per month.
Features Included
Beyond project management and estimating, Knowify includes a wide range of tools that help contractors manage complex projects from start to finish.
Some of the key features include:
- Cost-plus and time-and-material contract management
- Subcontractor management
- Project budgeting and planning
- Cost templates for estimating
- Work orders
- Daily job logs
- Client portal access
- Detailed job costing
- Work-in-progress (WIP) reporting.
Knowify also offers inventory management and equipment management as optional upgrades for companies that need those additional capabilities.
Is Knowify Right for Your Business?
Knowify is not designed to replace every dispatching platform on the market. If your business primarily performs residential service work or same-day repairs, another solution may be a better fit.
However, if your company specializes in commercial construction, long-term projects, remodels, or government contracts, Knowify provides a level of project organization and financial health that many traditional service management platforms cannot match.
From estimating and project budgeting to change orders, WIP reporting, prevailing wage tracking, and seamless QuickBooks integration, Knowify helps create the back-office organization that growing contractors need to stay profitable.
If you are considering integrating Knowify with QuickBooks Online or need help determining which software best fits your business, our team at Waterford Business Solutions is here to help. We work with contractors every day to streamline their accounting systems, improve job costing, and build software workflows that support long-term growth.
Contact us today to learn how we can help your business become more efficient and more profitable.
