Best Accounting Software for Construction Australia 2026
Last updated: November 2026 · Prices verified at official AU vendor sites on 4 November 2026 · Affiliate disclosure
MYOB AccountRight Plus is the best accounting software for Australian construction businesses that need real job costing. Job tracking, progress claims and subcontractor management are built in rather than bolted on, and payroll is unlimited at a flat $150 a month. Smaller builders, renovation contractors and subcontractors are usually better off on Xero or MYOB Business, which cost a fraction of that and cover what they actually do.
The thing that separates construction from every other industry on this site is not the accounting. It is job costing, retention, progress claims, the Building and Construction Award, and a TPAR obligation with a hard deadline. Those are the things worth choosing on.
Best construction accounting software compared
| Software | Price/mo | Job costing | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| MYOB AccountRight Plus | $150 | Built in | Builders, civil contractors, multi-crew construction businesses |
| MYOB Business Pro | $63.64 + $4.55/employee | Basic | Small building businesses wanting MYOB without the desktop tier |
| Xero | From $37 | Projects, from $107 | Sole trader builders, renovation contractors, subcontractors |
| QuickBooks | From $32.72 | Projects, from $81.81 | Price-first buyers with simple job tracking |
Prices are standard monthly rates, GST exclusive, from each vendor's own AU pricing page. All four run near-permanent introductory discounts, so price the second year rather than the first.
Free Tool
True Cost Calculator
See your real monthly cost for Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks based on your crew size.
Try the calculator →What construction needs that other businesses do not
Job costing. Every dollar of labour, material, plant and subcontractor cost has to land against the right job, or you find out a job lost money after it is finished. This is the single biggest reason builders leave general accounting software.
Progress claims and retention. Construction bills in stages against a contract, not on delivery, and the client usually holds a percentage back. Software that cannot raise a claim against a job budget or track what is being withheld leaves you reconciling it in a spreadsheet.
Subcontractor payments and TPAR. A reporting obligation with a fixed annual deadline, covered in its own section below.
The on-site award. Site allowances, travel and fares, inclement weather, RDOs. None of it is standard payroll.
Working without coverage. Plenty of sites have no usable mobile signal. That used to be the case for AccountRight's desktop software, but MYOB has ended offline working, so every platform on this list now needs a connection. Plan to do the books when you are back in range.
Job costing, and which platforms actually do it
Every vendor claims job costing. They mean different things by it, and the gap matters.
| Platform | What you get | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| MYOB AccountRight | Native job costing, budgets per job, progress claims, retention, subcontractor tracking | Interface is dated and the learning curve is real |
| MYOB Business Pro | Basic job tracking against income and expenses | No progress claims or retention handling |
| Xero Projects | Time and cost against a project, project profitability | No progress claims against a budget, no retention, no variations |
| QuickBooks Projects | Income and cost per project, basic profitability | Thinnest of the four, and only on Plus at $81.81 or above |
The practical test is how many jobs you run at once. One or two at a time and Xero Projects is fine. Five or more concurrent jobs with variations and staged claims, and you are either on AccountRight or you are running dedicated job management software alongside a simpler ledger. For smaller trade-focused operators that second path is often better value, and we cover it in the best job management software for tradies.
If you are shopping for job costing software for contractors in Australia, be clear about what you are actually buying. Most construction job costing software sold locally is a job management layer that sits on top of Xero or MYOB rather than replacing it, which means two subscriptions to buy and maintain. Simpro, AroFlo and Buildxact all work that way. AccountRight Plus is the exception in this comparison, because its job costing lives in the ledger itself instead of syncing into one.
TPAR and subcontractor payments
If you pay subcontractors, this is the compliance job that catches people out, because it has a hard deadline and sits outside the BAS cycle entirely.
A Taxable Payments Annual Report must be lodged by 28 August each year, covering the financial year just finished. You need to lodge one if you have an ABN, you make payments to contractors or subcontractors for building and construction services, and 50% or more of your business income came from building and construction services in either the current financial year or the one immediately before it. Payments to employees are not reported in a TPAR, only payments to contractors.
Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks all generate the report. What none of them can do is fix a year of miscoded transactions in August. The report is only as good as the contractor coding you did as you went, which is the actual argument for setting supplier records up properly on day one rather than at year end.
One trap worth naming: being a subcontractor yourself does not exempt you. If you are subcontracting to a builder and also paying your own subbies, you may well have a TPAR obligation of your own.
Construction payroll and the on-site award
The Building and Construction General On-site Award is MA000020, and it is one of the more involved awards in the country. Site allowances vary by project value, there are travel and fares allowances, inclement weather provisions, and RDO accrual to track. When you compare payroll software for a construction company, this award is what the choice should turn on.
No accounting platform interprets it for you. Xero Payroll and MYOB payroll are both Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 compliant, both handle super and PAYG correctly, and both let you build pay items for allowances and penalty rates. Neither checks that the rates you entered are current, and neither will tell you when the award is varied. For a small crew on one classification that is manageable. For a larger crew across several classifications, award interpretation is the job Employment Hero or Deputy do, and you would run one of those alongside your accounting software rather than instead of it. Our payroll software comparison covers those options.
What it costs by crew size
Headcount drives the bill more than features do, and the three options diverge sharply as the crew grows. AccountRight Plus is flat regardless of how many people you pay, which is what makes it competitive despite the sticker price.
| People paid | Xero | MYOB Business Pro | AccountRight Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $37 Ignite | $68.18 | $150 |
| 5 | $107 Comprehensive | $86.36 | $150 |
| 10 | $143 Ultimate 10 | $109.09 | $150 |
| 20 | $180 Ultimate 20 | $154.55 | $150 |
| 32 | $250 Ultimate 50 | $209.09 | $150 |
MYOB figures here are ex GST, to match Xero; MYOB's own page shows them with GST. Two crossovers worth knowing. AccountRight Plus overtakes MYOB Business Pro from 20 people, where Pro's $4.55 per employee finally adds up to more than the flat fee. And AccountRight Plus becomes cheaper than Xero somewhere between 10 and 20 people on payroll, before you count the job costing you would otherwise be paying an add-on for. Full detail in our MYOB AccountRight pricing guide and MYOB pricing guide.
Free Tool
Not sure which one fits your build?
Answer three questions about your jobs, your crew and your subbies, and get a recommendation.
Try the software finder →Small builders and subcontractors
Most of this page is about head contractors. If you are a subcontractor, or a two-person building business, a lot of it does not apply to you and you should not pay for it.
A subcontractor invoices the builder, gets paid, and needs the invoicing, GST and payroll to be right. There is no retention to administer on ten jobs and no progress claims to raise against a budget. MYOB Business Lite at $31.82 a month plus $4.55 per employee, or Xero Ignite at $37, covers that comfortably. Spending $150 on AccountRight for job costing you will not use is the most common overspend in this category.
The two things to check before deciding you are the simple case: whether you pay your own subbies, which brings the TPAR obligation with it, and whether your crew is on the on-site award, which makes payroll the harder half of the job.
When you have outgrown accounting software
There is a point where the question stops being which ledger and starts being which construction platform. Estimating, procurement, site diaries, RFIs, variations and claims across many concurrent jobs are not accounting problems, and no amount of job costing in AccountRight makes them one.
That is where construction management software such as Buildxact or Simpro comes in, and at the larger end the construction ERP platforms. They sit alongside your accounting software rather than replacing it, they integrate with Xero and MYOB, and they cost meaningfully more than the ledger. Most Australian builders do not need one until they are past roughly ten concurrent jobs or a team in the dozens. If you are not there yet, the money is better spent on getting job costing right in what you already have.
Common questions
What is the best accounting software for a construction company in Australia?
MYOB AccountRight Plus at $150 a month for anything with real job costing, because the job tracking is built in rather than bolted on and payroll is unlimited at a flat price. MYOB Business Pro at $63.64 plus $4.55 per employee if you want MYOB without the desktop tier. Xero from $37 for a sole trader builder or a small renovation outfit that mainly needs invoicing, BAS and payroll. QuickBooks Simple Start at $32.72 undercuts Xero Ignite, but QuickBooks is the weakest fit here, because job costing only arrives on Plus at $81.81.
Does Xero do job costing for construction?
Only in a limited way. Xero Projects tracks time and costs against a project and will tell you whether that project made money, which is enough for a builder running a handful of jobs at a time. What it does not do is handle progress claims against a job budget, retention, or variations as first-class things. Projects is included on Comprehensive at $107 and above, not on Ignite or Grow. Past a few concurrent jobs most builders end up either on MYOB AccountRight or running dedicated job management software alongside Xero.
What is TPAR and when is it due?
The Taxable Payments Annual Report tells the ATO what you paid contractors and subcontractors. It must be lodged by 28 August each year for the financial year just gone. You need to lodge one if you have an ABN, you pay contractors for building and construction services, and 50% or more of your business income came from building and construction services in either the current or the previous financial year. Xero, MYOB and QuickBooks all generate the report, but only from what you coded correctly during the year, so the work is in the coding rather than the lodgement.
Does construction accounting software handle retention?
MYOB AccountRight handles retention as part of job management. Xero and QuickBooks handle it through manual journals or a third-party add-on. If your contracts carry retention of 5% held for a 12-month defects period, which is common, doing that by hand across several jobs is where errors creep in and it is a fair reason on its own to pay for AccountRight.
Can accounting software handle the Building and Construction Award?
Not on its own. The Building and Construction General On-site Award is MA000020, and it carries site allowances, travel and fares allowances, inclement weather provisions and RDO accrual that none of the accounting platforms interpret automatically. Xero and MYOB payroll are both Single Touch Payroll Phase 2 compliant and both let you build pay items for those components, but you are the one deciding the rates are right. For a crew across multiple classifications, award interpretation is what Employment Hero or Deputy add on top.
What accounting software suits a small construction business or subcontractor?
If you are a subcontractor rather than a head contractor, most of the construction-specific machinery is irrelevant to you: you are issuing invoices or progress claims to a builder, not managing retention on ten jobs. MYOB Business Lite at $31.82 a month plus $4.55 per employee, or Xero Ignite at $37, covers it. Do still check the TPAR question, because you may be a subcontractor who also pays subcontractors.
Is MYOB good for construction companies?
For job costing it is the best of the mainstream accounting platforms in Australia, which is why so many builders are on it. The job costing, progress claims and subcontractor tracking are native to AccountRight rather than add-ons. The trade-off is the interface, which is dated next to Xero, and a smaller app ecosystem. Full numbers in our MYOB AccountRight pricing guide.
Do I need construction ERP software instead?
Once you are running estimating, procurement, site diaries, RFIs and progress claims across many concurrent jobs, an accounting ledger stops being the right tool and you are looking at construction management platforms such as Buildxact, Simpro or the larger ERP options. Those sit alongside your accounting software rather than replacing it, and they cost more than the ledger does. Most Australian builders do not need one until they are past roughly ten concurrent jobs or a team in the dozens.
Start Free
Try Xero free for 30 days
No credit card required. Full access to your chosen plan, cancel anytime.
Start your free trial →See also: Accounting software for tradies · Job management software for tradies · MYOB review · Xero review · Best accounting software AU · Xero pricing
StackPick may earn a commission if you subscribe through our links, at no extra cost to you. This does not influence our recommendations. See our affiliate disclaimer.
