← Back to Bead BoardQuickBooks for welding shops vs Bead Board
Every small welding shop has QuickBooks for the books. A few of them are also trying to jam job tracking, quoting, photos, and the clock-in into QB and finding out the hard way that QuickBooks was built for an accountant's desk, not a welder's glove.
Keep QuickBooks. It's not the problem.
QuickBooks is accounting software. Books, taxes, payroll, sales tax, AR, AP. That's what your bookkeeper needs and that's what QB is good at. Nobody's asking you to drop it.
Bead Board is the other half. It's for the welder on the truck and the fabricator on the floor. Job board, quote builder, customer history, photos, clock-in. Everything that happens before the invoice goes out. You build a PDF quote in Bead Board, your customer signs it, and you type the totals into QB when the check clears. That's the whole integration.
Side by side, shop-floor stuff only
QuickBooks Online list prices verified April 2026 at quickbooks.intuit.com/pricing. Simple Start $38, Essentials $75, Plus $115, Advanced $275. Solopreneur and QuickBooks Time not included.
When QuickBooks alone is fine
One-person shop, three jobs going at once, QB Estimates into QB Invoice, everything fits inside QB. Don't bolt anything on. You'd be paying $99 a month for a problem you don't have yet.
Where QB starts hurting
The first crack shows up on the phone. QB mobile wants to help you send an invoice. It does not want to help you add three in-progress photos of a handrail to a job while you're standing next to it with gloves on. You end up texting photos to yourself and never putting them anywhere.
Then it's the customer call. "What did you charge us for that stair last year?" You open QB, search the customer, scroll through a list of invoices with no pictures and no notes, and eventually guess. A welder's customer history lives in photos and notes and line items, not in GL codes.
Then it's the clock-in. QB will happily sell you QuickBooks Time Premium on top of your subscription at another $20 base plus $8 per user every month. Your welders hate it. They stop using it after week two, and you're back to guessing hours per job at the end of the month.
Questions welders ask about QuickBooks vs job tracking
Can I use QuickBooks to track welding jobs instead of paying for a second tool?
QuickBooks tracks money. It does not track jobs. You can create invoices and estimates in QB, but there is no job board, no photo attachments on a job, no offline mode, and no way for a welder in the truck to see what stage a job is in. Most shops keep QuickBooks for the books and add a job tracker for the shop floor.
Does Bead Board replace QuickBooks?
No. Bead Board generates PDF quotes and invoices that you enter into QuickBooks manually. It handles the shop-floor side: job tracking, quoting, photos, time, materials. QuickBooks handles the accounting side: books, taxes, payroll. They are complementary.
How much does QuickBooks Time cost on top of the base subscription?
QuickBooks Time Premium is $20 base plus $8 per user per month. For a 4-person shop that is $52/mo on top of your QB subscription just for time tracking. Bead Board is $99/mo flat for the whole shop, unlimited users, and time tracking is built in.
Can my welders clock in through Bead Board on a phone with no signal?
Yes. Bead Board works offline on iOS and Android. Clock-ins, photos, notes, everything. It syncs when signal comes back. QuickBooks Time requires internet for every punch.
Also worth reading: welding spreadsheet • WeldTrace (code welding) • Jobber (field services) • the whiteboard • how quoting works.