Can QuickBooks do construction accounting?
QuickBooks is excellent general accounting, but it was not built for construction finance. It struggles with retainage tracking, detailed job costing by cost type, work-in-progress and over/under billing reports, and cash forecasting. Most contractors keep QuickBooks as the system of record and add a layer on top to answer the weekly questions it cannot.
What it does not do well
Retainage is not tracked in a construction-correct way, job costing cannot cleanly split costs by construction cost type or include commitments, and there is no native WIP or over/under billing report. It records what happened; it does not tell you whether you can make payroll on Friday.
The practical answer: keep it, add a layer
You do not need to rip out QuickBooks. The common approach is to keep it as the system of record and add a decision layer that reads its data and answers the construction-specific questions, cash position, job health, who is paying slowly, and what needs billing.