QuickBooks Online Calculations: Track Labor, Material & Sub Margins on Your P&L
Oct 02, 2026Your profit and loss report tells you if you made money. It doesn't tell you where you made it. In this video I show how builders can use custom calculated fields in QuickBooks Online to add labor, material, and subcontractor margins right into the P&L.
If you record billable labor, materials, and subs as income and track the matching costs in cost of goods sold, you already have the data you need. Calculated fields do the math for you, so you can see which part of your business is carrying your profit and which part is dragging it down.
In this video:
- How a builder's P&L is set up with billable income and matching cost of goods sold
- Using the % of Income and % of Expense columns
- Where to find calculated fields in QBO report settings
- Building a Labor Margin formula step by step: (Billable Labor − Labor) ÷ Billable Labor
- Setting the field type to a percentage and placing it where you want it on the report
- Adding Material Margin and Sub Margin the same way
- Fixing calculated fields that break when an account changes
- Comparing margins year over year by changing the date range and displaying columns by year
