Workyard Alternative for Electrical Contractors: Why FieldTimesheet Costs Less and Syncs Cleaner with QuickBooks
A 15-person electrical crew on Workyard Pro pays $245/month — $2,940/year — for time tracking and job costing. The same crew runs FieldTimesheet for $139/month and gets QuickBooks Online sync built specifically for how electrical contractors bill T&M work.
This is not a hit piece on Workyard. It is a solid product, especially for general construction GCs. But if you are an electrical sub billing time-and-materials, prepping 1099s, and pulling job costs out of QuickBooks every Friday, the math and the daily workflow look different. Below is the real side-by-side: pricing, features, what each tool actually does for an electrician, and when Workyard is still the right call.
If you are comparing more than two tools, our time tracking guide for electrical contractors covers the whole landscape.
How Much Does Workyard Cost for an Electrical Contractor?
Workyard charges $6/user/month plus a $50 base fee on Starter, or $13/user/month plus $50 base on Pro — and job costing is locked behind the Pro tier.
That tier gate matters. Starter looks cheap until you realize it does not include the one feature electricians actually need: per-job labor cost rollups. Without job costing, you are tracking hours but flying blind on whether the strip mall remodel actually penciled out.
Here is the real monthly math for crew sizes electrical shops actually run:
| Crew Size | Workyard Starter | Workyard Pro | FieldTimesheet | Annual Savings vs Pro |
|---|
| 10 workers | $110/mo | $180/mo | $99/mo | $972 |
| 15 workers | $140/mo | $245/mo | $139/mo | $1,272 |
| 20 workers | $170/mo | $310/mo | $179/mo | $1,572 |
| 30 workers | $230/mo | $440/mo | $259/mo | $2,172 |
FieldTimesheet includes job costing on the base plan. Workyard pricing pulled from their public site, May 2026.
Why Electrical Contractors Switch from Workyard
Workyard built for general construction. The feature set assumes a GC managing dozens of trades, hundreds of cost codes, and a project-management layer most electrical subs do not run. For a 12-person residential service shop or a 25-person commercial electrical contractor, that is overhead you pay for and do not use.
Three patterns drive switches:
Pricing creep at the Pro tier. Once you cross 10 workers, the $13/user math adds up fast, and Starter is hobbled without job costing. QuickBooks sync depth. Workyard syncs to QuickBooks, but if you bill T&M the useful question is not only whether the hours arrive — it is whether they arrive with the work described. FieldTimesheet's QuickBooks sync writes one TimeActivity per entry and puts the electrician's own clock-out note in the description field, so the line reads as a description of work instead of a bare number. Trade specificity. Electrical contractors deal with prevailing wage on public jobs, apprentice ratios, service calls versus project work, and 1099 subs. A general-construction tool treats those as edge cases instead of core workflow.Workyard vs FieldTimesheet: Feature-by-Feature
| Feature | Workyard | FieldTimesheet |
|---|
| Starting price | $6/user + $50 base | $99/mo flat for 10 users |
| Job costing included on base plan | No (Pro only) | Yes |
| QuickBooks Online TimeActivity sync | Yes | Yes |
| QB customer/service-item mapping for T&M billing | Limited | Yes |
| GPS capture | Continuous (5-min ping) | At clock in/out |
| Offline clock in/out | Yes | Yes (PWA) |
| Built specifically for electrical contractors | No (general construction) | Yes |
| 1099 prep workflow | No | Yes |
| 14-day free trial, no card required | No (card required) | Yes |
| Per-worker contractor pricing | $6–$13/user | $8/user above 10 |
When Workyard Still Makes Sense
If you run a general construction company with mixed trades — concrete, framing, drywall, electrical, HVAC under one roof — Workyard's broader cost-code library and project structure fit better. If your crews exceed 50 workers and you need batch supervisor entry across dozens of foremen, Workyard scales there.
If continuous GPS pinging is a hard requirement — for example, you are tracking driver routes for a fleet of service vans and need 5-minute location updates regardless of clock state — Workyard's location engine is purpose-built for that.
FieldTimesheet captures GPS at clock-in and clock-out only. That is a deliberate choice for electrical contractors: it answers "was this worker on the job site when they punched in" without draining phone batteries or generating data you will never look at. If you need continuous tracking, that is not us.
Honest tool fit beats forced fit every time.
How Does FieldTimesheet's QuickBooks Sync Compare to Workyard?
FieldTimesheet pushes each completed time entry to QuickBooks Online as a TimeActivity record carrying the date, the worker, the hours, and the note the electrician wrote at clock-out.
Getting from worker hours to customer-billable lines is work in either tool. Neither one hands you a finished T&M invoice, and you should be suspicious of any time tracker that says it does.
Here is exactly what the sync does and does not set today, because the difference decides how much work is left on Friday. It sends the date, the employee, the hours, and the description. It does not set a service item, a class, a billable flag, or a rate, and it does not attach the QuickBooks customer — assigning those hours to a customer or project is something you do inside QuickBooks. What the sync removes is the re-keying and the guessing about what a number meant; building the invoice is still a step you take in QuickBooks. See the full sync mechanics in our QuickBooks time entry guide.
What About GPS and Battery Drain on Electrician Crews?
Continuous GPS — which Workyard uses with 5-minute location pings — drains phone batteries faster than punctuated GPS, especially on older Android devices common in field crews.
This is a real complaint in Workyard's own G2 and Software Advice reviews. The fix Workyard recommends is keeping phones plugged in during the workday, which works in a service van but not for an electrician on a 14-foot ladder running EMT.
FieldTimesheet captures GPS only at clock-in and clock-out. That gives you the answer to the question that matters — "was the worker at the job site when they punched the clock" — without the all-day drain. For prevailing wage audits or T&M billing disputes, two timestamped GPS points are evidence enough. You do not need a breadcrumb trail of every step the worker took between them.
Switching from Workyard: What to Expect
Migration takes a weekend for most shops under 25 workers. The order:
- Export your Workyard data. Workyard supports CSV export for time entries, workers, and jobs. Pull the last 90 days at minimum.
- Start a FieldTimesheet free trial. No card required for 14 days. Connect QuickBooks Online during setup — the OAuth handshake takes about 90 seconds.
- Import workers and active jobs. Workers go in as users with their hourly or burdened rate. Active jobs map to QB customers.
- Run a parallel week. Have one foreman or one job site run both tools for five working days. Compare the time entries Friday afternoon. You are checking for missed clock-ins, GPS gaps, and QB sync errors.
- Cut over the rest of the crew. Once the parallel week looks clean, kill the Workyard subscription. Workyard bills monthly, so you save the next billing cycle.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is FieldTimesheet really cheaper than Workyard for a small electrical crew?
Yes, once you cross 6 workers. Workyard Starter at $6/user + $50 hits $86 at 6 workers and lacks job costing. FieldTimesheet at $99 flat for 10 workers includes job costing and QB sync, so the per-feature math favors FieldTimesheet for any crew above six that needs job-level visibility.
Does FieldTimesheet do geofencing like Workyard?
FieldTimesheet captures GPS at clock-in and clock-out, which answers the "was the worker on the job site" question without continuous tracking. We do not currently offer Workyard-style geofence alerts that trigger when a worker leaves a perimeter mid-shift — that is a roadmap item, not a current feature.
Can I run FieldTimesheet on the same phones my crew already uses for Workyard?
Yes. FieldTimesheet is a Progressive Web App, not a native install. Workers open the URL in any phone browser, tap Add to Home Screen, and the app behaves like a native app — including offline clock in/out when cell service drops on a job site.
Will I lose historical time data when I switch?
Not if you export from Workyard first. Pull at least 90 days of time entries as CSV before canceling, and keep those records for audit, prevailing wage compliance, and 1099 prep. FieldTimesheet imports CSV time entries during onboarding if you want continuity in reports.
What about prevailing wage and certified payroll?
FieldTimesheet captures the data you need for certified payroll reports — worker, classification, hours, job, date — but the WH-347 export itself is a 2026 roadmap item. If you have an active prevailing wage job this month, ask us about the export status before switching.
How long does the QuickBooks sync take to set up?
The OAuth handshake between FieldTimesheet and QuickBooks Online takes about 90 seconds. Mapping your active jobs to QB customers takes another 5–10 minutes depending on how many active customers you have. After that, time entries sync automatically as TimeActivity records.
Is there a long-term contract?
No. FieldTimesheet is monthly, cancel anytime. The 14-day free trial requires no credit card. Workyard requires a card on file for trial access.
Bottom Line
Workyard is built for general contractors managing many trades. FieldTimesheet is built for electrical contractors running 10–30 workers who bill T&M, sync to QuickBooks Online, and need job costing on the base plan — not behind a Pro upsell.
A 15-person crew saves $1,272/year switching from Workyard Pro to FieldTimesheet, with a deeper QuickBooks billing integration and no battery-draining continuous GPS. If you are a residential service shop, a commercial electrical sub, or a small electrical contractor outgrowing QuickBooks Time, FieldTimesheet is the right shape.
If you run mixed trades or need fleet-style continuous GPS, Workyard is still the better fit. Pick the tool shaped like your business — not the other way around.
Start a 14-day free trial — no card required — or run the numbers yourself with our job cost calculator.