As contractors grow, their reporting needs get more complex. Class and location tracking can show basic profitability, but they don’t answer the deeper operational questions:
Intuit Enterprise Suite (IES) Dimensions were built to answer these questions. When combined with Knowify, they provide a consistent financial model across all projects and entities.
This article covers what Dimensions are, why they matter, how they work with Knowify, and what real contractors are doing with them today.
Dimensions are customizable tags you apply to financial data. They can represent system type, region, project phase, customer segment, work type, or anything else meaningful to your reporting. They function like more flexible versions of classes and locations but scale better for multi-entity, multi-division construction companies.
Dimensions make it possible to analyze your business without creating a massive Chart of Accounts. They help you understand:
They give growing contractors a cleaner, more scalable structure, especially when the business does multiple types of work in multiple locations.
Dimensions are a strong fit if your business is:
Single-entity contractors with simple reporting needs may be fine with classes and locations alone. But once complexity increases, Dimensions become a better long-term approach.
Knowify and IES together create a single workflow from the field to your books.
Knowify handles project-side operations: job costing, change orders, billing, subcontractors, WIP, service work, and field execution. IES handles accounting, multi-entity management, consolidations, and reporting. Dimensions sit in the middle as the shared structure that keeps everything aligned.
The workflow is similar to class and location mapping but more flexible:
This gives you a simple setup: choose Dimensions once per job, and Knowify applies them consistently.
Below are the most common use cases, paired with examples from real contractor workflows.
Business: Mechanical contractor
Setup: Dimensions for System Type (HVAC, plumbing, steam, controls) reveal which systems generate the strongest margins across projects.
Insight: HVAC is consistently more profitable than controls; plumbing rough-in tends to underbid labor.
Business: Mechanical contractor
Setup: Dimensions for Project Phase (rough-in, trim, commissioning) highlight where overruns happen.
Insight: Trim-phase labor runs higher than expected on most jobs, prompting changes to estimating assumptions or crew planning.
Business: Electrical contractor with three subsidiaries
Setup: Dimensions for Division and Region create a unified reporting structure across all entities.
Insight: Industrial work in the Mid-Atlantic underperforms across all subsidiaries, which wouldn’t be visible without shared Dimensions.
Business: Concrete contractor
Setup: Dimensions for Customer Segment (private, municipal, federal) show how profitability varies across customer types.
Insight: Municipal work has higher labor variance; federal projects yield better margins and more predictable billing cycles.
Business: Electrical contractor
Setup: Dimensions for Region allow side-by-side comparisons of job performance by geography.
Insight: Northeast work shows higher material surcharges; Mid-Atlantic jobs have lower productivity due to longer travel distances.
The Knowify + IES Dimensions integration gives growing contractors:
Assign Dimensions once at the job level in Knowify, and they carry through all your synced financial data in IES.
