When time records are handled manually or spread across multiple tools, payroll, reporting, and job costing can take longer than they should.

That process often becomes harder to manage if you, like 86% of Canadian business owners, have outgrown your initial digital tools. Once older systems stop fitting the business, even basic hour tracking can take more time and become harder to review.

Accounting software like Intuit QuickBooks can connect hours, approvals, payroll, and reports, reducing manual work and duplicate entry. This guide looks at how time tracking works, why it matters, and how QuickBooks Time helps Canadian businesses manage it.

Table of contents:

• What is time tracking and why does it matter?
• How Businesses Track Employee Hours Today
• Benefits of using time tracking software
• Time tracking tips and best practices
• Free time tracking tools to save you time
• How Intuit QuickBooks supports time tracking
• Start tracking time with Intuit QuickBooks
• Frequently asked questions

What is time tracking and why does it matter?

What is time tracking? It’s a simple question, but the answer can affect payroll, reporting, and job costing as your business grows. 

Essentially, time tracking is the practice of recording when work starts, when it ends, how long breaks last, and where that time goes. That may sound basic, but it can impact every part of your business.

Once hours start feeding payroll, project budgets, client work, or staffing plans, time tracking becomes part of how the business runs.

The main benefits of time tracking:

• Payroll accuracy: Clear, reviewed time records can give payroll a cleaner starting point, which may reduce rework and pay questions.
• Job costing: Tracking time by client, project, or task can help show where labour goes and which work is paying off.
• Reporting value: Hour data helps finance and operations compare scheduled time, actual time, and labour cost trends.
• Compliance support: Clear records can make overtime reviews, paid time off tracking, and payroll documentation easier to manage.

In Canada, time records matter beyond day-to-day administration. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) requires employers to include employee hours in payroll records, giving time records a practical role in payroll compliance and audits.

How Businesses Track Employee Hours Today

Time tracking at work usually falls into a few familiar patterns. Some teams still use paper. Others rely on spreadsheets. More businesses now use mobile tools or software that connects hours to payroll and reporting.

The right method often depends on team size, approvals, and how many places the same hour data needs to go.

The tradeoffs for each time tracking method:

This comparison shows where manual methods often start to fall short. Paper timesheets and spreadsheets can work for a while, but their limits usually become more obvious once shifts, locations, overtime, or multiple approvers are involved in the process.

Benefits of using time tracking software

What is time tracking in a growing business, day to day? Mostly, it’s less about the timer itself and more about how cleanly hours move into payroll, reporting, billing, and planning.

Knowing how to choose a time tracking system becomes more worthwhile as a business expands. For teams that have outgrown basic tools, a financial management solution for growing businesses can make time, payroll, and reporting easier to manage together.

The main advantages of the right time tracking software in practice:

• Fewer manual entries: Staff don’t have to keep re-entering the same hours across multiple systems.
• Faster approvals: Managers can review time during the pay period, not after payroll is already due.
• Better payroll preparation: Approved time can support cleaner wage calculations, overtime checks, and pay runs.
• Stronger reporting: Time by project, role, or location can give teams a better view of labour costs.
• Easier scaling: The process tends to hold up better when more employees, approvers, and workflows are involved.

There’s also a reporting angle many teams miss. Service Canada uses insurable hours on a Record of Employment, so accurate time records can matter when employment changes happen.

Time tracking tips and best practices

The right process isn’t complicated. It usually works best when everyone knows what to record, when to submit it, and who approves it.

How to make the time tracking process easier to manage:

1. Track time in real time: Logging hours as work happens is usually more reliable than reconstructing a week from memory.
2. Standardize the rules: Decide how your team will handle breaks, travel time, overtime, paid time off, and edits.
3. Set approval deadlines: Clear cutoffs can help managers review time before payroll gets rushed.
4. Connect time to payroll: The less copying and pasting involved, the fewer chances there are for mistakes.
5. Review trends, not just totals: Look at reports by project, shift, or location to spot over-servicing, bottlenecks, or staffing patterns.
6. Keep the process simple: If tracking takes too long, people are less likely to do it consistently.

The process can get more complicated when teams aren’t all in one place. Selecting the best employee time tracking software for your setup can help you manage the extra approval steps that often come with remote and hybrid work.

Free time tracking tools to save you time

Not every team needs software right away. Sometimes, the practical first step is a template, calculator, or planning tool that helps create better habits.

What free tools can help you get started:

• Time card calculator: A time card calculator can help you total hours, breaks, and overtime over a pay period.
• Bi-weekly timesheets: Bi-weekly timesheets can work well for a 14-day payroll cycle and manual approval process.
• Time blocking: Time blocking is useful when the goal is better planning, more focus time, and less back-and-forth between tasks.

These tools are most helpful when you need a simple starting point. When more people, shifts, and pay periods are involved in the process, a manual method may take too much time.

How Intuit QuickBooks supports time tracking

Intuit QuickBooks fits best when time data needs to do more than sit in a spreadsheet. 

With Intuit QuickBooks, you can connect daily hour tracking to approvals, payroll, scheduling, and reporting in one workflow. That matters because most growing teams need a process that holds together when more people, projects, and pay periods enter the picture.

How Intuit QuickBooks can help you connect hours, approvals, and payroll:

• Mobile clock-ins: Records time from desktop or mobile and keeps entries closer to real time.
• Scheduling tools: Creates and shares schedules by job, shift, or task.
• Project tracking: Tracks time by client, project, or task to support job costing, estimates, or billable work.
• Payroll connection: Moves approved hours into payroll with fewer manual handoffs.
• Custom reports: Analyzes timesheets, wage reports, and project profitability in more detail.

These features, working together, can make time tracking a more useful part of payroll, labour reporting, and day-to-day planning.

Start tracking time with Intuit QuickBooks

As teams add shifts or locations, time tracking can affect payroll, staffing, and labour costs when manual methods take too long or become harder to manage. Intuit QuickBooks accounting software can keep hours, approvals, payroll, and reporting together, reducing manual steps.

If you want to see the real-world benefits of moving away from manual timesheets, explore how a time tracking system like QuickBooks Time supports time tracking, payroll, reporting, and day-to-day planning in one place.