Reliable time tracking software for your team

Time tracking software is a digital tool that helps businesses record exactly when and where their employees are working. Instead of relying on outdated methods, your team can log their hours directly from their own devices. This completely replaces:

• Messy paper timesheets
• Manual punch cards
• Complicated, error-prone spreadsheets

The result is a real-time view of who is working, what jobs they're tackling, and exactly how much labour is costing the business.

Modern time tracking is designed to be simple for both you and your team. The daily process looks like this:

• Clock in: Employees open the app on their phone, tablet, or computer and select a button to start their shift.
• Track tasks: Throughout the day, they can switch their tracked time between different tasks or projects.
• Clock out: When the shift is done, they select the button again.

Behind the scenes, the software automatically totals those hours, calculates potential overtime, and routes the digital timesheet to a manager for easy approval.

The biggest benefit of time tracking is taking the guesswork out of your labour costs and payroll. Top features that drive these benefits include:

• Simple clock in and out: Makes it easy for staff to track time accurately from any device.
• GPS location tracking: Shows you exactly where fieldworkers are when they clock in.
• Shift scheduling: Lets you build, share, and adjust team schedules in minutes.
• Real-time reporting: Gives you instant visibility into job profitability and overtime risks.

Yes, it can help. Keeping accurate digital records is one of the best ways to protect your business. Time tracking software can automatically calculate rules set by Canadian labour laws, including:

• Overtime pay thresholds
• Statutory holiday entitlements
• Mandatory break times

Additionally, a digital, unalterable log of all hours worked makes it much easier to defend your business in the event of a labour dispute or an audit by the CRA.

Manual data entry is the number one cause of costly administrative errors. Time tracking software solves this in two distinct ways:

• Error-free payroll: Approved timesheets sync directly to your payroll system, so you never accidentally overpay an employee due to a typo.
• Accurate invoicing: The software tracks every billable minute spent on a client's project, and those exact hours are pulled directly onto an invoice, so you never underbill for your team's work.

Pricing typically depends on the size of your team and the features you need. Most platforms split their pricing into two parts:

• A flat monthly subscription fee for the software itself
• A small per-user fee for every employee you add

See the QuickBooks pricing page for current rates and a side-by-side plan comparison.

Yes. QuickBooks Time offers flexibility for however your team prefers to work. Employees working remotely or in the field can manage their shifts and track time on the go. It syncs in real time, so your data is always up to date regardless of which device your team uses.

Yes. QuickBooks Time is built to work directly with QuickBooks Online accounting software. When the two are connected:

• Employee data and customer lists sync automatically
• Job codes match up between systems
• Approved timesheets flow instantly into your accounting dashboard, eliminating double data entry

This makes QuickBooks Time the natural choice if you already use QuickBooks Online to manage your books.

Yes. Beyond its native connection to QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Payroll, QuickBooks Time has a wide range of integrations with third-party business applications. You can sync your labour data with:

• Project management tools: Track time directly against specific project phases or tasks.
• HR platforms: Streamline employee onboarding and manage time-off requests.
• Expense tracking apps: Keep reimbursements and billable hours in one place.
• Alternative payroll providers: Export approved timesheets into your preferred payroll system.

Yes. Combining QuickBooks Time with QuickBooks Payroll is the fastest way to pay your team accurately. Once a manager approves a digital timesheet, those exact hours flow directly into the next payroll run, including calculated overtime, regular hours, and paid time off. What used to take hours of manual calculation can be completed in a few steps.

QuickBooks Time does more than log hours, it connects scheduling, time tracking, payroll, and invoicing into a single workflow. Instead of managing separate apps that don't talk to each other, you get:

• One platform for scheduling, tracking, approving, and paying your team
• Native integration with QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Payroll
• A mobile app your team can use from anywhere
• Reporting that shows real labour costs against jobs and projects in real time

It's built for Canadian small businesses that want to stop spending time on admin and start using that time on the work that actually grows the business.

Yes. QuickBooks Time is designed to scale alongside your business as your headcount increases. As you grow, basic spreadsheets become a significant administrative bottleneck. QuickBooks Time handles that growth by letting you:

• Add new team members in seconds
• Assign custom user roles and permissions for managers
• Track job costing across larger, more complex projects
• Generate reports that give leadership visibility into labour costs without manual compilation

It's a common concern, but time tracking and micromanagement are fundamentally different things. Micromanagement is about controlling how employees work. Time tracking is about accurately recording how many hours were worked—primarily for payroll, client billing, and labour cost visibility.

For most employees, the day-to-day experience is simply selecting a button to start and stop their shift. They're not being monitored beyond that. The businesses that see the smoothest adoption are typically the ones that communicate the purpose clearly upfront: accurate pay, correct invoices, and fair overtime tracking. When employees understand the why, time tracking tends to be a non-issue.

Yes. QuickBooks Time is well suited to freelancers and consultants who need to track billable hours accurately across multiple clients or projects. Here's how it works for client-based work:

• Start a timer when you begin work on a client project—or log time manually after the fact
• Assign hours to specific clients, projects, or tasks
• When it's time to invoice, billable hours pull directly into a QuickBooks invoice
• Run reports to see exactly how much time each client is taking and whether your rates are working

For consultants juggling multiple clients, this level of detail protects your revenue and builds client trust.

Yes. QuickBooks Time includes GPS-based features designed specifically for businesses with employees working in the field, such as construction crews, trades, delivery drivers, landscapers, and similar industries. Key features for field-based teams include:

• GPS clock-in: Employees clock in from their phone and their location is recorded, giving you confirmation they're on-site.
• Geofencing: Set a job site boundary and automatically prompt employees to clock in or out when they enter or leave.
• Crew functionality: A crew lead can clock in an entire team at once, useful when workers don't all have individual smartphones.
• Mobile app: Works on iOS and Android, so employees don't need a computer to track their time.

For construction and trades businesses in particular, this removes the end-of-week scramble to reconstruct hours from memory.

Yes. QuickBooks Time is built for distributed teams. Employees don't need to be in the same location (or even the same time zone) for time tracking to work. For remote team management, QuickBooks Time lets you:

• See who is currently clocked in and what they're working on, in real time
• Review and approve timesheets digitally
• Set up shift schedules that employees can view and manage from their own devices
• Run labour cost reports across your whole team regardless of where they're based

All data syncs to your QuickBooks Online dashboard automatically, so managing a remote team requires no more admin overhead than managing an in-office one.

Yes. QuickBooks Time lets you assign tracked hours to specific customers, jobs, or projects—making it useful for both job costing and client billing. This is particularly valuable if you:

• Run multiple projects simultaneously
• Bill clients by the hour and need a clean, accurate record to back up your invoices
• Want to track whether a job came in on budget by comparing estimated versus actual hours

When connected to QuickBooks Online, job-costed hours feed directly into your project profitability reports, giving you a clear picture of which clients and projects are actually worth your time.

Yes. QuickBooks Time includes built-in shift scheduling tools, making it a strong fit for restaurants, retail stores, healthcare clinics, and any business that manages rotating or variable schedules. With shift scheduling in QuickBooks Time, you can:

• Build weekly schedules and publish them so employees can view their shifts from their phone
• Drag and drop shifts to reassign or cover absences quickly
• Set alerts when an employee is approaching overtime before it happens
• Allow employees to notify you of availability or request shift swaps

Scheduling and time tracking in the same platform means your labour costs are always accurate.

QuickBooks Time is one of several time tracking tools used by Canadian small businesses. Here's how it stacks up against common alternatives:

• QuickBooks Time vs. Toggl Track: Toggl is popular with freelancers for its simplicity; QuickBooks Time has more depth for teams, with scheduling, GPS, crew management, and native payroll integration.
• QuickBooks Time vs. Harvest: Harvest is well suited for invoicing and project billing; QuickBooks Time has a stronger advantage when you're already using QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Payroll.
• QuickBooks Time vs. Clockify: Clockify offers a free tier for basic tracking; QuickBooks Time costs more but includes scheduling, GPS, and direct sync with QuickBooks that Clockify can't replicate natively.

The clearest reason to choose QuickBooks Time is if you're already in the QuickBooks ecosystem. The integration between time tracking, payroll, and invoicing is seamless in a way no third-party app can match.

Yes. You can try QuickBooks Time free for 30 days with full access to the features. The trial lets you set up your team, run a real schedule, approve timesheets, and see how time tracking connects to QuickBooks Payroll and your invoicing before you commit. Visit the QuickBooks pricing page to start your trial and compare plan options.