How to turn on billable time by default?

Hello mldowdell,

Welcome to Community!  I would be glad to assist you with setting billable time as default, so you're able to track and invoice your time, to ensure your billable expenses remain accurate and organized!

Here's how to turn on the billable time setting:

1. Open your Settings ⚙ and choose Account and settings

2. Select the Time tab

3. Click on the Edit ✎, in the Timesheet section

4. Turn on Allow time to be billable 

Note; If you want users to see their billable rate when entering their time, select Show billing rate to users entering time. You may want to opt out of this option, if you bill customers at a different hourly rate than you pay your employees and subcontractors.

5. Hit Save, then Done.

To learn more about recording billable time by a single time activity, or weakly timesheet, click here.

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach back out.  We would be happy to help!

Hi, thanks for getting back to me. That option is already turned on (see attached image). Unfortunately that does not answer my question... How do I turn on billable hours by default when adding a time entry?

Hi mldowdell,

Thanks for getting back to me here.  Follow these steps to turn on billable time by default;

1. Open Reports

2. Enter Customer Contact List, in the Search field

3. In the URL, replace Cust (after token=) with EMP and press Enter to open the Employee Contact List report

4. Locate the employee and click on their name

5. Select the Billable by default checkbox

6. Hit Save.

I hope you find this helpful.  If you have additional questions, feel free to touch base with us again.  We're here to help!

Hi! This sounds really interesting, but after I put EMP in the URL and hit Enter as instructed, it doesn't update to an Employee list. The page refreshes, but simply remains on Customer Contact List. Are there missing instructions?

Hi there CTatM_Co,

Thanks for reaching out about your billable hours. QuickBooks Online is a great tool able to help you keep track of sales and expenses so you know the amount of profit for your company. I can point you in the right direction for assistance with activating billable hours.

For further assistance with making hours billable, I recommend reaching out to the QuickBooks Online support team outside of the Community. They'll be able to further assist you at making sure those hours are billable so they appear correctly in your books. You can reach them using these methods:

Schedule a Callback or start a Chat: click (?)Help in the upper right > type and enter "Contact support" into the QB Assistant > click Contact Us > explain your situation > click Let's Talk > choose Get a callback or Start a Chat.
Social Media: Facebook and X / Twitter

if you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.

This only works if the employee's time is a straight hourly rate instead of a rate established by the Service provided. 

I understand what the OP is asking and I am having issues trying to resolve the same problem. I have to manually toggle the "Billable (/hr)" switch every single time I enter my time on the "Add work details" window. I'm afraid I'll forget and then my time won't show up on the invoice.

I spend a lot of time at the end of the month going through each and every time entry just to make sure that toggle switch says "Billable!" There's gotta be a better way!

I wanted to clarify the process regarding the Billable (/hr) feature in QuickBooks Online (QBO), particularly when adding time in the Add Work Details window.

Currently, the system requires you to manually toggle the Billable (/hr) option each time you add work details. While we understand that an automatic toggle could streamline your workflow, the design intentionally allows for manual control. This ensures you can make specific decisions about which transactions to classify as billable, even if the overall billable hours setting is activated in your account.

At Intuit, we're committed to providing an exceptional experience for all QuickBooks users worldwide. While the feature you're looking for isn’t available at the moment, your feedback is important to us. I recommend sharing your request with our product engineers. They appreciate hearing from users like you, as it helps us improve the program’s features.

To submit feedback, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Gear icon at the top.
2. Select Feedback.
3. Enter your comments or product suggestions. 
4. Then select Next to submit feedback.

If you would like to understand the impact of applying billable rates on your profitability, you can visit this article: Pay rates, cost rates, and billable rates in QuickBooks Online.

If you need assistance running reports to assess your business standing, we're just a message away. You can easily get help by replying to this thread.