Timesheet setup: QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Time

Learn how to set up  timesheets in QuickBooks Online.

Want to use QuickBooks Online Payroll or QuickBooks Time to track hours worked for employees? You can use QuickBooks basic time tracking, but we recommend using QuickBooks Time for a fuller experience. QuickBooks Time can be used with any of our QuickBooks Online Payroll products and is built into QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and QuickBooks Elite Payroll. Use the links below to learn about setting your employees up with Time tracking.

• Get started
• Invite users to access timesheets
• Enter and approve timesheets
• Print timesheets
• Assign a class to your employees
• Troubleshooting: Save for Later isn't saving

Get started

Here are things you should decide before time is entered. If you're using QuickBooks Time and need information on setting up your rates for your employees and contractor services, see below:

1. Decide who fills out time sheets. (QuickBooks Time allows your employees to do this, so you don't have to.)
   • Users who can fill out everyone's time sheet.
   • Users who can only fill out their own time sheet.
   • A mixture of the two.
2. If you bill customers for time, decide how to structure your hourly rates.
   • Default rates for employees or subcontractors.
   • Rates based on services.
   • A combination of the two.

Invite users to access timesheets

Using QuickBooks Time (QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and QuickBooks Online Payroll Elite)

1. Go to Payroll and select Employees (Take me there).
2. Select the employee you want to invite.
3. Select Edit ✎ next to Pay.
4. In the Personal info section, add your employee's email address and select Invite this employee to track and record hours they work. Note that this is only available if you are using QuickBooks Time.
5. Select Done. Your employee receives the invitation through email.

Need to resend QuickBooks Time invite? You can go back to this screen, then select Resend.

Using QuickBooks Weekly Time Sheets

There are 2 ways to let someone fill out a timesheet:

• Let the user fill out everyone's timesheets.
• Let the user only fill out their own timesheet.

There are two ways to restrict a user to only give them access to their own time sheet.

• If the user is an ordinary user (without access to All or Customer & Sales access), you can set their access rights to only access their own time sheet.
• You can create a unique profile for the user as a Time Tracking Only user. The user only has access to his or her own time sheets. When the user logs in, they'll see a special version of QuickBooks Online Plus that shows time sheets for that user, and no other features.

Create a Time Tracking Only user

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Manage Users.
2. Select New.
3. Select Time Tracking Only user.
4. Enter the user's email address. They will get an invite that they'll need to accept. (The Time Tracking Only user will be prompted to create an Intuit account if they don't have one.)
5. Once the user has accepted the invite, they can log in QuickBooks Online to perform time tracking.

If the Time Tracking Only user can't see the invite email, please follow the steps above and resend it. Always remember to check junk and spam folders to see if filter settings have blocked emails.

Enter and approve timesheets

Using QuickBooks Time (QuickBooks Online Payroll Premium and QuickBooks Online Payroll Elite)

1. Select + New.
2. Select Approve Time.
3. Choose a date range and select the employee's name to expand their details.
4. Select the timesheet row to display the timesheet details.
5. Make your edits, then Save.
6. Reapprove the time and select Accept. The updated timesheets will be sent back into the Weekly timesheets.

Using QuickBooks Weekly Time Sheets

Either you or your employee fills out a Weekly Time Sheet or a Single Activity Time Sheet. 

To enter hours in the time sheets:

1. Select + New.
2. In the Employees section, select Single time activity or Weekly timesheet.
3. Select the employee's name and check if the pay period is correct.
4. Enter the hours.
5. Select Save and close.

When you run payroll, your employee's total pay hours are automatically calculated.

Print timesheets

1. Go to Reports.
2. Select the Time activities by employee detail report. Choose the correct date range.
3. Select Customize and change columns to add or remove columns.
4. Choose a start time, end time and break time.
5. Select Run report.
6. Select Print.

Assign a class to your employees

Note: This feature is only available in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced.

You can only assign one default class per employee. However, when recording a timesheet for that employee in QuickBooks Time and selecting a class, those class selections currently only appear in QuickBooks Time reports.

Enable and set up your classes

1. Go to Settings ⚙, then Advanced.
2. Select Edit ✎ next to Categories, then enable Classes.
3. Define how you want classes to appear on transactions.
4. Go to Settings ⚙, then select All Lists to set up classes.
5. Select Classes and Add New classes as needed.

Assign classes to your employees

1. Go to Settings ⚙ and select Payroll Settings.
2. Select Edit next to Accounting preferences.
3. Select ✎  next to Class Tracking.
4. Make your selection of class tracking preference.
5. Select the class you want to assign each employee from the small arrow ▼.
6. Once every employee is assigned a class, select Continue, then select Save.
7. Our employee’s classes will now appear on reports after each payroll run.

Note: These classes won't show up on the employee's pay stub.

Troubleshooting: Save for Later isn't saving

When you have timesheets selected to Copy hours from employee time sheets under Setup, it will appear as though Save for Later is not working because there are 0.00 in Time Sheets.

You can instead select I'll enter hours when I create paycheques. Save for Later which will save what you enter in Run Payroll.