Time Entry for Owners/Members

Hi there, @MelissaB.

It's good to have in the Community today. Allow me to provide some insights about tracking time entries for owners/members in QuickBooks Online. 

Your set up will depend on the form you are going to submit at the end of the year. If you will submit the W2 form, then you'll be tagged as an employee. However, if you are going to file a 1099 form then you'll consider yourself as a vendor. To ensure that your books will be accurate It'd be best to reach out to your accountant for further assistance. 

Also here are some helpful articles that will guide in tracking employees hours as well as adding a vendor in QuickBooks Online:

• How to turn on and set up time tracking.
• Vendors overview.
• Set up a 1099 vendor and print forms.
• Add an employee.

These resources should get you on the right track.

Please let me know if you have any other questions about tracking time entries for owners/members in QuickBooks Online. I'm always here to lend a helping hand. Have a good one!

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@MelissaB wrote:

Looking for feedback from the community surrounding a multi-member LLC (3 owners) that are performing work and therefore would like to track hours worked. The goal of the initial tracking is to assist with measuring how accurately we are estimating jobs. 

 

Given we are owners/members - not employees - would trying to track our time in the timesheets module in QB cause reporting or systematic issues when it comes to end of year financials? (a/k/a - we do not want to negatively impact any financial statements to show we have employees, as we do not. We are owner/members looking to track time). 

 

Lastly, why do some of the posts recommend setting yourself up as a vendor when you are an owner of a company? Then other posts advise against it. 

 

 

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in QBO, intuit decided that time tracking is only used for either employees, or vendors. As a result, it you want to use time tracking, you have to set up the members as vendors. The prohibition you read about is setting up a member as a vendor to pay them something for some reason - just not the way to do it

when you set up time tracking be sure to set the hourly rate to zero, then if you want and if you have billable expenses turned on you can move time to an invoice - though it will appear as a zero amount so you might consider a work around rather than moving time to the customer invoice.

Create another invoice for the customer, set the invoice number the same as the one you sent to the customer and add a -T (for time) to the invoice number, then move the time entries to that invoice, it will still be a zero dollar invoice but the customer will not see it

On a related topic, can the following be applied to a sole proprietorship, where the owner and one employee complete construction projects?  Everything I've read says no, but if there is any accounting guidance that you can point me to that allows this, I would really appreciate it!

"Your set up will depend on the form you are going to submit at the end of the year. If you will submit the W2 form, then you'll be tagged as an employee. However, if you are going to file a 1099 form then you'll consider yourself as a vendor. "

The best option I have found is to enter a zero dollar check into QBO Plus so that the item cost shows on project reports, but that there is no expense recorded.

That is the problem with QBO. It assumes the owner is one sitting around making decisions and never out there doing the work with the employees. Nonetheless, that is exactly what many contractors in the home improvement industry do. I am already paying a lot for the QB subscription. I don't want to pay for another app. If the program can't tailor itself to my type of operation without some awkward workarounds, then maybe Intuit should produce a less expensive base program and then we can supplement that with an app tailored for our situation.I don't use half the features of QB advanced, but I need it because I track expenses by projects.