Thank you for providing such thorough details about your concern, @mmplus. It would be my pleasure to give you the closure you need.
Yes, you're right. You need to run payroll and create paychecks for the labor costs to affect or show in your job's P&L report.
Time entries are not recorded in costing reports since they are non-posting transactions. As a result, you will need to use a payroll item that is associated with the timesheet and use it in a paycheck.
That said, I would recommend activating a manual payroll in QuickBooks Desktop. For more information, you can make use of this resource: Set up manual payroll without a subscription in QuickBooks Desktop.
Furthermore, I've got you an article to help set up job costs and track your payroll expenses: Set up and track payroll expenses by job in QuickBooks Desktop.
Don't hesitate to get back to this thread if you have more queries about the labor cost in QuickBooks. I'll be happy to help you again.
