QuickBooks Online · Feature
QuickBooks Online time tracking: billable hours to invoices & payroll.
Time tracking is how QuickBooks Online captures hours and turns them into money. Basic time entry is built in: you record hours against a customer, project, and service item, mark them billable, and pull them onto an invoice. The fuller tool is QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets), an add-on that layers on scheduling, GPS, and approvals. Recorded hours can flow three ways — onto invoices for billable work, into projects for profitability, and into payroll for hourly staff. Below: what the feature does, how to use it well, and when a ProAdvisor should set up the time→invoice→project→payroll workflow for you. Independent firm, not affiliated with Intuit Inc.
QuickBooks Online time tracking records hours and routes them to where they matter. Basic time entry is built into QuickBooks Online — you log time against the right customer, project, and service item, and mark it billable so it can be added to an invoice. QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) is the fuller, separate add-on: it brings employee scheduling, GPS and mobile clock-in, and approval workflows on top of basic entry. Recorded time can flow in three directions: onto invoices as billable hours, into projects so you see real labor cost and margin, and into payroll so hourly staff are paid from the same hours. The discipline that makes it work is capturing each entry against the correct customer/project/service item, marking billable accurately, and reviewing time before it’s invoiced or paid — a wrong category at entry follows the hours all the way through.
Reference maintained by the Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor team at TechBrot Inc., an independent firm — not Intuit, and not Intuit’s official software support. Not affiliated with Intuit Inc.
QuickBooks Online time tracking, in five questions.
What does QuickBooks Online time tracking do?
It captures hours worked and turns them into money. You record time against a customer, project, and service item, mark it billable, and the hours can flow onto an invoice for billable work, into a project for profitability, and into payroll for hourly staff. Basic time entry is built into QuickBooks Online; QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) is the fuller add-on.
Is time tracking built into QuickBooks Online?
Basic time entry is — you can record hours against a customer, project, and service item and mark them billable without anything extra. The fuller tool is QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets), a separate add-on that layers on employee scheduling, GPS and mobile clock-in, and approval workflows. If you simply need to bill your own hours, built-in entry usually does; if you have hourly field crews or need approvals, that’s the add-on.
How do tracked hours get onto an invoice in QuickBooks Online?
When you record time, you tag it to a customer and a service item and mark it billable. The next time you create an invoice for that customer, QuickBooks offers the unbilled billable time so you can add it to the invoice at the right rate. The discipline that makes this work is marking time billable accurately at entry and reviewing it before invoicing — un-marked or mis-tagged time never reaches the invoice.
Does QuickBooks Online time tracking connect to payroll?
Yes — if you run QuickBooks payroll, recorded hours for hourly employees can feed payroll so staff are paid from the same time data, rather than re-keying hours. The same entries can also be tagged to projects so you see real labor cost against revenue. One accurate hour can serve invoicing, project costing, and payroll at once, which is the point of capturing it correctly the first time.
Do I need an accountant to set up time tracking in QuickBooks Online?
Not for simple billable-hour entry — many owners record their own time and add it to invoices. A Certified ProAdvisor earns their fee wiring the full time→invoice→project→payroll workflow, deciding whether built-in entry or QuickBooks Time fits, and untangling hours that were tracked against the wrong customers or never marked billable. We configure it inside your own QuickBooks file; an independent firm can’t touch your Intuit account or login.
What QuickBooks Online time tracking is, plainly.
Time tracking is the part of QuickBooks Online that captures hours worked and turns them into money — billed to customers, costed against projects, or paid through payroll. There are two levels to it, and it’s worth being precise about which is which. Basic time entry is built into QuickBooks Online: you record a block of time against a customer, a project, and a service item, and you can mark it billable. That’s enough for many service firms that simply need billable hours to land on invoices.
The fuller tool is QuickBooks Time, formerly TSheets — a separate add-on that sits on top of QuickBooks Online. It adds employee scheduling, mobile and GPS clock-in for crews on the move, and approval workflows so a manager signs off on hours before they post. If you have hourly staff in the field, shift scheduling, or a need to approve timesheets, that’s the add-on; if you just need to bill your own time, the built-in entry usually does.
Either way, recorded time can flow three directions. Marked billable, it pulls onto an invoice so the customer is charged for the hours. Tagged to a project, it feeds project profitability so you see labor cost against revenue. Connected to payroll, the same hours pay hourly employees. We describe QuickBooks Online’s behavior as it actually works — basic entry built in, QuickBooks Time as the add-on — and don’t claim capabilities a given tier doesn’t have.
What QuickBooks Online time tracking does.
The moving parts of the feature, in the order you meet them — from a recorded hour through to invoices, projects, and payroll.
Part 01 · Basic time entry is built into QuickBooks Online
You can record hours directly in QuickBooks Online without any add-on — a time entry captures who did the work, how long, and what it was for. The point is to get hours into the system as data you can act on rather than a note on paper. For many service firms that just need billable hours on invoices, built-in entry is the whole feature.
Part 02 · QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) is the fuller add-on
QuickBooks Time is a separate add-on that sits on top of QuickBooks Online and adds employee scheduling, GPS and mobile clock-in, and approval workflows where a manager signs off on hours before they post. It’s the right tool for hourly field crews, shift scheduling, or anywhere timesheets need approval — not something you need if you simply bill your own time.
Part 03 · Each entry maps to a customer, project, and service item
A time entry is only useful if it’s tagged correctly — to the right customer, the right project, and the right service item, with the right billable flag. That tagging is what lets the same hour route to an invoice, a project, or payroll afterward. A wrong tag at entry follows the hours all the way through, so this is where accuracy is won or lost.
Part 04 · Billable hours flow onto invoices
Time marked billable becomes unbilled billable time against the customer. When you invoice that customer, QuickBooks offers the unbilled time so you can add it at the correct rate — the hours become a line on the invoice rather than something you re-type. This is how tracked time turns directly into revenue, and why the billable flag has to be right.
Part 05 · Hours feed projects and payroll
Tagged to a project, time contributes to project profitability so you see labor cost against revenue and know whether the job made money. Connected to payroll, recorded hours pay hourly employees from the same data instead of a separate timesheet. One accurate entry can serve invoicing, project costing, and payroll at once — the reason to capture it cleanly.
The limit · What entry alone does not do: review itself
Time tracking records hours; it doesn’t judge whether they’re right. An entry tagged to the wrong customer, left un-billable, or duplicated will flow downstream exactly as entered — onto the wrong invoice, the wrong project, the wrong paycheck. Reviewing time before it’s invoiced or paid is the separate control that keeps the workflow honest. Treat capture as fast data entry and review as the safeguard.
How to use time tracking well.
Six steps, in order. The first set up the workflow; the rest are the habits that keep tracked hours accurate all the way to the invoice and the paycheck.
Decide built-in entry or QuickBooks Time
Start by matching the tool to the work. If you mainly need to bill your own hours, the built-in time entry in QuickBooks Online is enough. If you have hourly staff in the field, shift scheduling, or a need to approve timesheets before they post, that’s where the QuickBooks Time add-on earns its cost. Choosing deliberately avoids paying for capability you won’t use — or outgrowing the basics mid-job.
Set up service items and projects first
Time only routes correctly if there’s something to route it to. Before tracking, set up the service items time will bill against and the projects it will cost to, with the right rates. Getting this structure right up front means every hour you record afterward lands in the correct place, instead of being re-tagged later when the mappings finally get built.
Capture time against the right customer, project, and service item
When you record an hour, tag it to the correct customer, project, and service item every time — this is the single habit that makes everything downstream work. Time logged with no customer, the wrong project, or a vague item still records, but it won’t bill cleanly or cost a project correctly. Accuracy at the point of entry is far cheaper than untangling it at invoice time.
Mark billable accurately
Mark time billable only when it should be charged to the customer, and leave internal or non-billable work unmarked. The billable flag is what surfaces hours for invoicing — mark non-billable time as billable and you’ll over-bill; forget to mark billable work and it never reaches an invoice. Setting the flag honestly at entry is what makes the invoice trustworthy later.
Review time before invoicing or paying
Before you invoice a customer or run payroll, review the time entries feeding them. Check that hours are tagged to the right customer and project, that billable flags are correct, and that nothing is duplicated or missing. This review is the control that catches mistakes while they’re cheap — an error caught here is a quick edit; the same error invoiced or paid is a credit memo or a payroll correction.
Connect hours to payroll for hourly staff
If you run QuickBooks payroll, wire recorded hours through to it so hourly employees are paid from the same time data instead of a re-keyed timesheet. Reviewing approved hours before they hit payroll keeps pay accurate and gives you one consistent record of time across billing, projects, and pay — which is the whole reason to track time in QuickBooks rather than a spreadsheet.
Want hours flowing cleanly to invoices, projects, and payroll?
A Certified ProAdvisor reviews the file free, then sets up time entry, maps hours to the right customers, projects, and service items, and connects them to invoicing and payroll — a focused setup is typically a $1,200–$3,000 fixed-fee scope; cleanup runs $1,500–$15,000+ if hours have been mis-tracked. Independent firm.
When a ProAdvisor should help.
Wiring the full time-to-invoice-to-project-to-payroll workflow
Getting one accurate hour to serve billing, project costing, and payroll at once takes a deliberate setup — service items, projects, billable rules, and the payroll connection all aligned. A ProAdvisor builds that workflow so the same time data flows cleanly to every destination, instead of being captured once and re-entered three times or routed to the wrong place.
Choosing and configuring QuickBooks Time
Deciding whether built-in entry is enough or QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) is warranted — and if so, setting up scheduling, mobile and GPS clock-in, and approval workflows for a crew — is judgment work. A ProAdvisor matches the tool to how your team actually works and configures it so hours come in clean and approved, rather than bolting on an add-on nobody uses correctly.
When tracked hours have gone wrong
If time has been logged against the wrong customers, never marked billable, or double-entered, the hours have already flowed to invoices, projects, and payroll incorrectly. That’s a file review and a fixed-fee cleanup — correcting the mappings and the downstream effects, then setting the workflow up properly so it stays clean. Untangling mis-tracked time without creating new errors is real cleanup work.
A Certified ProAdvisor configures time tracking inside your own books.
Recording an hour is easy; making that hour flow correctly to an invoice, a project, and a paycheck is the real work. A Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor sets up the service items and projects time will map to, decides whether built-in entry is enough or QuickBooks Time is warranted, and wires the billable-time-to-invoice and hours-to-payroll connections so the same hour isn’t lost or double-counted. Where time has been tracked against the wrong customers or never marked billable, we untangle it, correct the mappings, and bring the workflow back into line — against a written scope, inside your own QuickBooks Online file. Independent firm — not Intuit, and not Intuit’s software support; an Intuit account, subscription, or billing matter stays with Intuit.
Free
file review first — we look before we scope
$1,200–$3,000
typical fixed-fee scope to set up the time-tracking workflow
Independent
Certified ProAdvisor firm — not Intuit, not Intuit’s software support
What people ask about QuickBooks Online time tracking.
Is this Intuit’s official QuickBooks support?
How does time tracking work in QuickBooks Online?
What is the difference between built-in time entry and QuickBooks Time?
Does time tracking automatically bill my customers?
Can tracked hours flow into payroll?
My time entries are tagged to the wrong customers — is that covered here?
Can you set up time tracking in my QuickBooks Online file?
Want hours flowing cleanly to invoices, projects, and payroll?
We set up the time tracking workflow inside your own QuickBooks file.
Mapping time to the right customers, projects, and service items, marking billable correctly, and connecting hours to invoicing and payroll is operational bookkeeping — the work an independent ProAdvisor firm does inside your books. Start with a free file review; a focused time-tracking setup is typically a $1,200–$3,000 fixed-fee scope, and if hours have been mis-tracked into a tangle, a full cleanup runs $1,500–$15,000+. Written scope before any work begins.