For many businesses, QuickBooks is the center of accounting, payroll, billing, and financial reporting. But when employee and contractor time is tracked outside of QuickBooks — in spreadsheets, emails, paper timesheets, or disconnected apps — the process can quickly become messy.
Hours have to be reviewed, corrected, categorized, approved, and then re-entered or imported into QuickBooks. This creates extra work for accounting teams and increases the risk of payroll mistakes, billing errors, missed billable hours, duplicate vendor bills, and inaccurate project costs.
That is why choosing the right time tracking software for QuickBooks users is so important. The best solution is not just a timer or a digital timesheet. It should help your team capture accurate time, organize it by project or customer, support approvals, prepare payroll, calculate overtime when needed, create invoices, generate vendor bills for contractors, and make the data easier to use inside QuickBooks.
Why QuickBooks Users Need Better Time Tracking
QuickBooks is powerful accounting software, but many businesses need more detailed time tracking before the data reaches QuickBooks.
For example, a business may need to know:
- Which customer or project the employee worked on
- Whether the time was billable or non-billable
- Which task, service item, class, department, grant, or contract the time belongs to
- Whether the time has been reviewed and approved
- Whether the hours should be used for payroll, invoicing, job costing, or reimbursement
- Whether overtime rules apply
- Whether contractor time should become a vendor bill
- Whether changes were made after submission
Without a structured time tracking system, accounting teams often spend hours cleaning up timesheets before they can run payroll, invoice clients, pay contractors, or review project profitability.
Common Problems with Basic Time Tracking Apps
Many time tracking apps are designed for simple use cases. They may work well for freelancers or very small teams, but they can fall short when a business needs more control.
1. Time is not categorized correctly
Employees may track hours, but the time is not tied to the correct customer, project, task, class, service item, or billing status. This makes it difficult to use the data in QuickBooks without manual corrections.
2. Managers cannot properly approve time
If employees submit time without a proper approval workflow, accounting teams may receive incomplete or incorrect timesheets. This can delay payroll, invoicing, and contractor payments.
3. Billable and non-billable time gets mixed together
Businesses that invoice clients need a clear way to separate billable work from internal, administrative, or overhead time.
4. Project costs are hard to track
If labor hours are not tied to projects, tasks, customers, grants, or contracts, it becomes difficult to understand whether a project is profitable.
5. Reports are too limited
Some time tracking tools provide basic hour totals but do not give enough detail for accounting, compliance, project management, payroll, or client billing.
6. Data still needs manual cleanup before QuickBooks
The biggest frustration for many QuickBooks users is that even after using a time tracking app, someone still has to fix the data before it can be used.
7. Contractor payments are handled separately
Many businesses manage employee payroll and contractor payments as separate manual processes. Contractor hours may have to be reviewed, converted into payable amounts, and then manually entered into QuickBooks as vendor bills.
8. Invoicing takes too long inside QuickBooks
For some businesses, QuickBooks invoicing becomes time-consuming because invoices require detailed project, task, contract, labor category, expense, or time-entry information. When billing is complex, creating invoices manually in QuickBooks can take too much time.
What to Look for in Time Tracking Software for QuickBooks
When choosing time tracking software for QuickBooks, look beyond basic clock-in and clock-out features. The right system should support your accounting workflow from time entry to approval, invoicing, payroll, vendor bills, and reporting.
1. Project-Based Time Tracking
If your business tracks work by customer, job, project, grant, contract, or service line, your time tracking software should support project-based timesheets.
Employees and contractors should be able to enter time against the correct project and task. Managers and administrators should be able to review where time is going before it is used for payroll, billing, vendor bills, or reporting.
This is especially important for:
- Consulting firms
- Government contractors
- Nonprofit organizations
- Professional services firms
- Engineering and architecture firms
- Construction and field service businesses
- Agencies
- Project-based organizations
2. Billable and Non-Billable Time Tracking
For businesses that invoice clients, tracking billable and non-billable hours is essential.
Your time tracking system should make it easy to identify:
- Client billable hours
- Internal administrative time
- Overhead time
- Non-billable project work
- Time off
- Training or meeting time
- Contractor billable time
- Non-billable support or management time
This helps businesses invoice accurately and understand how employee and contractor time is being used.
3. Approval Workflows
A good time tracking system should allow managers or project approvers to review time before it is finalized.
Approval workflows help ensure that:
- Employees submit complete timesheets
- Contractors submit approved billable time
- Project managers verify time against the correct project
- Payroll teams receive reviewed hours
- Billing teams invoice only approved work
- Vendor bills are created from approved contractor time
- Corrections are handled before data moves into accounting
This is especially useful for businesses with multiple approvers, departments, projects, grants, contracts, or locations.
4. QuickBooks Integration for Invoicing, Payroll, and Vendor Bills
For QuickBooks users, integration is one of the most important features of a time tracking system.
The goal is not just to collect hours. The goal is to turn approved time into useful accounting transactions without re-entering the same information again and again.
With the right time tracking software, approved time can be used to support:
- Customer invoices
- Employee payroll
- Overtime calculations
- Contractor payments
- Vendor bills
- Project costing
- Job profitability reports
- Billing backup reports
- Compliance and audit reports
This is where a more advanced time tracking system can make a major difference.
Using Time Tracking Data to Create Invoices in QuickBooks
For businesses that bill clients based on time, approved timesheets can be used to create invoices in QuickBooks.
Instead of manually reviewing timesheets, calculating billable hours, copying descriptions, checking rates, and entering invoice lines by hand, your time tracking software should help organize the billing data before it reaches QuickBooks.
This can include:
- Customer or client
- Project or job
- Task or service item
- Employee or consultant
- Billable hours
- Billing rate
- Time entry descriptions
- Date of work
- Class, department, grant, or contract
- Approved status
When time is captured correctly from the beginning, invoicing becomes faster and more accurate. It also reduces the risk of missing billable hours or billing the wrong customer, project, task, or service item.
For QuickBooks users, this can save a significant amount of administrative time every billing cycle.
Using Time Tracking Data for Payroll and Overtime
Time tracking software can also help prepare hours for payroll.
For many businesses, payroll is not just a matter of total hours. They may need to separate:
- Regular hours
- Overtime hours
- Double-time hours
- Paid time off
- Holiday time
- Sick time
- Billable versus non-billable labor
- Hours by department, class, project, or location
If overtime rules apply, approved timesheets can be used to calculate overtime before payroll is processed. This helps reduce payroll errors and makes it easier to review employee hours before they are sent to QuickBooks or another payroll system.
For companies with hourly employees, contractors, field teams, or project-based staff, this can be a major advantage. It gives payroll teams cleaner, reviewed data and reduces the need to manually calculate overtime from spreadsheets.
Automatically Converting Contractor Time into Vendor Bills
Many businesses use contractors, consultants, or vendors who submit time for payment. Managing contractor time manually can become time-consuming, especially when contractor hours need to be reviewed, approved, coded to projects, and then entered into QuickBooks as vendor bills.
With TimeRewards, contractor time can be converted into vendor bills automatically.
This helps businesses:
- Reduce manual vendor bill entry
- Pay contractors based on approved time
- Match contractor costs to the correct project or customer
- Improve job costing and profitability reporting
- Maintain better records for audits and internal review
- Avoid missed or duplicate contractor payments
- Save accounting time at the end of each billing or payroll cycle
This is especially useful for consulting firms, professional services companies, nonprofits, government contractors, and project-based organizations that use both employees and contractors.
Instead of treating contractor time as a separate manual process, TimeRewards helps bring contractor time into the same structured approval and accounting workflow.
When QuickBooks Invoicing Becomes Too Time-Consuming
QuickBooks is a powerful accounting platform, but some businesses have invoicing requirements that are too detailed or time-consuming to manage efficiently inside QuickBooks alone.
For example, your business may need to invoice by:
- Project
- Task
- Employee
- Labor category
- Contract
- Grant
- Billing rate
- Time period
- Class or department
- Expense category
- Detailed time descriptions
If your billing process requires too many manual adjustments in QuickBooks, it may be faster to generate invoices in TimeRewards and then send the completed invoices to QuickBooks.
This can be especially helpful when your invoices require detailed supporting information, custom formatting, project-level grouping, expense details, or complex billing rules.
By preparing invoices in TimeRewards first, your team can review the billing details, make corrections, generate the invoice, and then send the invoice to QuickBooks. This helps reduce manual work inside QuickBooks and gives your accounting team a cleaner process.
5. Detailed Reporting
Time tracking reports should do more than show total hours. Businesses often need detailed reports by:
- Employee
- Contractor
- Customer
- Project
- Task
- Class
- Department
- Pay period
- Billable status
- Approval status
- Time off category
- Grant or contract
- Labor category
- Vendor cost
- Invoice status
Detailed reporting helps with payroll review, client billing, contractor payments, project profitability, compliance, and management decisions.
6. Easy Employee and Contractor Experience
Even the most powerful time tracking system will fail if people do not use it correctly.
The best software should make it simple for employees and contractors to:
- Enter daily or weekly time
- Start and stop timers
- Track time by project and task
- Add notes or descriptions
- Submit timesheets
- Correct mistakes
- View approval status
- Access the system from anywhere
A simple user experience leads to better adoption and more accurate data.
7. Compliance and Audit Trail Support
Some businesses need more than basic time tracking. Government contractors, nonprofits, and organizations with grant or contract reporting requirements may need stronger controls.
Important compliance-related features may include:
- Timesheet approvals
- Employee certifications
- Change history
- Audit trails
- Labor distribution reports
- Project and grant-level tracking
- Separation of billable and non-billable time
- Historical reporting
- Contractor cost tracking
- Payroll and billing backup reports
If your business has DCAA, grant, nonprofit, or contract compliance requirements, your time tracking system should be designed to support those workflows.
Why This Matters for QuickBooks Users
For many QuickBooks users, the real problem is not time tracking itself. The real problem is what happens after time is submitted.
If approved hours still need to be cleaned up manually, copied into invoices, adjusted for overtime, separated for payroll, or entered as vendor bills, then the business is still losing time.
A strong QuickBooks time tracking solution should help turn approved time into accounting-ready data.
That means:
- Faster invoicing
- Cleaner payroll
- Better overtime handling
- Easier contractor payments
- More accurate project costing
- Less duplicate data entry
- Fewer billing and payroll mistakes
- Better reporting for management
- Better backup for audits, grants, and contracts
TimeRewards is designed to support this complete workflow, from employee and contractor time entry to approvals, reporting, invoicing, payroll preparation, vendor bills, and QuickBooks integration.
Why TimeRewards Is a Strong Choice for QuickBooks Users
TimeRewards is built for businesses that need more than simple time tracking. It helps organizations capture, approve, organize, and report employee and contractor time before that data is used for payroll, billing, project costing, vendor bills, or accounting.
For QuickBooks users, TimeRewards can help reduce manual cleanup by giving teams a structured way to track time by employee, contractor, project, task, class, billable status, approval status, and billing rules.
Key Benefits of TimeRewards for QuickBooks Users
Create Invoices from Approved Time
TimeRewards helps businesses use approved billable time to create invoices. This reduces the need to manually copy hours, descriptions, rates, projects, and service items into QuickBooks.
For businesses that invoice clients based on time and materials, this can save hours every billing cycle and reduce the risk of missing billable time.
Send Invoices to QuickBooks
If your invoicing process is complicated and takes too much time inside QuickBooks, TimeRewards can help you prepare invoices first and then send them to QuickBooks.
This is especially useful when invoices need detailed time descriptions, project grouping, contract-level billing, labor categories, expenses, or custom billing rules.
Prepare Payroll with Overtime
TimeRewards can help organize approved employee hours for payroll, including regular time, overtime, time off, holiday time, and other pay categories when needed.
This gives payroll teams cleaner data before payroll is processed and helps reduce manual overtime calculations.
Convert Contractor Time into Vendor Bills
TimeRewards can automatically convert approved contractor time into vendor bills. This helps businesses reduce manual entry, pay contractors accurately, and track contractor costs by project, customer, grant, or contract.
Project and Task-Based Time Tracking
TimeRewards allows employees and contractors to track time against the correct project, task, customer, or assignment. This helps businesses understand where labor is going and makes time data more useful for accounting and reporting.
Billable and Non-Billable Time
Employees and contractors can track billable and non-billable time, helping businesses invoice clients accurately and understand internal labor costs.
Approval Workflows
Managers and approvers can review timesheets before they are finalized. This helps reduce errors before time is used for payroll, billing, vendor bills, or reporting.
QuickBooks-Friendly Time Data
TimeRewards helps organize time data in a way that supports QuickBooks workflows. Instead of relying on spreadsheets or disconnected time entries, businesses can prepare cleaner, more structured time data for accounting use.
Detailed Reports
TimeRewards provides detailed reporting for payroll, billing, project tracking, labor distribution, compliance, vendor costs, and management review.
Support for Complex Organizations
TimeRewards is especially useful for businesses that need tracking by project, task, class, employee, contractor, department, grant, or contract.
Compliance-Focused Timekeeping
For organizations with stricter reporting needs, TimeRewards supports stronger timesheet controls, approvals, and audit-friendly reporting.
Time Tracking for QuickBooks: Simple vs. Advanced Needs
Not every business needs the same type of time tracking software.
A freelancer may only need a simple timer. A small business may need employee timesheets and payroll reports. A project-based company may need billable time, project costing, approvals, contractor vendor bills, and QuickBooks integration. A government contractor or nonprofit may also need labor distribution, audit trails, and compliance reporting.
Before choosing a time tracking system, ask these questions:
- Do we track time by customer, project, task, or grant?
- Do we need billable and non-billable time?
- Do managers need to approve timesheets?
- Do we need time data for payroll, billing, or both?
- Do we need to calculate overtime?
- Do we use contractors whose time needs to become vendor bills?
- Do we use QuickBooks classes, service items, or projects?
- Do we need detailed reports for clients, grants, or contracts?
- Is invoicing too complicated or time-consuming inside QuickBooks?
- Do we need an audit trail?
- Are spreadsheets creating extra work or risk?
If the answer to several of these questions is yes, a basic time tracker may not be enough.
Who Should Use TimeRewards with QuickBooks?
TimeRewards is a good fit for organizations that need structured, accurate, and reportable time data.
This includes:
- Government contractors
- Nonprofit organizations
- Consulting firms
- Professional services companies
- Engineering and architecture firms
- Project-based businesses
- Organizations that track grants or contracts
- Businesses that use contractors
- Businesses that need detailed labor reports
- Companies that use QuickBooks for accounting, payroll, billing, vendor bills, or job costing
Final Thoughts
The best time tracking software for QuickBooks users should do more than record hours. It should help your business collect accurate time, organize it correctly, approve it properly, and use it confidently for accounting, payroll, billing, project costing, vendor bills, and reporting.
For simple teams, a basic timer may be enough. But for project-based businesses, nonprofits, government contractors, consulting firms, and organizations with more detailed reporting needs, a more structured solution can save time and reduce costly mistakes.
TimeRewards helps QuickBooks users manage time tracking with the structure, approvals, reporting, invoicing, payroll support, contractor vendor bill automation, and flexibility needed for real business workflows.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best time tracking software for QuickBooks users?
The best time tracking software for QuickBooks users depends on your business needs. If you only need simple hours, a basic time tracker may work. If you need project tracking, approvals, billable time, labor reports, payroll support, contractor vendor bills, and accounting-ready data, a more advanced solution like TimeRewards may be a better fit.
Can time tracking software create invoices in QuickBooks?
Yes. Approved billable time can be used to create invoices for customers in QuickBooks. A good time tracking system helps organize the time by customer, project, task, service item, rate, and description before invoicing.
Can TimeRewards send invoices to QuickBooks?
Yes. If your invoicing process is complicated, TimeRewards can help prepare invoices first and then send them to QuickBooks. This can save time when invoices require detailed project, task, labor, expense, or contract-level information.
Can time tracking software help with payroll and overtime?
Yes. Time tracking software can help prepare approved employee hours for payroll, including regular hours, overtime, time off, holidays, and other pay categories. This helps reduce manual payroll calculations and improves accuracy.
Can TimeRewards create vendor bills from contractor time?
Yes. TimeRewards can convert approved contractor time into vendor bills automatically. This helps businesses reduce manual entry, pay contractors accurately, and track contractor costs by project, customer, grant, or contract.
Why is this better than entering time manually in QuickBooks?
Manual entry can be slow and error-prone, especially when time needs to be split by project, task, customer, class, employee, contractor, billing rate, or payroll category. TimeRewards helps structure and approve the time first, so the data is cleaner before it reaches QuickBooks.
Why not just track time directly in QuickBooks?
Some businesses can track simple time directly in QuickBooks. However, companies with project-based work, approval workflows, contractor payments, complex invoicing, compliance requirements, or detailed reporting needs may require a more flexible time tracking system before sending or using data in QuickBooks.
What features should QuickBooks users look for in time tracking software?
QuickBooks users should look for project and task tracking, billable and non-billable time, approval workflows, payroll and overtime support, contractor vendor bill automation, detailed reporting, employee-friendly timesheets, audit trails, and support for accounting workflows.
Is TimeRewards useful for project-based businesses?
Yes. TimeRewards is designed for organizations that need to track time by project, task, employee, contractor, class, department, grant, contract, or customer. This makes it useful for project-based businesses that need accurate time data for billing, payroll, vendor bills, reporting, and compliance.
Does TimeRewards support billable and non-billable time?
Yes. TimeRewards helps businesses track billable and non-billable time so they can invoice clients accurately and understand how labor is being used.
Is TimeRewards only for QuickBooks users?
No. TimeRewards can support a variety of time tracking, reporting, payroll, billing, vendor bill, and compliance workflows. However, it is especially useful for businesses that need structured time data for accounting systems like QuickBooks.