QuickBooks® Integration Tips

Virtual TimeClock supports an easy-to-use interface that exports a specially formatted time clock file for QuickBooks®1 for Windows that makes your payroll process easier, more accurate, and less time consuming. This file contains employee names and payroll items that allow you to import regular hours, daily or weekly overtime, as well as paid leave hours like vacation, sick leave, holiday, and personal time into the QuickBooks® Weekly Timesheet.

After a one-time setup, you can quickly review employees hours and create the export file for easy import into QuickBooks®. Here are some tips to make sure your time clock integration remains smooth.

Employee names must be exactly the same.
QuickBooks® uses employee names in order to assign hours from the export file to the appropriate employee account in QuickBooks®. QuickBooks® may create blank employee records if it doesn’t find a name with an exact match. It will also fail to create a match if there are any blank spaces within the first or last name. This is the most common reason why integration fails. You must combine names with spaces if you wish your QuickBooks® integration to be successful. You must open the QuickBooks® Weekly Timesheet and delete the hours before the duplicate employee record can be successfully deleted.

Each Virtual TimeClock export field needs an assigned payroll item.
This issue usually only presents itself on the first attempt to import hours into QuickBooks®. After the missing payroll item gets assigned to the correct Virtual TimeClock export field, then future imports are successful. Revisit your QuickBooks® payroll setup to verify that all QuickBooks® payroll items have a corresponding Virtual TimeCock export field.

Only import the Virtual TimeClock export file once.
Once you fix any issues related to the import, don't import the file again! QuickBooks® does not keep track of what hours have already been imported and so the hours will be duplicated within QuickBooks®. You'll need to open the Weekly Timesheet and delete the duplicate hours one line at a time. It's better to just manually add the hours into QuickBooks® if you need to make changes after the original hours have already been imported.

Add customer job information after the hours have been imported.
Although Virtual TimeClock can keep track of all hours worked against different projects or companies, only the regular, overtime, and leave hours will be exported into QuickBooks® so you can process payroll. The hours can still be assigned to different customer jobs and service items within QuickBooks® after importing by simply opening the Weekly Timesheet.

If you need help setting up time clock integration with your QuickBooks® software for the first time, follow the steps in the QuickBooks® Payroll Integration Guide.