Posting Time to QuickBooks

After you’ve successfully Integrated QuickBooks with BigTime and your users have entered and submitted their timesheets, the Financial Administrator can send the timesheets to your QuickBooks accounting system.

BigTime supports integration with both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop. In this article, we’ll introduce you to all of the features available on the Post Timesheets screen. When you’re ready to post time to QuickBooks, you’ll see how easy it is to integrate timesheets with your billing process.

Navigating to the Post Timesheets Screen

The Financial Administrator may navigate to the Post Timesheets page. The Post Timesheets page is available under the menu option of QuickBooks.

Post Timesheets Shows You Total Hours per Person, per Period.

The default view on this page will show the current month,  year, and all the timesheets entered or submitted for that period.

The list is grouped by BigTime staff member and each row shows a specific timesheet "period." (note that the period on this page is weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly or monthly -- depending on the period selected in your Timesheet Settings page). In addition, you'll see time broken down by status:

• Entered means input time.  The number of hours entered by the user in the timesheet but not yet submitted for review.
• Submitted indicated total time ready to post. The number of hours submitted by the user in the timesheet that are ready to be posted.
• Approved/Rejected totals may appear as well. Users with an Essentials package and up can activate a review/approval process for their managers (asking managers to approve the timesheets a user submits).  We make the status of each period's time visible on this page (in case you want to wait and post only approved time). To set up multiple approval levels, users will need to sign up for or upgrade to a Premier package.
• Posted Time has already been transferred to QuickBooks. Hours that have successfully posted will show with a green checkmark in this column.

You Can Submit/Post Multiple Timesheets Using the Bulk Action Picklist Button.

The bulk-action button is in the toolbar on this page (it's the big "default" button that allows you to submit/post time).  

To bulk submit time, for example, you would check off 1 or more timesheet periods and then choose SUBMIT TIME from the picklist (admins can submit time on another user's behalf).  

Posting Time to QuickBooks

Whether you are posting a single timesheet or checking off several and choosing the POST TIME bulk action, the timesheets you've selected will be posted to QuickBooks behind-the-scenes.

At this point, depending on your version of QuickBooks, this action will result in either of the following:

• The hours in the period will have a gray cloud icon indicating that the time is pending acceptance from QuickBooks.
• The hours will have a green check mark next to them indicating that the hours have been accepted into QuickBooks. The hours will appear in the timesheets section of your QuickBooks file.
• The hours will be accompanied by a red cloud icon, indicating that the hours have failed to write into QuickBooks due to an error. To find out what caused the error, you can drill down into the time period and the hyperlinked hours to see a detailed message on what went wrong.

Viewing/Posting Timesheets From Other Periods

The calendar buttons (at the top of this page) allow you to jump from month-to-month or year-to-year - so you can see/post time from other periods. Note that you can also press the directional arrows (next to the month and year displayed) to go back and forward in time.

If you prefer to post data within a specific date range, click the CALENDAR ICON next to the right directional arrow. 

This icon changes the calendar picker into a hard-set start and end date. Then, if you click on this date range, you can edit the date range displayed and hit apply.

To view all time in the system that has not been posted, simply click the checkbox next to the calendar editor. This will show all hours to date that have not been posted.

Finally, The settings icon on the far right is a shortcut to your QUICKBOOKS..INTEGRATION SETTINGS page, and you can make some basic adjustments to how data is posted to QuickBooks from that dialog.

Using Payroll Items in Bigtime

If you are a QuickBooks desktop user and you use QuickBooks to run payroll, then you will likely want a payroll item to post with every time entry.  While you can add a payroll item picklist to your timesheet from the timesheet settings page, BigTime's Payroll Filters allow you to assign payroll items behind-the-scenes -- based on rules you define/control.

This feature keeps the decision about which payroll item is applied to each time entry out of the hands of your users -- making it easier to prevent errors.

Viewing/Editing and Posting Individual Time Entries

Each line on this page contains a "period" entry, and the period is a hyper-link, allowing you to drill down into a list of detailed timesheet entries for that period.

Once you are inside the list of detailed entries, you can view/sort or customize that view, and even click down into the details on a single entry (the values in the HOURS column on this detail view are hyperlinks as well -- so the Admin can view/edit individual time entries). Users who have management rights can edit, view, or delete submitted hours in this view.

Finally, you can customize the columns that are shown in your timesheet "details" view by clicking the cog icon in the utility bar (upper left) on the details/grid page.

Clicking the settings icon will take you to a wizard that allows you to add, remove, or rename the available fields. Click onto an existing column to edit the name or the text alignment. Click the plus or minus icons to add or remove columns. Use the left and right directional arrows attached to each column detail to re-order the columns.

Once you’re done, simply click the update view button to apply your changes.