At the beginning of every new year, it’s time to start a new payroll year as well. Payroll is always an extensive data entry process but especially at the start of a new year with new employees, inactivating old employees, and updating pay rates and vacation time. Then there are the normal payrolls, entering all the hours worked, assigning to the right pay schedules and customers if the hours are to be billed. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to automate a bit of payroll?
QuickBooks does not allow time to be directly imported into payroll by third-party applications. However, Transaction Pro Importer can import time into Time Activities for QuickBooks Online and Time Tracking for QuickBooks Desktop. If your employees already enter data into some type of electronic time clock, why not save your fingers some data entry?
Most time clocks and time clock programs can export the data into some type of flat file such as Excel, csv, or txt. These files can then be used to import the data into QuickBooks with Transaction Pro Importer. The data imported into Time Activities/Time Tracking can then be converted to payroll data entry, allowing the payroll to be processed with a lot fewer steps.
For both the desktop and online import, time can be imported on a day-to-day basis or as one lump sum for the entire week. Each day can have multiple time entries imported. Both the desktop and online imports require a customer to be imported for each time record. If you are not billing the time to a customer, you can set up a generic customer in QuickBooks and post the imported time. There are also differences, though, between the desktop import and the online import that affect what can be imported and how it can be used.
The import into Time Tracking for QuickBooks Desktop allows the payroll item associated with the time to be imported, allowing multiple payroll types to be imported for each employee. Time Activities for QuickBooks Online automatically assigns any imported time to the default payroll item setup for the employee. By default, the online import allows the rate to be used to invoice the customer to be imported. The desktop import uses the Billing Rate Level that is assigned to the employee in setup to determine the rate to invoice the customer.
With the online import, you cannot specify the pay rate for the import time. The pay rate used is the default rate assigned to the employee, and if any changes are necessary, they must be updated manually in QuickBooks. The desktop import has an option to add a command line code that will add a Pay Rate field, allowing different pay rates to be assigned for each time entry, if needed.
Whether you are using QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop, however, Transaction Pro Importer can help you save data entry time when it comes to payroll by importing employee time from your time clock. For more information, reference the detailed articles in our Knowledge Base for Time Activities (QBO) or Time Tracking (QBD). You can also email support@transactionpro.com with any questions.