QuickBooks Time is Intuit’s employee time tracking and scheduling solution — formerly TSheets and acquired by Intuit in 2017. In addition to time tracking and scheduling, QuickBooks Time offers automatic timesheets and payroll integration; paid time off (PTO), break, and leave management; and serviceable support for employee attendance.

QuickBooks Time is rated mostly positively by users, who enjoy the platform’s functionality and the company’s customer support. Negative reviews center on the high costs, slippage in customer service over time, and some missing features. 

I wanted to test QuickBooks Time for myself and see where it lands across essential features and functionality for small-to-medium-sized businesses. Below, you’ll find my honest review of QuickBooks Time, including where it excels and where it misses the mark.

Final verdict

While QuickBooks Time offers good support for timesheets, payroll, and paid time off (PTO) and leave, it performs less well on employee time tracking, scheduling, and attendance tracking. The mobile app is fluid and enjoyable, if a little basic, but the main web app is dated and a bit clunky.

It offers solid reporting (with some notable gaps), integrates well with other software, and has good security features (although clock-in security could be tighter).

While QuickBooks Time’s price is definitely higher than that of competitors, it may work well for existing users of QuickBooks Online or Payroll.

Total score: 3.5 / 5

Read the full review below for more information on how each section was scored.

Category	Score
Pricing	2 / 5
Account Creation and Setup	4 / 5
Main Features	3.3 / 5
→ Time tracking	3 / 5
→ Scheduling	2 / 5
→ Attendance and Labor Savings	2 / 5
→ Timesheets and Payroll	4.5 / 5
→ Paid Time Off and Leave	4.5 / 5
User Interface and Ease of Use	3.5 / 5
Mobile App	3.5 / 5
Reporting	4 / 5
Help and Support	4 / 5
Integrations	4 / 5
Security	4 / 5

Pros and cons

Pros	Cons
✅ Excellent integration with QuickBooks Online and Payroll	❌ Time and attendance tracking is quite basic
✅ Good reporting, especially for accounting purposes	❌ Poor visibility for attendance issues
✅ Many integrations with payroll providers	❌ Poor support for overtime and conflicts in scheduling, shift swaps, and coverage
✅ Simple account creation for existing QuickBooks Online users	❌ Much more expensive than similar tools
✅ Good timesheets, payroll, PTO, and leave support

Pricing

To use QuickBooks Time, you have to also be subscribed to QuickBooks Online; you can’t use QuickBooks Time unless you’re using both systems. If you’re not already using QuickBooks Online, you’ll have to sign up for at least the Essentials plan, which starts at $75/month.

QuickBooks Time has two pricing tiers: Time Premium and Time Elite. Time Premium starts at $10/user per month and has a $20 monthly admin fee. Time Elite starts at $12/user per month and has a $40 monthly admin fee. New customers get a 50% discount on the admin fee for the first three months.

Here’s how the pricing breaks down for these two plans, alongside pricing for a similar time tracking tool, Buddy Punch, for comparison:

	QuickBooks Time Premium	QuickBooks Time Elite	Buddy Punch
Base cost per month	$20	$40	$19
Cost per user per month	$10/user	$12/user	$4.49/user
Example: 15-person team	$170	$220	$86.35

And here’s a table showing the costs of QuickBooks Time vs. Buddy Punch for different features:

	QuickBooks Time	Buddy Punch
Admin users	One included in the monthly admin fee	Unlimited included in the monthly admin fee
Mobile apps	$10/user	$4.49/user
Built-in payroll	$13/user	$10.49/user
Scheduling	$10/user	$5.49/user
Reports	$10/user	$4.49/user
PTO tracking	$10/user	$4.49/user
Time clock kiosk	$10/user	$5.99/user
Mileage tracking	$12/user	Not available
Job costing	$12/user	$4.49/user
Geofencing	$12/user	$5.99/user
GPS tracking	$12/user	$4.49/user

All things considered, QuickBooks Time is a pricey option. This is partly because you need a QuickBooks Online subscription in addition to the base rate, and partly because the per-user cost is so high. 

Verdict: 2 / 5

For teams both large and small, QuickBooks Time is one of the most expensive options on the market. 

Account creation and setup

I found creating a QuickBooks Time account relatively easy. One small hurdle is that you must have an existing QuickBooks Online subscription to use QuickBooks Time. 

If you do, moving to QuickBooks Time is very quick and straightforward. Your employees and customers sync automatically, with all the relevant information for wages, payroll, and PTO and leave. 

I didn’t have an existing QuickBooks Online subscription, so I had to set one up first. If you’re starting from that point as well, the setup will be longer. You can use an employee directory from a provider like Gusto or a spreadsheet, and the latter option works for customers, too. 

I was a little disappointed to see that there isn’t a way to import an existing schedule during account creation, as I’ve really enjoyed this feature with other providers. But it’s a minor point here. 

Once my account was set up, I encountered a few on-screen tutorials.  I also turned to the QuickBooks YouTube channel for in-depth videos on setting up and using the software, which I found helpful.

Verdict: 4 / 5

The account creation and onboarding process is simple, and it would be even more so if I were an existing QuickBooks Online user. I took a point off because you can import employees, which is great, but not schedules.

Time tracking

Time tracking in QuickBooks Time is mostly straightforward. There are some good features, notably around shift information and reporting, but there are also important shortcomings. 

Shift information 

The core features are all here: Employees can clock in from the web app, mobile app, or a desktop or tablet kiosk. 

Something I appreciated seeing is that both managers and employees can add notes to shifts. You can even require employees to enter notes, such as a summary of their shift. 

Another standout was the ability to add any number of custom fields, which can then be used in scheduling and time tracking. When I first started with QuickBooks Time, there was already a “service” field, but I was able to create additional custom fields, such as “projects” and “departments.”

This is great for day-to-day management, end-of-month reporting, and customer billing. It’s something I haven’t seen in many other time clocks, and the benefits are obvious: You can categorize time entries however it works best for your business. Plus, if you create a custom field in QuickBooks, it will sync automatically to QuickBooks Time so you can get a truly holistic view.

Time-clock entries can be associated with a client (e.g., “Mark Johnson”), service item, and department. You can also mark them as billable and add notes. 

GPS tracking and employee accountability 

QuickBooks Time’s GPS tracking works well and includes a mileage tracking feature for companies with fleets. You can set up geofences around locations and job sites, too, but the functionality here is limited. For example, you can’t set a rule that employees can clock in only within a specific geofence. Instead, your team gets a reminder to clock in and out as they enter and leave a geofence. That’s not quite the same thing, from an accountability perspective.

Unfortunately, there are no other real anti-time-theft measures to speak of. Other apps, like Buddy Punch, offer a number of useful employee accountability features like photos on punch, facial recognition, and IP address locks. It would’ve been great to see some of these in QuickBooks Time.

Schedule integration 

I found the integration between scheduling and time tracking to be really lacking. 

You can clock in to a shift by selecting it in your schedule, but if you start by clicking or tapping “Time Clock” (as one normally would), the entry isn’t associated with any particular shift. 

There’s a huge downside to this: There’s no simple and easy way to see who’s on time, who’s late, who’s early, who’s missed their shift, or anything else managers might care about. There is a tardy report, but I tested it by clocking in late for a shift, and it didn’t catch it. I later read why in QuickBooks’ help documentation:

“Team members who are currently clocked in won’t display as tardy on the report. You might want to run the report again at the end of the workday.” (Emphasis added.)

That’s not very useful for managers who want to see what’s going on during a shift, is it?

If you have crews working in the field and want to be able to keep a close eye on their attendance, apps like Buddy Punch are a better fit. It’s attendance tracking capabilities show you labels on your dashboard when employees clocked in late, clocked out early, or missed a shift, and you can set up alerts for attendance issues to get notified in real time. Plus, detailed attendance reports show you all attendance infractions over a specific timeframe.

Verdict: 3 / 5

There are some good features around shift information but not much in terms of employee accountability. Additionally, the separation between the time clock and schedule features makes for a poor management experience.

Scheduling

Next, I tested out QuickBooks Time’s scheduling features from a manager and employee perspective.

Creating schedules as a manager

Building a new schedule is easy: Click on any date to enter a new shift, then fill in the information in the menu that appears to the right. Here, you have many options to customize the shift. You can add a title, choose a color, set the start and end times (and timezone), select multiple team members, add a customer and location, enter notes, and include any custom fields you’ve set (like the “project” field I created).

You can also set the shift to repeat: every X months or weeks on specific days, or else every day or weekday. After a shift has been set to repeat, when you click on it again, you can choose to edit just that day or the entire series. This is handy, but if you select multiple team members, you’ll have to edit each series individually after saving. 

While testing, I missed the ability to create reusable shifts, such as “opener” or “afternoon cover,” with set times. Having to set start and end times for each shift is a bit tedious. Fortunately, you can drag-and-drop shifts and Alt Click + drag to copy a shift. There are also convenient “save week as template” and “copy previous week” options. As a result, once you’ve got one or two full weeks set up, you can do a lot by just copying and pasting. 

I initially felt confused that QuickBooks Time let me publish individual shifts before publishing a week. I kept accidentally hitting publish on individual shifts instead of “save draft,” which meant shifts went out to my (mock) employees before I was really done. I’m sure I would have gotten used to it, but the setup seems to invite small mistakes. 

On a positive note, the day and month views work as expected, and I liked that you could drag-and-drop shifts in the day view to change their times. 

I also found it useful that you can view the schedule by customer rather than by team member; that’s helpful for field workers such as contractors, construction crews, painters, and plumbers. You can drag and drop shifts between customers, too. 

In hindsight, it’s unfortunate that you can’t “View By” any of your custom fields. That would be a real bonus in a future version of QuickBooks Time.

Dealing with overtime and scheduling conflicts

Very regrettably, QuickBooks Time doesn’t provide any clear alerts about overtime or scheduling conflicts.

If you exceed eight hours when creating a shift, the total time turns red, which is somewhat helpful. But there are no visual cues if the week exceeds the set number of hours or if the total number of hours in the day exceeds eight.

For example, I was able to schedule three separate five-hour shifts for the same person with no warning. In fact, I was able to schedule the same person for a shift from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. the same day — no warning, no flag. 

To me, that makes it far too easy to make mistakes, which can snowball into incorrect overtime pay calculations, payroll issues, and even noncompliance risks. Other apps, like Buddy Punch, offer strong conflict resolution and plenty of warnings around overtime and other scheduling issues. 

Scheduling from the employee perspective

As an employee, you can view your schedule on the web version of QuickBooks Time and in the QuickBooks Workforce mobile app. 

From the web, you can click on a shift to clock in, but you can’t do this in the mobile app, for some reason. You can click on a shift to see more information, including notes and custom fields, the customer and address, and the date and time. 

The biggest drawback here is that employee self-service options are essentially nonexistent. Crucially, there’s no support for shift trades or covers (which apps like Buddy Punch offer), which leaves managers to deal with mountains of emails and text messages to resolve scheduling issues. 

Likewise, there’s no way for employees to update their availability themselves (another feature offered in Buddy Punch). Once again, managers are left resorting to emails and messages to stay on top of people’s changing availability and manually updating schedules whenever a change occurs.

Verdict: 2 / 5

It’s easy to create a schedule, and there are good features for organizing work: by customers, services, jobs, and other custom fields. But I had to take points off for the lack of employee self-service tools and the very poor overtime and conflict management. In this area, QuickBooks Time pales in comparison to competitors.

Attendance and labor cost tracking

As mentioned, managers can see who’s working at any given time and their location, but little beyond that: no alerts, tags, or icons for late punch-outs, early clock-ins, or missed shifts. As a manager, that makes it hard to plan for the day. 

I did like that QuickBooks Time provides a map view of who’s working. Though it’s a standard feature of modern time trackers, it was still nice to see.

Other cost-saving features were fairly basic. As I noted earlier, you can remind employees to clock in and out, but you can’t automatically clock them out when their shift ends (a feature you can find in apps like Buddy Punch). 

QuickBooks Time supports overtime as a payroll calculation, but it’s not displayed in a meaningful way for managers in the schedule or time clock features. As a seasoned manager, I know just how easily scheduling accidents and shift covers can lead to overtime, so this was definitely a disappointment. Other apps I’ve tested, including Buddy Punch, offer overtime alerts that notify you when employees are nearing overtime so you can adjust their schedules. 

That said, I was happy to see that QuickBooks Time provides break tracking — though I had to dig a bit to find it (under Feature Add-Ons > Breaks). Once it’s turned on, you have various options: create break rules, set them for a specific or undefined length, make them paid or unpaid, and enforce them automatically based on time since clocking in or days of the week.

You can also guarantee workers their entire break by preventing them from clocking back in, automatically ending the break when the time is up, and notifying workers X minutes before that happens. And at any time, you can see who’s currently on break on the “Who’s Working” screen.

Verdict: 2 / 5

QuickBooks Time deserves some points for good break management and basic attendance features, but overall, it falls short of other time clock apps in this area.

Timesheets and payroll

QuickBooks is first and foremost accounting software, so I was expecting a smooth experience with its timesheets and payroll features — and I pretty much got that. 

You can view, add, and edit timesheets by clicking on “Time Entries.” This will give you a list of all the time entries for a given period, and you can select which columns to view. Frustratingly, you can only select up to eight columns; in QuickBooks itself, you can view all the columns at once. 

While you can search time entries by team member, you can’t filter by location or even surprisingly by customer — despite how central this category is to QuickBooks Time. That said, you can export these reports to CSV and sort, filter, and manipulate them in Excel or Google Sheets as you see fit. 

I appreciated that there’s an option to view a history of manager edits, which enables a sort of audit of changes made. This is actually a recurring theme in QuickBooks Time that I felt was well done: whether it’s time entries, custom fields, or scheduling, most features include a log of changes you can review.

The “Time Entries” section also has manual time card and time slider features. These make it a little easier to manually add time for employees if needed. Manual time card lists the dates and customers, and you add time to the relevant cell. Time slider lets you click and drag to select a timeframe (e.g., 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.) for any given day.

As for payroll reports, I found them robust. 

You can run reports by week, month, or custom date, filter for team members or groups, view time as a decimal or hh:mm:ss (hours:minutes:seconds), and hide team members with no activity. 

The report includes scorecards for straight hours, regular hours, time off, overtime, and total hours. You can see more information by clicking on a team member; this reveals their overtime, different jobs, and timesheets. You can download individual reports for those details in CSV, Excel, or PDF format, too.

Of course, all this information is also visible in QuickBooks Online. You can approve timesheets either in QuickBooks Time or QuickBooks Online, where you’re also able to manage payroll.

Verdict: 4.5 / 5

Unsurprisingly, QuickBooks Time has strong timesheet and payroll functionality. It’s especially useful if you’re a QuickBooks Online or Payroll user, but it also integrates with several other accounting platforms and payroll providers. 

Paid time off and leave

QuickBooks Time supports PTO very well. 

First off, it’s easy to create PTO policies with all the usual options. Employees can earn time off annually, each pay period, or based on hours worked. You can set rules for whether unused PTO expires or carries over. And you can control policy start and reset dates, as well as whether employees can enter negative PTO balances. 

But with QuickBooks Time, you don’t have to create policies from scratch. The software includes a few policies you can use right away: Holiday, Vacation, PTO, Sick Time Off, and Unpaid Time Off.

Additionally, you can bulk-upload PTO balances, which is convenient when first setting up QuickBooks Time. You’re also able to add holidays for the whole team, specific groups, or individuals. You can enter holidays on the “Time Off” screen, and I found the process straightforward.

What slightly frustrated me, though, was how long it took to load time codes when I wanted to modify them. It may not be a universal experience, but everything else in the app was working fine, so I’m inclined to believe it was a bug.

To request time off, employees can do so through the mobile app. It was a quick, painless process when I tested it out. 

You simply add the relevant day or days off (which don’t need to be back-to-back), select the amount of time off for each day, and choose which PTO policy it should fall under (if you’re subject to multiple policies). There’s also a field to include a note explaining your reason for requesting time off.

As a manager, you can view, approve, and deny requests. I was happy to see that you can also add a note to the approval or denial, which simplifies communications.

Verdict: 4.5 / 5

I docked half a point for that frustrating user interface bug. Other than that, the PTO and leave management features in QuickBooks Time offer a simple experience and strong functionality. 

Reporting

QuickBooks Time offers various reports, including:

• Payroll
• Itemized Time Total
• Scheduling:
  • Scheduled vs. Worked
  • Tardies (see Attendance and Labor Costs for concerns with this feature)
• Exceptions:
  • Less than X hours worked on a weekday
  • Not yet approved or submitted
• Exports:
  • Groups and Group Managers
  • Customers
  • Team Members
• Logging and Auditing:
  • Applicable Large Employer
  • Approvals History
  • Time Off Balances
  • System Log
  • Timesheet Log
• Payroll:
  • Hours Summary by Team Member
  • Wage Report
• Tracking
  • Job Costing by Team Member
  • GPS Points
  • Hours by Date, Team Member, Group, or Customer

As I said before, I was disappointed to see little in terms of employee accountability. There are no reports for absences or late/early clock-ins/clock-outs, which makes it hard for managers to spot trends and react accordingly. This is one of the few things that makes QuickBooks Time feel like it was built more for accountants than actual team managers. 

Verdict: 4 / 5

There are many reports available to meet a wide range of business needs, but fewer than would genuinely help team managers. 

Help and support

I had a mostly positive experience with QuickBooks Time’s support, which is accessible via the support icon in the top-right corner of the screen. 

In addition to “Product Help,” you can view the “Getting Started Guide,” see “What’s New,” and “Suggest Ideas.” Clicking on “Product Help” opens a sidebar with a search field for help articles and a contact us button. That button takes you to a form where you can describe your issue, but you have only 170 characters to do so. That feels unnecessarily short, especially because questions of any real depth will easily run over the limit.

After clicking “Continue,” you have the option to either “Ask the Community” (using QuickBooks Time’s forum) or “Start a Chat” or get a callback, both of which are available from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. ET. 

I chose the chat option and was connected to a friendly agent very quickly. They first asked for my name, email address, and company ID, then helped me with my query. Unfortunately, there is no way to see who’s clocked in late or early in the Who’s Working screen, but they suggested a few workarounds, like looking at the timesheets. They didn’t offer to escalate my request or add the suggestion to a roadmap. 

Verdict: 4/5

Overall, working with QuickBooks Time’s customer support was an enjoyable experience, and the person who helped me was knowledgeable about the tool. 

User interface and ease of use

You may have noticed from the screenshots in this review that the web version of QuickBooks Time has a dated, rather clunky interface. The overall experience feels like using Windows 98; the app could use a major modernization. 

Visuals aside, the organization of the app is fairly simple and mostly well thought out. There’s a menu on the left that lets you access all the different windows; they’re actual windows you can drag around the screen. My only issue is that you can open multiple windows, but you can’t resize them. This often results in a cluttered user experience. 

Now, in fairness to the platform, Intuit is in the process of migrating features. Many, but not all, QuickBooks Time features can be found in the “Time” section of QuickBooks Online. Scheduling is there, for example, but most actual time tracking features aren’t, so the experience is a bit inconsistent across the board. 

Perhaps in the future, QuickBooks Time will be scuttled in favor of a single QuickBooks application. But until then, the overall experience isn’t entirely enjoyable. 

Verdict: 3.5 / 5

The app is dated, and the interface isn’t very enjoyable to use. It also often fails to convey information managers will want at their fingertips. On the whole, though, navigating QuickBooks Workforce wasn’t a totally arduous experience. 

QuickBooks Workforce mobile app

QuickBooks Time’s mobile app, called QuickBooks Workforce, has a modern interface and is easy to use. It has five main screens: 

• The Overview screen shows total hours worked for the day, and you can click it to see more details (including customers, projects, and billable rate). Managers can also look at hours worked by team members, by week, or by pay period. Clicking “View Report” opens the payroll report with the same filters as the desktop version. You can view and request time off, too. You can organize these four sections (Time Clock, Hours by Team Member [managers], Schedule, and Time Off) as you like.
• The Time Tracker screen allows you to clock in; select the customer, billable rate, and any custom fields; add notes, attach photos, and see your location. On this screen, you can take a break, clock out, and use “Switch” to change customers. Plus, the “Time Tracker” screen shows timesheets — for yourself or, if you’re a manager, for everyone.

• The Schedule screen mirrors the web version of QuickBooks Time, just without week or month views. Instead, you see only an agenda of your upcoming shifts. Managers can, of course, view all workers’ shifts and create new ones, but the functionality is much more limited compared to the web app. You can’t make recurring shifts, for example, or copy and paste shifts. There is a handy search feature I liked, though, so you can look up “morning shift” or “on call” shifts, for example.
• The Time Off screen enables workers to request time off, but as a manager, you can’t approve or deny requests from the mobile app. You have to use the web version for that. It’s a minor frustration for managers who are often on the move, but not a major miss.
• The More screen lets managers pull up the team roster, see who’s working, manage customers, and view hours by team members. Workers can see information for their own team, update notification settings, and get help.

Verdict: 3.5 / 5

The QuickBooks Workforce app offers good functionality for employees. But for managers, several features are missing: PTO and leave requests, advanced scheduling, and reports. You’ll need to use the web app for most things. 

Integrations

QuickBooks Time integrates with several payroll providers and other platforms. The QuickBooks Time App Marketplace has 25 integrations in total, including QuickBooks Online (of course), ADP, Square, Paychex, and Onpay, as well as business analytics software like Power BI and cloud storage like Dropbox and Google Drive. 

Verdict: 4 / 5

QuickBooks Time offers a decent number of integrations, but competitors like Buddy Punch integrate with more payroll providers. 

Security

QuickBooks is a major accounting software solution used by large enterprises, so it’s no surprise that the security is robust. 

The platform is compliant with PCI DSS, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 027001, and VPAT protocols. Data is also protected at rest and in transit (SSL, DigiCert) and complies with TRUSTe Privacy Program standards for data privacy. 

When it comes to the app, there are many ways to control who has access to what data, with multiple permission levels for workers, managers, admins, and accountants.

The only feature that could use a security improvement is the time clock. From a time-theft and employee accountability perspective, it’s not particularly secure. It would be easy for employees to buddy punch or commit other types of time theft. 

Verdict: 4 / 5

QuickBooks Time is very secure, but security from a team management perspective could be stronger, in my opinion.

Methodology

To test QuickBooks Time, I created a QuickBooks Online company and admin user, then a QuickBooks Time account. 

When I test a software solution, I typically start by getting a general “feel” for it by exploring the user interface. With QuickBooks Time, I clicked through each screen, testing the user interface and seeing how different features, like scheduling and time tracking, work together (or not). I also like to check out the settings menu at this point to find any hidden options for the features before testing them. 

Then, I test the main features one by one; I take notes and screenshots as I go, noting anything I think is done really well and anything that could be improved. This usually takes about an hour per feature. In this case, that included scheduling, time tracking, attendance and labor, timesheets and payroll, PTO and sick leave, and reporting. 

Next, I test out the mobile app. I’m looking for usability and full-featuredness. A good mobile app will let you do almost everything on the fly with an interface that’s adapted to on-the-go use. 

Finally, I check out the pricing and compare it to other providers to get a sense of where it sits in the market. Plus, I look at any available integrations and check out both technical security features and worker-oriented ones.

I consider all this through the lens of my own experiences as a manager, aiming to zero in on features and gaps that will matter to business owners and other managers.