QuickBooks Time vs. Spreadsheet Import: Which Is Right for Your Team?

QuickBooks offers its own dedicated time tracking product — QuickBooks Time, formerly TSheets — and it's a capable tool. But it's built around a particular way of working: staff clock in and out in real time via an app. If your team doesn't work that way, it may not be the right fit. Spreadsheet import is the alternative for teams that collect time differently.

What QuickBooks Time Does

QuickBooks Time is a standalone time-tracking app with a QBO integration. Its core features are:

• Mobile and web clock-in/clock-out
• GPS location tracking for field workers
• Shift scheduling and crew management
• Manager approvals within the app
• Automatic sync of approved hours to QBO as time activities

It's well-designed for what it does. The QBO sync is reliable and the mobile app is usable on a job site. The pricing sits at around $10–$20/month base plus a per-user fee, putting it in a different cost bracket to simpler tools.

Who QuickBooks Time Suits

QuickBooks Time is a strong fit for field-based businesses: tradies, construction companies, home services operators — anywhere staff are moving between job sites and need to capture time against specific jobs in real time. The GPS tracking and geofencing features are genuinely useful in that context.

It also suits businesses where the approval workflow needs to happen in the time-tracking system itself, or where payroll compliance requires precise clock-in/clock-out records.

What Spreadsheet Import Does

Spreadsheet import takes a different starting point. Time is collected however your team already collects it — typically an Excel file submitted by a manager or staff member at the end of the week. The import tool reads that file and pushes the rows into QBO as time activities, with duplicate detection to prevent double-importing.

Time On It specifically builds its import template from your actual QBO data. Connect via OAuth and the template's dropdowns are populated with your real employees, customers, service items, and classes. Upload the completed template and the entries appear in QBO exactly as if they'd been entered manually — including billable status.

Who Spreadsheet Import Suits

Spreadsheet import fits teams where time collection is already working but the path into QBO is manual and tedious:

• Office and remote teams where managers submit weekly timesheets for their direct reports
• Businesses that use external contractors who aren't going to install a time-tracking app
• Operations teams that compile hours from multiple sources into a single file before processing
• Bookkeepers managing multiple client QBO files, where each client sends their own spreadsheet format
• Teams already comfortable in Excel who don't want to migrate to another piece of software

Side-by-Side Comparison

Verdict by Team Type

Field-based teams with GPS requirements: QuickBooks Time. The live capture and location features justify the cost and the change management required to get staff onto the app.

Office, remote, or mixed teams already using Excel: Spreadsheet import. There's no new tool for staff to learn, no change to how time is collected, and the cost is a fraction of QuickBooks Time.

Bookkeepers with multiple QBO clients: Spreadsheet import. Each client sends a file; you import it into the correct QBO company. QuickBooks Time would require each client to be on the same system.

Teams with external contractors: Spreadsheet import. Contractors won't install your time-tracking app. They will fill in a spreadsheet.