Frequently Asked Questions

The template is generated live from your QuickBooks company. Employee names, customers, and service items are pulled directly from QBO and embedded as dropdown lists so that every name you enter is guaranteed to match. If you download before connecting, these dropdowns will be empty and your import will likely result in Skipped rows.

Connections are held in memory. If the server restarts for any reason, you will need to reconnect via the Connect to QuickBooks button. Your existing QuickBooks data is not affected — only the session token is lost.

Yes — open the downloaded template in Google Sheets, fill in your data, then export it as File → Download → Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) before uploading. Note that Google Sheets may not enforce the dropdown validation, so take care to match names exactly.

The dropdowns are sourced directly from your QuickBooks company. If a name is missing, it either doesn't exist in QBO yet or is marked as inactive. Add or reactivate the record in QuickBooks first, then re-download the template — the new name will appear in the dropdown.

Yes. Blank rows are detected and skipped automatically. You can structure your spreadsheet however suits you — entries below a blank row will still be imported.

The app generates a description automatically in the format Service Item – Customer Name. You can override this by entering your own text in the Description column.

Setting a row to Yes marks the time entry as billable in QuickBooks, meaning it can appear on a customer invoice. No marks it as non-billable. If left blank, it defaults to non-billable.

Yes — it is safe to re-upload. Before creating any entry, the app checks whether an identical record (same date, employee, customer, and service item) already exists in QuickBooks. Duplicates are counted and listed in the results but never created twice.

Skipped rows contain a name (employee, customer, service item, or class) that could not be matched in QuickBooks. The results list will show you exactly which rows and which field caused the skip. To fix:

• Re-download the template to get an up-to-date dropdown list
• Check that the name exists and is active in your QuickBooks company
• Correct the affected rows and re-upload — duplicates from the previous upload will be skipped automatically

No. Failed rows were rejected by the QuickBooks API after a valid name match was found — this is usually a temporary API issue. The error message in the results will indicate what went wrong. Wait a few minutes and re-upload; the duplicate check will skip any entries that already succeeded.

The app first loads your QuickBooks employee, customer, service item, and class lists, then creates each time entry one at a time via the QBO API. A typical import of 20–30 rows takes 10–20 seconds. Larger imports may take longer.

Yes. There is no restriction on the date range. You can import time entries for any past date, including entries from previous financial years. The duplicate check covers the date range of the entries in the file, so re-uploading historical data is safe.

Yes. Time On It runs an Australian English spell check on every Description field during import. Any suspected typos are listed in the results with up to three suggested corrections. The import still proceeds — spelling warnings do not block entries from being created in QuickBooks.

The Dashboard is your home screen after sign-in. It shows a summary of your most recent import — date, filename, rows imported, duplicates, and any errors — alongside your total hours imported this month and quick links to the main app sections.

Team Insights shows hours by employee for a date range you choose. Use the View dropdown to switch between Monthly, Weekly, and Daily breakdowns — each with its own set of period presets (this month, last quarter, this week, last week, etc.). Data is read from your connected QuickBooks company and covers all time entries in QBO — not only those imported through Time On It.

Click any employee's name to open their personal breakdown in Employee Insights — showing hours by customer, service item, and work type tag for the same date range.

You can also download the table as a CSV for further analysis.

Project Insights shows hours by customer or project for a selected date range. Each row displays total hours logged, billable hours, and a budget usage bar if a budget has been configured. The bar turns red when hours exceed the budget, so over-runs are immediately visible. Like Team Insights, the data is sourced directly from QuickBooks.

If a project has a monthly budget and a start and end date, Time On It breaks it into monthly retainer periods — each showing hours used versus the monthly budget and whether the period is past, current, or future.

Click a project to open its detail view, then click any customer row to drill down to the individual time entries that make up those hours.

Use the QuickBooks Data page (under Sync in the sidebar) to pull a fresh snapshot of time activity from your QBO account for the date range you need. Once the sync is complete, both insights pages will reflect the updated data. You can re-sync at any time to include more recent activity.

Yes. In Team Insights, use the View dropdown to switch between Monthly, Weekly, and Daily breakdowns. The Period dropdown then lets you jump to common presets for that view — for example, "This week" and "Last week" appear when Weekly is selected. Weekend columns are shaded in the Daily view to make them easy to spot.

Tags let your team classify the type of work inside each QuickBooks timesheet description without changing service items or how clients are billed. You wrap a short label in square brackets at the very start of the description — for example [Feature], [Change Request], or [Advisory] — and Time On It picks them up automatically when you sync.

Every insight page (Customer, Project, Employee, Team) shows a By Tag breakdown — total hours per tag, expanded to show which service items contributed. This makes it easy to see, for example, how much of a project's time went on reactive support versus planned feature work, even when that effort spans multiple disciplines.

Tags are free-form — your team decides which labels to use. See the tags guide for example tag sets for different types of businesses and usage guidelines.

Go to Sync → QuickBooks Data in the sidebar. Step 1 connects your QuickBooks account; Step 2 (enabled once connected) lets you choose a date range and run the sync. Time entries are pulled from QBO and stored locally so the Insights dashboards can display them. You can re-sync at any time to pull in more recent activity.

A full history of every sync you have run — including the date triggered and the number of records returned — is available at Logs → Sync History.

The sync step requires an active QuickBooks connection. Complete Step 1 — connect your QuickBooks account — and Step 2 will become enabled automatically.

Yes. In Team Insights, click any employee's name to open their personal breakdown. You'll see their hours split by customer, by service item, and by work type tag — for the same date range you have selected. From there you can drill further into individual time entries for any customer.

If you set a start and end date on a project and it has a monthly budget, Time On It automatically breaks the project into monthly retainer periods. Each period shows how many hours were used vs the monthly budget, and whether the period is in the past, current, or future. This gives a clear picture of retainer utilisation month by month.

Project Insights shows total hours logged against each project's budget. The budget usage bar turns red when hours exceed the budget, so over-runs are immediately visible. For detailed cost analysis, combine the hours data here with your QBO invoicing — Time On It shows the time side, QBO shows the revenue side.

Yes. In Project Insights, click a project to open its detail view, then click any customer row to see the individual time entries that make up those hours — including the date, employee, service item, description, and hours for each entry.

Go to Settings → Profile (accessible via the gear icon at the bottom of the sidebar). From there you can update your display name. The page also shows which login provider — Google, Microsoft, or Apple — is linked to your account.

Open Settings from the gear icon in the sidebar. The settings hub links to Profile (available to all users) and — for admins — Organisation settings, Service Categories, Employees, and Users. Sign-out is also located here.

You can sign in with Google, Microsoft, or Apple. Your active provider is shown on the Profile settings page. Time On It does not store a separate password — authentication is handled entirely through your chosen provider.

The Timesheet Uploads log (under Logs in the sidebar) shows every Excel file you have imported, including the filename, import date, and a breakdown of successful, duplicate, skipped, and failed rows.

Sync History (under Logs in the sidebar) records every QuickBooks Data sync you have run — including the date it was triggered, the date range that was synced, and the number of records returned. It is useful for confirming that your Insights data is current.

Timesheet Uploads tracks file imports — each row is one Excel spreadsheet you uploaded, and shows how many time entries were created in QuickBooks as a result.

Sync History tracks QuickBooks Data syncs — each row is one time you pulled existing time data from QBO to refresh your Insights pages. No entries are created during a sync; it only reads from QuickBooks.

We offer several plans starting from $5/month. See the pricing page for current rates. You are invoiced monthly with no lock-in contract.

Use our contact form for any billing enquiries.