The advantage of tracking time in QuickBooks is that the hours you record are ready to attach to an invoice or use in payroll. You can enter time for individual activities or fill in a weekly timesheet. In the Time / Enter Single Activity dialog box, you can type in the number of hours for a single activity. The dialog box also includes a stopwatch, so you can have it track the time you spend working on a task.
The set up is : You tell QuickBooks that you want to track time and then set up the people who need to track their time. You use the customers and items you've set up in QuickBooks to identify the billable time you work. If you want to track nonbillable time, you need a few more entries in QuickBooks.
To turn on time tracking in QuickBooks go to Edit - Preferences - Time & Expenses and click the Company Preferences tab. You need to choose Yes to the question "Do you track time?".
You only can track people's time if their name appear in one of your name list (the employee list, vendor list or other names list).
To set up items and customers for time tracking, you choose the service item you're working on. QuickBooks then totals your hours and figures out how much you charge the customer based on the number of hours and figures out how much to charge the customer based on the number of hours you worked and how much you charge per hour for that service.
The only type of item that QuickBooks' time tracking feature recognize is service.
If you will not bill to a customer, enter zero as rate for the service.
