One of the key benefits of tracking time in QuickBooks is gaining insights through reporting. QuickBooks provides a variety of helpful time and billing reports to analyze utilization, profitability, productivity, and more.
Time Tracking Reports Overview
Let’s first understand the main time-related reports available in QuickBooks:
Time by Name – Shows total hours worked by each employee or subcontractor. Useful for utilization analysis.
Time by Item – Displays hours grouped by service item or task. Helps analyze tasks that consume most time.
Time by Job Summary – Summarizes total time across jobs and projects. Identifies most time-intensive projects.
Item Profitability Detail – Calculates revenue and profitability by service item or billable task.
Unpaid Hours by Job – Lists any pending time entries not yet invoiced. Ensures accurate client billing.
Employee Payroll Hours Audit – Compares employee time logs to actual payroll hours paid for accuracy.
Now let’s explore each report in more detail.
Time by Name Report
The Time by Name report aggregates total hours worked by each employee or subcontractor:
- Filter by date range to analyze a specific period
- View hours grouped by employee/vendor name
- Assess employee utilization for the selected period
- Compare hours across employees
- Identify over or under-utilized team members
This helps optimize staffing plans and assignments.
Time By Item Report
The Time by Item report summarizes hours worked grouped by service item or task:
- Filter by date range
- View hours logged by item/task
- Identify most time-intensive tasks
- Assess task distribution across team
- Compare hours to budgets or estimates
- Adjust billable rates if needed
Leverage this report to understand where your team is spending time.
Time By Job Summary
The Time by Job Summary shows total hours worked per client project or job:
- Filter by date range
- View total hours per job
- Identify most time-consuming projects
- Assess completion percentage based on hours
- Compare hours to original project estimates
- Adjust project plans or staffing
Use this report to track project health and profitability.
Item Profitability Detail
The Item Profitability Detail report calculates revenue and profitability for each service item or billable task:
- View item name, billable rate, hours, and amount billed
- Calculate item revenue by multiplying rate x hours
- Determine item costs based on employee hourly pay rates
- Identify profit margin per item by deducting costs
- Analyze profitable vs. unprofitable tasks
- Adjust billable rates or staffing as needed
This provides insight into which services drive profit.
Unpaid Hours By Job
The Unpaid Hours by Job report lists any pending time entries that have not yet been invoiced:
- Run this report before creating invoices
- View total unbilled hours by job
- Verify that entries are approved
- Use as basis for creating invoice totals
- Compare to prior invoices and estimates
- Prevent time leakage and missed billable hours
This ensures all tracked hours get properly billed.
Employee Payroll Hours Audit
The Payroll Hours Audit report compares employee time logs to actual payroll hours paid:
- Run after processing payroll
- View time log hours and payroll hours side-by-side
- Identify discrepancies between logged and paid time
- Investigate unpaid time logs or overpayments
- Enforce policy for entering and approving time logs
- Improve accuracy of time data
This report helps reconcile payroll to approved time logs.
Customizing Time Reports in QuickBooks
In addition to the standard time reports, you can also customize reports in QuickBooks to focus on specific time tracking needs:
- Edit standard reports using the customize button to filter, sort, or regroup data.
- Create and save custom reports from scratch by selecting desired filters, columns, and formatting.
- Memorize customized reports to quickly rerun in one click.
- Export report results to Excel for additional analysis and formatting.
- Add visual charts or graphs to illustrate key time report insights.
- Tweak report columns and calculations using formulas.
- Compare time across locations, departments, types of work, etc.
- Calculate utilization rates and target metrics.
- Schedule email delivery of key time reports to stakeholders.
- Restrict employee access to sensitive time reports.
- Integrate report data into dashboards and presentations.
The flexibility of QuickBooks reporting allows endless possibilities to extract the time insights you need. Analyze billable utilization, gauge productivity benchmarks, identify bottlenecks, optimize staffing – the options are unlimited. Get creative with custom time reports to unlock your unique data insights.
Maximizing QuickBooks Time Reports
Follow these tips to leverage time reports:
- Train employees on proper time entry practices
- Standardize billable service items
- Review reports frequently – at least monthly
- Compare reports to budgets, estimates, and prior periods
- Share relevant reports with staff and managers
- Take action on insights uncovered
Accurate time data leads to impactful reporting you can trust for important business decisions.
QuickBooks provides powerful time reports to unlock key insights into billable hours. Review these standard reports frequently and take data-driven actions to optimize team utilization, project profitability, and business processes.