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QuickBooks Desktop Invoice Exporting
QuickBooks Desktop Invoice Exporting

How to export invoices to QuickBooks desktop

Updated over a week ago

Timesheet Portal provides a mechanism for exporting timesheet data into QuickBooks. Currently this is only available for recruitment businesses.

How it works

Our export facility generates two export files:

Service Items List - This is a list of all unique employee/task/rate combinations which allows you to export the rates directly into QuickBooks with a uniquely named service item.

Timer Activities List - This is an export file of all the actual time recorded by your employees. The information gets imported directly into QuickBook's timesheets. By exporting timer activities in this way, if they are correctly linked to an appropriate customer as well as employee company (vendor/supplier in QuickBooks), then after the import is complete, QuickBooks will automatically generate invoices to send to your customers, and also generate invoices on behalf of your employees who are working for you as a limited company or through an umbrella company.

Different versions of QuickBooks use different terminology for vendors and suppliers, but they refer to the same thing. Throughout our system, we will refer to them as a supplier.

QuickBooks Export Setup

To start using Timesheet Portal QuickBooks export, you must first configure the export from the QuickBooks Export Settings page. You will need to supply the name of your company as it appears in QuickBooks, and also the company file timestamp. If you do not know your company file timestamp, you can determine it by performing an export in QuickBooks, by selecting File > Export > Timer Lists.

Save the export file, and open it with a text editor. You will see several columns of text, separated by tab spaces. Look for the column named COMPANYCREATETIME - this is the timestamp value you need to configure in Timesheet Portal. If you do not set up this value correctly, QuickBooks will not allow you to import files created by Timesheet Portal.

Income Account
This is the account used in QuickBooks when you receive money from your customers. This is usually "Income Account", but in some instances, you may have separate income accounts, for different branches or for different types of work e.g. "Employees Income".

Cost of Goods Account
This is the account used to deduct money paid to the employees for the work performed on client sites.

Date Format
This is the date format used when exporting data into QuickBooks. Some of our customers have reported having QuickBooks using UK date format but having to import data using US date format. If your time entries are appearing in the wrong dates, then try changing this option.

Timer Notes Export
This is the description of the notes created in the timer item when exported to QuickBooks. This is useful if you want to see further information on timer entries, but unfortunately, QuickBooks does not provide a way to tie this in with the invoice. This means it is not possible include any date information in the description of the invoice items created. The invoice items take the Service Item description by default. To configure the template for the Timer Notes field, the following tags are available:

Tag

Description

%EMPLOYEENAME%

The employee/employee's name

%JOBDESC%

The description of the task

%RATENAME%

The name of the rate as configured in Timesheet Portal

%RATECODE%

The unique rate code as configured in Timesheet Portal

%RATEUNITS%

The units being used for charging the rate used

%CLIENTNAME%

The name of the client which the task is associated with

%DATE%

The date of the timesheet entry, which is formatted depending on the time grouping chosen for the export


Weekly Grouping format example: "w/e 18/09/2011" (Uses the date format configured for your account)
Monthly Grouping format example: "Sep 2011"
Date Range Grouping format example: "between 12/09/2011 and 18/09/2011"

Service Item Description
This allows you to configure the description for the service item created in QuickBooks. The service item description is also the default text for the invoices generated automatically by Quickbooks

Tag

Description

%EMPLOYEENAME%

The employee/employee's name

%JOBDESC%

The description of the job

%RATENAME%

The name of the rate as configured in Timesheet Portal

%RATECODE%

The unique rate code as configured in Timesheet Portal

%RATEUNITS%

The units being used for charging the rate used

%CLIENTNAME%

The name of the client for which the job is associated with

Setting up Employees & Tasks in Timesheet Portal

In order to use QuickBooks exporting from Timesheet Portal, you must bear the following in mind when creating your project/clients:

Clients - The Client Reference field is the field used for exporting. This must match the name of your client in QuickBooks.

Tasks - You must ensure you fill in a unique id Job Reference as this is used to create a unique service item in QuickBooks. The pay and charge rate fields must also be filled in, otherwise there will be no costing data for QuickBooks to generate invoices/supplier bills.

Employees - Most agencies will have their employees either charging as a company, or working for an umbrella company and charging from that company. When creating employee records in Timesheet Portal. Ensure you select the appropriate option under the Employment Type field. If you do not choose a company option here, then supplier bills will not be generated by QuickBooks when it imports timesheet data from Timesheet Portal. If your employee's company bills usually add VAT (or another form of sales tax), then you should tick the option Taxable next to the employee's company name.

Exporting Data Into QuickBooks

To export your data into QuickBooks, ensure you have configured Timesheet Portal correctly from the QuickBooks Export Settings page first, and follow these instructions:

We strongly recommend you ALWAYS create a backup of your QuickBooks company file before performing any imports!

Go to the Reports page, and expand the Export Reports category.

Select QuickBooks export. Configure your start and end dates, and click Download Export. This will generate a ZIP file for you to download.

Open the ZIP file and copy its contents to a temporary folder. You will see two files contained within it. The first is the Service Items export. The service items export MUST ALWAYS BE IMPORTED FIRST! If you do not import this first, then QuickBooks will not have any information about the items imported into timesheets, and will not be able to generate invoices.

Open QuickBooks. To import the service items, select File > Utilities > Import > IIF Files, and select the service items export file downloaded from Timesheet Portal.

Now import the timer activities. Select File > Utilities > Import > Timer Activities, and select the timer activities export file downloaded from Timesheet Portal

Once the import is complete, you can load up a report to view the data imported


Automatic Generation of invoices & supplier bills

To generate your client invoices, select your client from the Custom Centre, right-click on their name and select Create Invoices

If QuickBooks does not automatically prompt you to create invoices for unbilled time, then you should click the button Add Time/Costs on the bottom of the invoice details. This should import all unbilled items which were imported from Timesheet Portal.

To generate your supplier bills, select your supplier from the Suppliers Centre, right-click on their name and select Enter Bills

By default the Expenses tab is selected. You must now select the Items tab. QuickBooks should then display a message stating 'This name has time data in the company file. Do you want this check or bill to represent the time worked'.

Select the option Yes, and then select the date range of the timesheet entries to import.

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