Billing Your Time in QuickBooks

There are four ways QuickBooks offers you to bill your time; a summary of activities by service item, a detail with item descriptions by service date, a detail with by activity notes by service date, and a detail with both item descriptions and notes in date order.   Let's start with entering your time into QuickBooks.  It can be entered a single activity at a time either using QuickBooks or by using a timekeeping applet that can be installed on remote computers and transferred into QuickBooks.  The single activity form is shown below.

It can also be entered into a weekly timesheet either using QuickBooks or using online timekeeping and transferring it into QuickBooks. The weekly timesheet form is shown below.

Once time has been entered you are ready to create an invoice for it.  To review and select from a list of all unbilled time and expenses, select "Invoice for Time and Expenses" from the "Customers" menu. Select from a list by Customer and Jobs and then select "Create Invoice" and "Selected Items". 

Note the "Options" icon at the top of the screen.  Select this to see your invoicing options.
You can combine activities with the same service item and rates or have a separate line item for each activity which can contain just the notes, the item description, or both.  Examples of each select are shown below.
The sample below is a detailed activity report with notes only.

The sample below is a detailed activity report with item descriptions only.

The sample below is a detailed activity report with both item descriptions and notes.

The sample below is a summary by item.

Robert Guild is certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor in Austin, TX who conducts CPE courses for CPAs and individual training and group classes to QuickBooks users. His company at www.QBCoach.biz, maintains a sixteen-station QuickBooks lab, providing hands-on training. You can contact him directly at rguild@QBCoach.biz or follow him on twitter at QBPro