QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Setting Up the Standalone Timer

Copies of QuickBooks aren't cheap, so chances are only the people who perform your bookkeeping have access to the QuickBooks software. Meanwhile, dozens of people might perform billable work and need a way to track the time they spend.

The Timer is a program that runs independently of QuickBooks (Pro, Premier, and Enterprise Editions only). You can send this program to anyone whose time is important to you and track their time without spending more money on QuickBooks licenses. With the Timer, people can track their time as they work with a stopwatch mode or enter the time they work after they finish. They send the data captured by the Timer program to you to load into your QuickBooks company file for billing or payroll.

Here're the tasks you must perform to let other people use Timer and to load the time they send you into your company file.

Exporting Lists for Timer Users

Your QuickBooks company file contains all sorts of information that you need for tracking time:

• Your customers and jobs.

• The people who perform work.

• The items that represent the work they do.

• The classes you use to track work in other ways.

The Timer program needs all this information to function, so you have to send several lists from your company file to people who use the Timer. If you export these lists before you distribute the Timer software, you can include the export file along with the installation software.

Figure 17-5. Once you've seen this dialog box, you probably don't need ...