QuickBooks 2008: The Missing Manual

174 QuickBooks 2008: The Missing Manual

Setting Up the

Standalone Timer

Setting Up the Standalone Timer

Copies of QuickBooks aren’t cheap, so chances are that only the people who per-

form 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. In reality, even if you run a one-person consulting shop, you probably

don’t want to run QuickBooks just so you can time your work.

Figure 7-4:

To time your current

activity, the Date field has

to contain today’s date. To

start the stopwatch, click

Start. You’ll see the

seconds that are passing

to the right of the Duration

box to show that it’s timing

your work. If you want to

pause the stopwatch to

take a break or a phone

call, click Pause; simply

click Start to start timing

again. When you finish the

task, click Stop. (Unless

you have special time-

travel powers, you can’t

run a stopwatch for work

performed on a different

day.)

POWER USERS’ CLINIC

Tracking Time Online

Time Tracker is a new add-on service that works with Quick-

Books. Anyone who you set up to track time with the ser-

vice logs into a Web site, fills in a timesheet, and submits it

to you. You don’t have to do their data entry for them. And

they can submit their time from any computer that has

Internet access, so you don’t have to wait for an employee

to get back from a trip to fill in a timesheet. The service even

handles reminding people to submit their time.

You review the timesheets online and then download them

all into QuickBooks in one fell swoop. You can even look at

unsubmitted timesheets if, for instance, someone’s hours

are nearing a limit set by your customer.

The bad news is this service isn’t free. (There had to be a

catch.) The price per month for a single user is $10 (that’s

$120 a year). For five users, the price is $25 per month. If

you have more than 50 users, the price jumps to $150 per

month.

To get the full details, choose Help

➝ Add QuickBooks Ser-

vices. In the QuickBooks Products and Services Web page,

click Time Tracker. Click the Learn More link at the bottom

of the window to go to the Time Tracking Software

Web page (quickbooks.intuit.com/product/add-ons/time-

tracking-software.jhtml).