How to track billable hours for QuickBooks Online

Updated 2026-10-28 · Written by the Feestead team

If you invoice clients from QuickBooks Online, the hours have to get there somehow. There are two ways: track time inside QuickBooks, or track it in a time tracker and bring invoice lines over. Here's how each works, and when to pick which.

Option 1: track billable time inside QuickBooks Online

Good for a few people billing a handful of clients. Intuit's help article on billable time lists QuickBooks Online Essentials and Plus.

1. Turn on billable time.
   Settings›Account and settings›Time›Timesheet›Allow time to be billable
2. Set up jobs (optional): to bill time per job, add each job as a sub-customer under the client and tick Bill parent customer.
3. Record time: + New → Single time activity for one entry, or Weekly timesheet for a week. Pick the person and customer, tick Billable (per hour) and enter the rate.
4. Invoice: create an invoice for that customer. The saved billable time appears as lines you can add.

Where it gets hard: time is entered per customer and week, and there are no hour budgets per project or team utilization views like in a dedicated time tracker. A running timer and mobile clock-in come with QuickBooks Time, a separate subscription.

Option 2: track time in a time tracker, import invoice lines

Better for agencies and consulting teams: people track against projects and tasks with the right rates, and QuickBooks only receives the finished invoice lines. In Feestead, Reports → Invoice lines CSV exports unbilled billable time grouped by client, project, task and rate:

1. Export Invoice lines CSV for the billing period. Invoice numbers and due dates are already filled in. Using your own numbering? Replace the numbers in the file, keeping one number per invoice.
2. In QuickBooks:
   Settings›Import data›Invoices›Upload a file
   Map the columns, then review and import.
3. Back in Feestead, mark the exported time as invoiced. It locks, so the billed hours can't change afterwards.

QuickBooks import limits to know: up to 1,000 rows and 100 invoices per file; customers and products or services should exist first (there's an option to add new customers; unknown items fall back to a generic "sales" item); and invoice import doesn't work if sales tax is set up in the account. In that case, create the invoice in QuickBooks and copy the totals from the CSV.

Which one should you use?

Leaving Harvest? Feestead imports your full Harvest history and checks every project against Harvest first. See agency time tracking or keep a spreadsheet for now with our free billable hours template.

FAQ

Sources: Intuit help articles Enter billable time by job and Import multiple invoices, checked October 2026.