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QuickBooks Timer

QuickBooks is a popular small business accounting software created by Intuit. It includes a timesheet where the time spent by employees on client jobs can be entered and used for creating invoices. It supports external timer programs used by the employees outside of QuickBooks just for entering the times and exporting them to it. The Android app gbaHours can be used as this kind of timer for QuickBooks.

Before using gbaHours in this way, the bookkeeper must export a Timer Lists file from QuickBooks and you must transfer it to the SD card and import it into gbaHours using the import menu option (see here). This file is a text file with the extension .IIF that contains the company name and lists of employees, clients, projects and jobs. When importing it, gbaHours creates clients, projects and tasks according to the lists. They are marked with the tag #QB# in the notes field and they can coexist with other clients, projects or tasks. The projects and tasks are created globally, since they do not belong to a specific client.

After importing, you just use gbaHours to track your time. With the export menu option (see here), you export a Timer Activity file and send it by email to the bookkeeper who will import it into QuickBooks. You must select the employee name and the time period. You may optionally select just one client, but by default all the clients marked with the tag #QB# in the notes field will be included.

Use of IIF entries

CUST Customers are mapped to clients. If the name includes a job name (separated by a colon), then the job name is mapped to a project of the client.
CLASS Classes are mapped to global projects.
INVITEM If they are of type SERV (service items), they are mapped to global tasks.
EMP The employee names are used for the selection list on the export screen, where you must select the employee for the timer activities.


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