Linking QuickBooks Time to QuickBooks Online: The Connection Steps Explained

Among the questions that reach our desk, linking QuickBooks Time to QuickBooks Online sits high on the list. Most are not reports of a failure. They come from people parked at a choice screen, unwilling to guess. The link itself rarely breaks. What stalls them is the run of decisions that appears once the two products start talking, and one prompt that demands a typed word before anything moves.

Does the connection start in QuickBooks Time or in the app marketplace?

Both doors lead to the same room, and knowing that removes most of the guesswork. From inside QuickBooks Time, open Feature Add-ons, choose Manage Add-ons, and install the QuickBooks Online integration from the add-on list. Selecting the connect option sends you to the Intuit sign-in page. Sign in, pick the right company if you manage several, and authorize the link when prompted. A confirmation message appears, and the preferences window opens at once.

The marketplace route approaches from the other side. The time tracking app has a listing in Intuit’s app marketplace, and launching setup from there asks you to sign in to QuickBooks Online, choose a company, and either log in to an existing QuickBooks Time account or start a trial. One completed authorization is all the tie requires. Running both routes end to end is unnecessary, because each finishes the same connection.

The preferences window decides what crosses over

Every meaningful data choice happens in that window, so it rewards a slow read.

Employees added to QuickBooks Time before the link existed will not be attached to your QuickBooks account. The setup offers to archive them during the first sync, which keeps the roster from doubling up. Importing customers and jobs pulls every active customer and their jobs across, so staff can track time against them. You can assign those customers to everyone at once or hand them out individually later. Customer addresses travel over as well when present, which feeds the nearby jobs view that groups assignments by location.

Three smaller switches round out the list. Service items become a pick list during time entry. The billable toggle lets an employee flag time as chargeable. Classes arrive as another selectable list. A separate option imports vendors and contractors as time tracking users, which suits teams that pay outside help by the hour.

A typed confirmation guards the first sync

Before the link takes effect, a warning names the items that will be deleted as part of the connection. Agreeing means typing the word delete into an empty box and moving on. That word is the gate. Read the warning slowly, because the lists it names will not come back once syncing begins.

The next screen sets an export cutoff. Timesheets dated before the day you choose will never travel to QuickBooks Online. A cutoff placed at your switchover date leaves historical time exactly where it was.

Can automatic imports be reined in later?

Once the link is live, it imports changes made in QuickBooks on its own. That behavior is adjustable. In the integration preferences, under the automatic import heading, clear the record types you would rather pull across by hand. Clearing the main automatic import option stops the flow altogether. A manual import remains available from the QuickBooks menu in the upper right corner of QuickBooks Time, which suits teams that prefer changes to land only when they choose.

The three spots that slow people down

Hesitation clusters in the same places across the reports we see. The first is the authorization screen, where several company files make the choice feel heavier than it is. The second is the archive decision for existing employees, which reads like a threat until you see that it only tidies the roster. The third is the deletion warning, whose typed confirmation exists to make you pause. None of these are defects. They are guardrails, and the setup moves quickly once you treat them that way.