QuickBooks Time Reports: What's Available and How to Run Them

QuickBooks Time offers a broad set of reporting tools that go well beyond basic timesheet totals. For teams trying to reconcile hours, prepare payroll, or audit employee activity, the platform groups its reports into several distinct categories — each accessible from the Reports menu inside the QuickBooks Time interface.

Report Categories at a Glance

The available reports fall into roughly eight families:

Approvals — shows the status of submitted, approved, and unapproved timesheets
Payroll — includes wage reports, payroll hours summaries, and itemized time totals
Logging and Auditing — system-level records of edits, approvals history, and time-off balances
Exports — raw data lists for job codes, users, and groups
Tracking — job costing, GPS coordinates, and hours broken down by date, team member, or job
Exceptions — flags for missing time, short shifts, or unsubmitted timesheets
DCAA — compliance-oriented reporting for Defense Contract Audit Agency requirements

Running an Approvals Report

The Approvals report is one of the most commonly used. To generate it, navigate to the Approvals section inside QuickBooks Time. From there, select the date range and the specific team members you want included, then run the report.

The results display total hours for each person, and you can drill into the individual timesheets behind those totals by selecting the view details option inside the hours total box. Tabs at the top of the window let you filter by hour status — approved, submitted, or unapproved. A panel on the right side breaks each team member’s hours into categories such as regular, overtime, time off, and breaks.

Once timesheets are approved, the data can be exported to payroll software for processing.

Setting Up the Wage Report

The Wage Report requires a bit of preparation. Before it can produce meaningful output, pay rates must be entered for each team member you want included. To do this, go to My Team, select a team member, and enter a Pay Rate in the appropriate field. Repeat this process for every team member who should appear in the report.

After the rates are in place, the report itself lives under Reports, then Payroll, then Wage Report. Without the pay rates configured beforehand, the report will not reflect accurate wage data.

The Payroll Hours Summary by Team Member report is available from the same Payroll submenu and provides a consolidated view of hours worked per person.

Logging and Auditing Reports

The Logging and Auditing category contains several specialized reports useful for compliance and record-keeping:

Approvals History captures all approval and unapproval activity on the account. The date range you select filters by the dates of the timesheets included — not the dates the approvals happened.
Time Off Balances shows each team member’s remaining balance per time-off code. The exported spreadsheet can be adjusted and re-uploaded into QuickBooks Time to update balances.
System Log records all system-level entries.
Timesheet Log tracks all time entries and edits made on the account.
Applicable Large Employer (ALE) calculates total average and monthly hours worked per team member — figures that feed into Affordable Care Act compliance determinations.

Export Reports

The Exports category produces raw lists rather than formatted summaries. Three options are available:

Job Export generates a complete list of all job codes in the account.
User Export produces a list of all team members and their associated details.
Groups and Group Mgrs Export lists all groups along with their assigned group managers.

These exports are useful when you need to review or reorganize your account structure in bulk.

Tracking Reports

Tracking reports focus on where and how time was spent. The Job Costing by Team Member report breaks down labor costs by individual, which is valuable for project-based businesses. The GPS Points report logs all coordinates recorded for each timesheet along with an accuracy approximation.

Additional hours-based reports let you slice time by date, team member, full job code, group, or top-level job. These can be viewed in either list or grid format with various filters applied.

Exceptions Reports

Exceptions reports help managers catch problems before payroll closes. Options include a report listing individuals who worked fewer than a specified number of hours on a given weekday, and another showing team members who have not yet submitted or had their time approved. These are particularly useful as payroll deadlines approach.

For businesses that need to dig into historical data or reconcile time across complex job structures, the combination of tracking, exceptions, and export reports covers most scenarios. If you are also working with QuickBooks company files alongside Time, keeping your job codes and customer lists consistent between the two will make payroll exports smoother.