QuickBooks Time team setup hinges on your QuickBooks Online plan

A familiar question keeps surfacing among QuickBooks Time users: where exactly do you add people, and why will a new hire’s account not open? The accepted community answer, credited to Intuit, settles both points at once. Your QuickBooks Online plan decides which door you use, and an invitation decides when the account starts working. We have traced the full answer, and it is shorter than the confusion around it suggests.

Your QuickBooks Online plan decides where the roster lives

The fork in the road is the subscription. Essentials, Plus, Advanced, and Accountant users manage team members from inside QuickBooks Online, and so do Payroll Premium and Payroll Elite subscribers. Everyone else manages the roster within Time itself. The confusion is predictable, because the same task lives in two different places. From the online side, the entry point sits under All apps, then Time, then Time team.

Can a team member sign in without an invitation?

No. The accepted answer is firm on this point: a person must be invited to Time before they can set up or use their account. The invitation is the entire gate.

When it lands, the recipient either creates an Intuit account or signs in with one they already hold. They arrive in their Time account, meet a short video tutorial, and receive a welcome email with training material. If a new hire cannot get in, the invitation status is the first thing to check.

How do you invite the whole team at once?

Bulk invitations begin from My Team in Time. Open the Add team members dropdown and choose Send invitations. You then see everyone who has not been invited, plus anyone whose invitation is still outstanding. Only people with an email address on file appear at all, which is worth knowing before you begin. Everyone listed is selected for you by default. Deselect the names you want to skip, or clear the whole set and pick again, then confirm the batch.

Resending one invitation

For one person, the route is shorter. Open My Team, select the team member, and in the General area choose Send Invite or Resend Invite, then Send. Which button you see reflects whether an invitation has already gone out. That covers the common case where a single email went astray while everyone else is already in and working.

Adding people manually, with three roles

Manual entry also sits under My Team. Open the same Add team members dropdown and choose Add manually. You enter the person’s details and assign one of three roles: Administrator, Worker, or Payroll Manager. Custom roles and later role changes belong to the permissions topic, a separate exercise. Supply an email address and tick the invite option, and the invitation goes out together with the record rather than afterwards.

Employees and contractors from inside QuickBooks Online

On the plans that manage the roster online, the Add team members dropdown offers two options. Add employee takes a short form with required fields. Add contractor works differently: you first choose an existing supplier record by its display name, then complete the remaining fields. The employee and contractor split matters later, at payroll time, so pick the right type at the start.

Moving a roster in from another system

Teams arriving from other software can be uploaded in bulk. The accepted answer names ADP RUN, Gusto, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, and Square as supported sources, with the online edition on the list as well. Users on that side can simply add their people there. Every roster task, uploads included, starts from the My Team screen in Time.

The short version

Three rules cover nearly every case. The plan picks the door: manage the list inside QuickBooks Online on the plans named above, or inside Time otherwise. The invitation opens the account: nothing works until it is sent and accepted. The email address is the prerequisite: without one on file, no invitation can go out. Hold those three in mind and the roster stops being the puzzle it seemed.