QuickBooks Time to Gusto exports overwrite hours and skip salaried staff

Payroll teams that run QuickBooks Time alongside Gusto keep tripping over the same set of integration limits. Hours vanish for some workers, salaried staff drop out of the export entirely, and entries already sitting in Gusto get replaced without any prompt. The accepted answer on the topic spells out the rules, and most of the trouble traces back to a handful of them.

The symptoms teams run into

The pattern shows up in familiar ways. Approved time never lands in Gusto for a small group of employees. Time off arrives, but it lands as vacation no matter which code it carried. A shift typed straight into Gusto turns into a zero after the next sync. Two structural limits sit behind several of these reports. The connection does not support multiple pay schedules in Gusto, and archiving a worker in QuickBooks Time leaves that same worker active on the payroll side.

The overwrite rule behind the surprise zeros

Every export replaces what Gusto already holds for the same employee and workday. That covers hours entered by hand in Gusto, and it covers swapping a positive amount for a zero. Anyone who logs a shift manually and then exports that day loses the manual entry.

Timing matters on both ends. QuickBooks Time exports completed weeks only, never partial ones, though approved future timesheets can go across. As long as payroll has not been run in Gusto, hours can be unapproved, corrected, approved again, and re-exported.

The salaried-employee catch

Gusto accepts a short list of hour types for hourly workers: regular hours, overtime, and paid vacation and sick leave. Every other time off code in QuickBooks Time gets merged and sent over as vacation.

Salaried employees face a separate gate. Workers flagged as salary with no overtime, or salary with overtime eligibility, will not export unless the Gusto pay rate is broken down by the hour. Compensation settings matter too. A worker marked as paid by the month or the year stays behind, while one marked as paid by the hour goes through.

Time off, accruals, and one source of truth

Exported hours feed time off accruals inside Gusto, so the two products can drift apart. One Gusto setting blocks the transfer of time off timesheets outright: the option letting employees submit their own time off requests has to be switched off. Balances never flow back into QuickBooks Time to match Gusto. The practical advice is to run accruals in one product only. Keeping the feature on in both invites a slow mismatch between what a worker sees and what payroll pays.

The sequence that completes an export

Admin rights are required to send time across. The import side is quick: from the Gusto menu in QuickBooks Time, choose Import and confirm the prompts. The export side is longer. Choose Export Time from that menu, pick the pay period, and continue. An approval report opens; set the filters, select an open Gusto pay period, and approve all employees or the names you check individually. The last step pushes the approved hours over.

Pay schedule timing prevents a common scramble. In Gusto company details, edit the pay schedule so the pay date falls a few days after the work done period. Three to four days is the suggested cushion for weekends and holidays.

Can hours be fixed after an export?

Sometimes, provided payroll has not completed. The Gusto account manager can cancel the run from payroll history, which frees the period. Back in QuickBooks Time, unapprove the affected hours, correct them, approve them again, and export. The new numbers override whatever Gusto held before. Cancelling a payroll period is the account manager’s call, so get that sign-off first. When an export fails without a clear reason, the sync log under the Gusto menu in QuickBooks Time records what happened on each attempt.

Our read: this connection behaves as a one-way pipe with strict edges. Gusto never learns about archived workers, balances never travel back, and an export always wins against manual entries. Set hourly rates, pick one accrual home, and delay the pay date before the first sync. Most of the failure points disappear once those three settings are settled.