QuickBooks Workforce cannot track time until an admin enables it in QuickBooks Time

Team members signing in to QuickBooks Workforce sometimes find an app that will show their hours but refuse to record them. The clock in and clock out controls are missing, and reinstalling the app changes nothing. We traced the complaint to a thread on the vendor’s Australian help pages, and the accepted solution names one root cause. The Workforce app has no settings of its own. Every permission that governs it sits in the QuickBooks Time web dashboard, and only a Time admin can change them.

Sign-in works, tracking does not

Mobile time entry is the permission behind the missing buttons. When it is off, a team member can still sign in and view recorded time on the phone. The option to track anything from the device is gone. The app is not faulty in this state; it is doing exactly what the account permits. That distinction matters, because the fixes people reach for first, such as reinstalling or signing out and back in, touch nothing.

The settings live in QuickBooks Time, not in Workforce

The accepted answer, credited to Intuit, lists the controls a Time admin must manage. They span mobile time entry, GPS setup and permissions, timesheet submission, geofencing, notifications, who’s working permissions, and the mobile device time zone. One further item sits apart from that list. Anyone who wants team members to add or request time off inside the app must grant that permission while setting up time off. Skip it and the time off options never appear for staff, even when everything else works.

Mobile time entry is the master switch

To open tracking for everyone at once, the admin opens Company Settings, selects Time Options, then Time Entry. Two checkboxes sit on that screen, and their relationship trips people up. The first, allowing team members to track time on the mobile app, is the direct switch for the phone’s clock buttons. The second, allowing team members to manage their own timesheets, is broader. Saving it also switches on mobile time entry across the whole account. The first checkbox then greys out, both in Company Settings and in each person’s permissions. A greyed box here is not an error. It means the account-wide setting now controls that option, so the individual copy cannot be edited until the broader setting is unticked.

One precedence rule governs the whole panel. Manually changing an individual’s permissions overrides the account-wide settings for that person. The accepted answer flags this explicitly, because a stray per-person edit explains many cases where one phone behaves differently from the rest.

Granting access one person at a time

Where only some staff should track time from phones, the admin reverses the account-wide choice first. In Time Entry, untick the box for self-managed timesheets, untick the mobile tracking box, then save. Next, open My Team, select the person, and open their Permissions tab. Tick Mobile time entry and save. A second tick on Manage my timesheets gives that person control of their sheet from any device, computer or phone. The admin then repeats the sequence for each additional person who needs it.

Location tracking, required or optional

GPS follows the same admin-only pattern. Under Company Settings, then Location, then Tracking, the admin picks one of two modes. Required mode forces location services on before the phone will record any time. Optional mode leaves that decision with your team members. The remaining panel items, geofencing among them, work the same way. They are configured for the account, not chosen in the app. The mobile device time zone setting, also admin-managed, keeps time stamps consistent when staff work across regions.

The takeaway

The pattern holds across every item in the accepted answer. Workforce behaves the way the Time dashboard tells it to. When a whole team cannot track time, check the account-wide checkboxes in Time Entry first. When one person cannot, look at their Permissions tab. And when a greyed checkbox blocks an edit, the broader self-service setting is holding it in place.