QuickBooks Workforce hides team timesheets behind one settings switch

A French-Canadian community thread about the QuickBooks Workforce mobile app keeps collecting the same complaint: managers open the app and see only their own hours. The accepted solution, published in French by Intuit’s help team and last updated on August 5, 2026, traces the trouble to a settings switch that ships turned off. The same controls govern approvals, edits, and deletions, and every one of them sits behind that switch.

Where did the team controls go?

The Workforce app opens in a personal view. You see your own timesheets, your own punches, and nothing else. Every tool that touches another person’s hours stays invisible until an account administrator turns on the team area. That single switch sits buried in general settings, and nothing in the app points to it.

To reveal it, open the More menu in the app, choose Settings, then General, and switch on the option that shows the admin team. A Team area appears once the switch is on. From there the permission rule takes over: only account admins or managers may manage another member’s timesheets. A regular team member cannot unlock these tools, because the restriction is tied to the role, not to the app.

One list holds every worker’s hours

With the team area active, the rest of the work happens in one place. Open Time tracking, then Timesheets. The app starts on a personal list of your own sheets. Switch that view to All timesheets and every member’s entries appear. Reviews, approvals, edits, and deletions all begin from this shared list, which is why, in our reading of the thread, people conclude the app lacks these features entirely.

Entering hours without a clock punch

Field and salaried workers do not always punch in and out. The accepted guidance gives managers a direct route: build the timesheet by hand and record a duration instead of a pair of punches. The steps run as follows.

1. Open the Team area in the app, or reach it through the More menu.
2. Pick the team, then the member whose hours you are recording.
3. Choose the clock-in action, and change the entry type from punch times to duration.
4. Set the date and the number of hours.
5. Choose the project or the customer, and complete any required fields.
6. Confirm the entry; the app reports that a timesheet was created for one user.

One caveat matters here. The worker is not placed on the clock by this entry. The timesheet records the hours, but it does not start a live shift. Managers who need live presence should have the worker punch in instead.

Why won’t the app insert a break?

This question produces most of the friction in the thread. Breaks in the Workforce app are manual, and they only attach to entries with a real start punch and a real end punch. A duration entry has no timeline to split, so the break action simply does not apply. The same limit covers paid entries for days not worked, such as time off.

When the entry qualifies, the flow runs as follows.

1. Open the timesheet from the All timesheets list.
2. Choose the More actions on the entry, then the option to insert a break.
3. Set the start time; the app proposes the shift midpoint and refuses times outside the original window.
4. Pick a break type; an unpaid type recalculates the total hours, and a paid type leaves the total alone.
5. Adjust the length if needed, then save the break.

Approving, editing, and deleting from the same screen

The remaining actions share one path, which confuses people who expect a separate approvals dashboard. Open the worker’s timesheet from the All timesheets list first. The actions to approve, reject, edit, or delete sit on that open entry.

Approving accepts the hours as submitted. Rejecting marks the sheet as declined rather than approved, which leaves the correction to a follow-up edit. Editing reopens the timesheet so the times, the duration, the project, or the customer can be fixed and saved in place. Deleting removes the entry outright, the right call when hours landed on the wrong person or day.

The role rule covers all four actions. An admin or a manager performs them on someone else’s sheet; everyone else reaches only their own. The vendor’s guidance groups every operation under that shared list, so the visibility of the list is the crux.

A design choice, not a bug

None of this suggests a broken app. The personal view keeps ordinary team members out of payroll data, and the role check keeps that boundary firm. The break limit follows from the data itself: a break needs a start and an end to sit between.

So the diagnosis runs in a fixed order. Check the switch first, then your role, then the entry type. When the team area is missing or a break refuses to insert, one of those three explains it. The accepted solution lands on the same practical ground, and the thread’s reports bear it out.