Timecard Submission Process

Timecard entries can be entered daily or all at once at the end of the week. The entries represent one block of time on any given job on any given day. One entry per day and one job per entry and the entries have their status set to “Pending”. Employees can always review their pending timecard entries in the Employee dashboard and also on the timecard entry page, below the form. They can edit the entries any time as long as they are pending. Employees cannot delete timecards, but they can simply repurpose (edit all the info) or zero out the hours and put a “DELETE” comment in the notes so a manager or administrator can delete them.

Weekly submissions just trigger a notification to the manager to process the entries.

Processing Pending Timecards

When a weekly timecard submission is emailed to the manager, it will include a link to a filtered list of pending timecard entries for that employee. This list would be exported to a CSV file which can be opened in Excel and/or imported into QuickBooks. There are two process options to get the timecards into the accounting system:

• When the manager completes the approval process, they can generate the export file themselves and send it to the Accounting Manager, who would transfer the entries into Quickbooks OR
• The manager can just email the Accounting Manager to let them know the timecards have been approved for processing and the Accounting Manager would log into the website and generate the export file themself and transfer the entries into Quickbooks.

To export the list, first make sure you filter for Status=Approved, then simply click the Export button at the top of the page:

This will prompt you for a save location and works just like any browser download action.

Once you have successfully imported or processed the pending timecards into Quickbooks, you will need to change their status’ to “Completed”. To do this, you can use the bulk editing feature:

• Click the Select All checkbox (be sure you are working with the filtered list of Approved timecards)
• You will see the Bulk Edit button above each column. Click the one for the Submission Status column. Change the status and click the Update button and confirm.
  

IMPORTANT: This process relies on these status filtering and changes. If you fail to change the status of a timecard to Completed after it has been recorded in Quickbooks, you may end up duplicating entries and double-paying employees. To be clear, the statuses are:

• Pending: This is the default status when an employee creates the entry. Typically, no timecards should remain in this status beyond one payroll cycle.
• Approved: This is what the manager needs to set the status to when the timecard has been reviewed and approved. If there is an issue with the timecard, the manager should make the edits before approving or contact the employee and have them make the corrections and the manager can approve it when it is resubmitted. *Once a timecard is approved, the employee will no longer have access to view or edit it in their Employee Dashboard.
• Completed: This indicates that the timecard has been entered into Quickbooks. This is the end of the line for the timecard entries. These will accumulate rapidly, so there may be a need to archive or delete these in the near future.

Regarding Quickbooks entry – at the time of launch, we were unable to setup a direct import process into Quickbooks. The exported csv file would have to be converted into a Quickbooks compatible file format (iif) and there did not appear to be a simple way for the Accounting Manager to do that. This leaves the process with a manual, line-by-line transfer of the timecard entries into Quickbooks and the possibility of error in that process. Compared to the old process with an inconsistent inflow of timecard formats and methods on top of the manual transfer, this should still be an improved, more efficient process as long as the basic functions – primarily status changes – are completed properly. I would still recommend contacting Intuit or a Quickbooks consultant to see if they can help facilitate the ability to just take the timecard export csv file and import it directly into Quickbooks.