Best QuickBooks Time Tracking Apps for Hourly Teams (2026)

Most time tracking apps say they work with QuickBooks. The phrase covers three different things: pushing approved hours into payroll, sending invoices, or handing you a file to import yourself. Which one you need depends on whether you’re paying employees or billing clients.

This guide ranks the best QuickBooks time tracking apps for hourly teams. For each one, you’ll see which QuickBooks versions it supports, how hours reach QuickBooks, and what it costs at 10 and 25 employees. Hourly pay is the norm in the U.S. More than 80 million workers were paid hourly in 2024, or 55.6% of all wage and salary workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A shorter section covers tools built for billable hours and project billing.

The best QuickBooks time tracking app depends on whether you’re paying employees or billing clients, and which QuickBooks version you run. Here’s the short list.

A payroll integration moves employee hours into QuickBooks, by sync or by export, so you can pay wages. An invoicing integration sends tracked time or finished invoices into QuickBooks so you can bill clients. Most apps are built for one or the other, so decide which job you’re hiring the tool to do before you compare features.

Restaurants, salons, retail shops, and clinics almost always need a payroll integration. Consultants and agencies billing by the hour need an invoicing integration. Clockify offers both through separate integrations, so it gets its own entry near the end of this guide.

Start here if you want the short version. The first table shows how each tool gets hours into QuickBooks, which QuickBooks versions it supports, and whether it has a free plan. The second shows what each costs.

Two details are easy to miss. Homebase and Connecteam move hours through an export rather than a continuous sync, and only some tools support QuickBooks Desktop. Two terms show up often: geofencing limits clock-in to a set area around your location, and the Web Connector is an Intuit tool that moves data between QuickBooks Desktop and other apps.

These figures cover time tracking only, use monthly billing, and reflect vendor pricing pages as of October 31, 2026. Each tool prices differently, so the table shows what a team of 10 and a team of 25 would pay.

A few notes on reading it:

At 10 and 25 employees, Homebase Essentials is the lowest-priced paid option in the table, because the price is flat per location and doesn’t grow with headcount. OnTheClock costs less only for teams of six or fewer. Essentials also adds scheduling, team messaging, and the QuickBooks export, and Homebase Payroll is available as an add-on when you want to stop exporting.

Homebase publishes this guide, so here is how we compared every tool, ours included. We used each vendor’s own pricing pages and help documentation as of October 31, 2026, and we note where we fall short.

We judged each app on four things:

Approved hours export from Homebase in a QuickBooks-ready format with no retyping, and Homebase Payroll sends approved time straight into payroll with no export at all. Where we don’t fit, our section says so: our QuickBooks integration works with QuickBooks Online Plus only.

Homebase is a time clock, scheduler, team messenger, and payroll option in one app. It’s built for hourly teams at fixed locations like restaurants, retail shops, salons, and clinics. Your team clocks in on a phone, tablet, computer, or point-of-sale (POS) system. Managers approve timesheets, and the hours export to QuickBooks Online Plus in a format QuickBooks can read.

What you get

How the QuickBooks export works

The export is manual, not an automatic sync. It’s available on Essentials and higher, and the free Basic plan doesn’t include it. The QuickBooks integration page and this step-by-step setup guide walk through the details.

Know the limits before you commit:

The no-export option

If you’d rather skip the export, Homebase Payroll sends approved time straight into payroll and files taxes for you. It’s a separate add-on from the QuickBooks integration, so you’d run payroll in Homebase instead of QuickBooks.

“The seamless way the data goes over to Quickbooks and I can run payroll with a couple button clicks is great.”

Keith Zimmerman, owner, Plum Creek Farm

Pros and cons

Pricing: Basic is free for one location and up to 10 employees, without the QuickBooks export. Essentials is $30 per location per month, Plus is $70, and All-in-One is $120, all with unlimited employees. Annual billing saves 20%. Payroll is $49 per month plus $6 per paid employee. Homebase currently offers six months of Payroll and Plus free, with terms.

Best for: hourly teams at fixed locations that run QuickBooks Online Plus and want scheduling, time tracking, and an optional payroll add-on in one place.

Connecteam is a team management app with a time clock, scheduling, chat, and forms that works as a QuickBooks time tracker. Its time clock matches employees to their QuickBooks profiles and exports timesheets to QuickBooks Online in two clicks.

Key features

QuickBooks details

Connecteam works with QuickBooks two ways. The QuickBooks Online integration exports timesheets directly. For QuickBooks Desktop, Connecteam creates an IIF file that you import yourself, which is a manual file export rather than an integration.

Pricing: The Small Business plan is free for businesses with fewer than 10 employees. A Limited plan is available after the 14-day trial for businesses with more than 10 but fewer than 30 employees, with restricted features. Paid Basic is $29 per month billed annually or $35 monthly for the first 30 users, and includes GPS clock-in and out, payroll integration, and basic scheduling. Check that the free plan includes the QuickBooks connection before you commit.

Pros and cons

Best for: teams of fewer than 10 that want a free plan to start, if the free tier includes the QuickBooks connection.

Buddy Punch is a QuickBooks time tracker built for hourly employees, with GPS punches, photo verification, and break rules. It connects to both QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop.

Key features by plan

QuickBooks details

Pricing: Starter is $4.99 per user per month billed annually or $5.99 monthly, plus a $19 base fee. Pro and Advanced list at $6.99 and $12.99 per user, also plus the $19 base fee. A 14-day trial is available.

Pros and cons

Best for: hourly teams that run QuickBooks Desktop, or that want GPS and break rules tied to payroll.

ClockShark is a QuickBooks time tracker built for crews that move between job sites. GPS breadcrumb trails show where a crew member traveled during a shift, offline clock-in works in areas with poor signal, and job costing tracks labor by project.

Key features

QuickBooks details: ClockShark’s own guide covers QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop. The integration syncs approved timesheet data into QuickBooks for payroll. ClockShark also offers time and job reports that teams use for invoicing, but those are reports, not an invoice sync.

Pricing: Standard is $42 per month plus $9.50 per user. Pro is $63 plus $11.50. A 14-day trial is available.

Pros and cons

Best for: construction and field service crews. If ClockShark isn’t the right fit, here are some ClockShark alternatives.

QuickBooks Time is Intuit’s own time tracking app for QuickBooks, formerly TSheets. It integrates with QuickBooks Online, so employee, customer, and project data stay consistent across both.

Key features

QuickBooks details: Intuit’s pricing page lists a separate QuickBooks Online subscription as a requirement. Intuit also supports QuickBooks Desktop, except Desktop for Mac, through the Web Connector, and recommends a direct method for U.S. QuickBooks Desktop 2021 or later. Confirm with Intuit which setup applies to you.

Pricing: Premium is $20 per month plus $10 per user. Elite is $40 plus $12. The base fee includes one administrator. Eligible new customers can get 50% off the base fee for the first three months, which is a promotion, not a free trial. These prices exclude the QuickBooks Online subscription.

Pros and cons

Best for: teams already running payroll in Intuit’s ecosystem. For a closer look, see how Homebase compares with QuickBooks Time.

OnTheClock is a straightforward QuickBooks time tracker with GPS on every plan, plus scheduling, job costing, and payroll exports. Its QuickBooks connection requires QuickBooks Online. OnTheClock’s help article says QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Self-Employed aren’t supported.

Key features

Pricing: $5 per month plus $4 per employee. The optional payroll add-on is $40 per month plus $6 per employee, with a one-time $250 migration fee. A 30-day free trial is available.

Pros and cons

Best for: small teams on QuickBooks Online that want GPS clock-in at the lowest monthly cost.

Not every QuickBooks integration moves employee hours. These three tools send tracked time or invoices to QuickBooks Online for client billing.

Toggl Track turns tracked time into invoices and sends them to QuickBooks Online. It doesn’t sync employee timesheets to payroll. The integration needs a paid plan, and per Toggl’s pricing page Starter is $9 per user per month and Premium is $16. Once an invoice is sent, changes in one system don’t update the other.

Harvest copies its invoices into QuickBooks Online and can copy client payments too. It’s an invoicing and accounting integration, not a payroll one. The free plan covers one seat and two projects. Teams includes the QuickBooks integration and is $9 per seat per month billed annually or $11 monthly.

Clockify sends tracked time entries to QuickBooks Online on its Standard plan or higher ($5.49 per seat billed annually, $6.99 monthly). The standard integration doesn’t work with QuickBooks accounts that have Payroll turned on. For those, Clockify sells a separate QuickBooks Payroll add-on for $6.99 per workspace per month, which also requires Standard or higher. Neither option supports QuickBooks Desktop or QuickBooks Online Simple Start.

Buddy Punch, ClockShark, and QuickBooks Time support QuickBooks Desktop (QuickBooks Time excludes Desktop for Mac), and Connecteam offers a manual IIF file export for Desktop. Homebase, OnTheClock, Toggl Track, Harvest, and Clockify do not support Desktop. Confirm your exact QuickBooks version and edition before you subscribe.

Restaurants need hours tied to sales. Homebase connects to POS systems including Toast, Square, and Clover, so you can track labor cost against sales. Approved hours then export to QuickBooks Online Plus for payroll prep.

“And then it needs to connect to QuickBooks so I can do payroll. Homebase had everything that I needed and was a good price.”

Luanne Ronquillo, owner and founder, Ruru Baked

See all of Homebase’s POS and payroll integrations.

Retail shops on Shopify, Square, or Clover can pair the same POS data with Homebase scheduling and timesheets, then export approved hours to QuickBooks Online Plus.

ClockShark and Buddy Punch both pair GPS verification with QuickBooks Desktop or Online support, which matters for crews moving between job sites.

Consultants and agencies invoicing clients should look at Toggl Track, Harvest, or Clockify.

Homebase prices per location and connects each location to QuickBooks separately. QuickBooks syncs with only one Homebase location at a time, so hours for team members who split time across sites need extra handling. If most of your team works at more than one site, compare how each tool handles multi-site rosters before you commit.

QuickBooks includes limited time entry for billing, and Intuit sells QuickBooks Time as a separate paid product for employee clock-ins, GPS tracking, and scheduling. QuickBooks Time requires an active QuickBooks Online subscription, which is billed separately. Many hourly businesses pair QuickBooks with a dedicated time clock app instead.

Connect your time tracking app to QuickBooks, match employees, approve timesheets, then sync or export hours. Some tools push approved hours automatically. Others, including Homebase on Essentials and up, give you a QuickBooks-formatted export to download after you approve timesheets. Confirm which QuickBooks edition the app supports first, since many work with QuickBooks Online only.

Connecteam’s Small Business plan is free for businesses with fewer than 10 employees, but confirm it includes the QuickBooks connection. Among paid options, OnTheClock lists a $5 base fee plus $4 per user, and Homebase Essentials, the plan with the QuickBooks export, is $30 per location per month with unlimited employees.

No. Homebase integrates with QuickBooks Online Plus only. It does not support QuickBooks Desktop or the Simple Start and Essentials editions of QuickBooks Online. If you use Desktop, look at tools that list Desktop support, such as Buddy Punch or ClockShark, and confirm the details with the vendor.

Buddy Punch, ClockShark, and QuickBooks Time support QuickBooks Desktop (QuickBooks Time excludes Desktop for Mac), and Connecteam offers a manual IIF file export for Desktop. Homebase, OnTheClock, Toggl Track, Harvest, and Clockify do not support Desktop. Confirm your exact QuickBooks version and edition before you subscribe.

Yes, with limits. Connecteam’s Small Business plan is free for businesses with fewer than 10 employees, but confirm it includes the QuickBooks connection. Homebase Basic is free but doesn’t include the QuickBooks export, which starts on Essentials. Toggl Track and Clockify need paid plans for their QuickBooks integrations.

A payroll integration moves employee hours into QuickBooks so you can pay wages. An invoicing integration sends tracked time or finished invoices into QuickBooks so you can bill clients. The six time clock apps in this guide support payroll workflows. Toggl Track and Harvest focus on invoicing. Clockify does both, with a separate add-on for QuickBooks Payroll.

Start with three checks: how the hours get into QuickBooks, which QuickBooks version you run, and whether you’re paying employees or billing clients. Then price the full setup, including base fees, payroll add-ons, and the QuickBooks subscription itself.

If you run an hourly team at one or more fixed locations, Homebase gives you a time clock, timesheet approvals, and scheduling in one app. You can export to QuickBooks, or run payroll in Homebase and skip the export. If you’re still adding up hours by hand, the free time card calculator is a good place to start. You can also try Homebase free and see how the QuickBooks export fits the way you run payroll.