QuickBooks Time review (2026): pricing, features and who it's for

Our verdict

Check your payroll plan before you buy this. Time tracking is already included with the Workforce Premium and Workforce Elite payroll tiers, so a shop on either of those is about to pay twice for the same feature. Log in and look first. It is the cheapest thing you can do today.

If you are not on those tiers, the sums are these. Premium is $20 a month plus $10 per user, so five people cost $70. Elite is $40 plus $12, which puts the same five at $100. Both per-user fees went up $2 on July 1, 2026. A QuickBooks Online plan is needed on top of either one, so this is two subscriptions, not one, and the sticker price is never your whole cost.

Our call: it earns its place when your books already sit in QuickBooks Online and you want approved hours flowing into payroll and invoices without anyone retyping. That single connection is the reason to choose it over a better standalone crew app. If your accounting lives anywhere else, you also have to buy a QuickBooks Online plan. That makes this an expensive way to get a time clock, and a crew app built for the trades will serve you better.

What works

Approved hours drop into QuickBooks payroll and invoices with no retyping
A manager can clock a whole crew in from one phone or a shared tablet
GPS location is stamped on clock-ins on both plans, not only on Elite
Month to month with no minimum term, so you can cancel any time
Overtime alerts warn you as someone approaches 40 hours for the week

What to watch

You need a QuickBooks Online plan on top of the time tracking bill
Job costing and project reporting are Elite only, at $40 plus $12 per user
Geofencing needs Elite, so Premium cannot stop an early clock-in
The 30-day trial covers the base fee but not the per-user fees
Support is chat or a callback on weekdays, with no published phone line

Are you already paying for this?

Intuit sells time tracking twice. It is a paid product on its own, and it is bundled into the two upper payroll tiers. Workforce Premium is $88 a month plus $10 per employee. Workforce Elite is $134 plus $12. Time tracking comes with both.

So before you compare anything, open your account and see which payroll plan you are on. A five-person shop that buys Premium payroll and then adds this separately is spending $70 a month, or $840 a year, on something already sitting in the plan.

The reverse is worth checking too. If you are on the base payroll plan and thinking about buying time tracking, price the upgrade. Base payroll plus this product, at five people, is $82.50 plus $70, which is $152.50 a month. Workforce Premium at five people is $138 and includes the tracking. Moving up costs less than bolting on, and it gives you same-day deposit and local tax filing as well.

Two subscriptions, and a trial that covers the smaller half

The pricing page states plainly that a QuickBooks Online account is needed to use QuickBooks Time. Whatever you pay for accounting is part of the price of this tool. Any comparison that puts $20 a month next to a standalone crew app is leaving out a subscription.

The base fee covers one admin. Everybody else is a per-user fee. Five people on Premium is $20 plus $50, so $70 a month, or $840 a year. Ten people is $120 a month. On Elite, five people is $100 and ten is $160.

The free 30-day trial applies to the monthly base fee and does not cover the per-employee fees. On a five-person crew, the base fee is under a third of the bill, so the trial is a discount rather than a free month. Read that before you plan around it. The commitment itself is light: month to month, cancel any time, which is a genuine advantage over time tracking tools in this category that ask you to sign for years.

GPS is on both plans, the fence is not

Crews clock in and out from a phone with GPS location attached on both paid plans. What Premium does not get is geofencing and the live who-is-working view. Those are Elite features, at $40 a month plus $12 per user.

The difference matters more than it sounds. GPS tells you afterwards where someone was when they punched. A geofence stops the punch happening until they reach the site. If your problem is a tech clocking in from the driveway at home, Premium records the problem and Elite prevents it. For five users that gap is $30 a month, or $360 a year.

Job costing splits the same way. Premium tracks time against customers and job codes. The reporting that shows what a job ate against what you estimated is Elite only. So a shop buying this specifically to find out which jobs lose money should budget for Elite from the start, at $100 a month for five people, plus the accounting plan underneath.

Clocking in a crew, and where the hours land

A manager or admin can select a whole crew and clock them in from one phone, switch their jobs, put them on break and clock them out. There is also a kiosk mode: a shared tablet at the shop where each person taps a 4-digit PIN. Between the two, a crew where half the guys do not want an app on their own phone still gets tracked.

Only an admin or a manager can manage another person's time, which is the right default and worth knowing when you set up who gets which role.

The payoff is at the other end. Approved hours flow into QuickBooks for payroll and for invoicing, so a tech's Tuesday becomes both a paycheck line and a billable line without anyone typing it twice. If your books are in QuickBooks Online, no other time tracking tool gets that close. That is the whole case for this product, and it is a strong one for the right shop.

Support, and how we reached this call

Support runs by chat or a callback request through your QuickBooks account, weekdays 6am to 6pm Pacific. Intuit does not publish a direct number for this product, so plan on a callback rather than reaching someone mid-crisis. Day to day the software is easy enough; the fiddly part owners describe is setup, especially adding people, sorting permissions and handling time-off approvals. Setup is easier if you are already inside QuickBooks Online, which you have to be anyway.

We should be straight about what is behind this review. Owner reports on this tool are thin: plenty of trade owners mention QuickBooks for invoicing and books, few say much about the time tracking product on its own. So our read rests on the vendor's own documentation and dated pricing rather than on owner accounts. We would rather say that than imply a verdict from owners we do not have.

Where that leaves you. Buy it if your books are in QuickBooks Online, your crew clocks in at customer sites, and you want the hours to reach payroll and invoices untouched. Buy Elite, not Premium, if you need the geofence or job profitability. Skip it if your accounting is somewhere else, because you would also be buying a QuickBooks Online plan, which turns a $70 time clock into a much bigger monthly number. Skip it too if you are on Workforce Premium or Elite payroll already, because you have it, and nobody at Intuit is going to call and tell you so.

How we researched this

Pricing comes from the vendor's pricing page, or for quote-only tools from dated user-reported figures, current as of the review date. Owner quotes are verbatim, from real practitioner discussions, with the source linked. We don't take payment for placement.

Last reviewed: August 2026