The QuickBooks workforce management software is an in-house solution for small business owners in the United States. It’s one of many services offered by Intuit, but it’s definitely one of their most popular ones. The Workforce Management tool lets you control when your employees work and allows them to clock in/out through their computers, tablets, or mobile devices. It gives managers easy access to their employee’s schedule, upcoming shifts, and full reporting capabilities.
The system is based on billing hours instead of employees. For example, if one person works two jobs for four hours each during a week, the client only pays for 8 billable hours (instead of 40). QuickBooks provides a feature for managers called “Override Time,” which lets you adjust an employee’s schedule if needed. For example, if one of your employees works 4 hours at Job A and 2 hours at Job B during a given week, and they request (or management approves) overtime, you’d add another job to the list in the workforce system in order to avoid paying them even more money.
QuickBooks’ workforce software is used by over one million organizations, including some of the biggest corporations in the world.
How Does QuickBooks Workforce Work?
Every user is required to create a free account in order to use the product. There are separate accounts for managers and employees. Managers sign into their QuickBooks account and can add employees by either typing in their email address or selecting them from a list (provided they’re already using QuickBooks). Once added, managers will have access to their entire schedule. They can add new shifts, delete others, and easily edit a shift if need be by clicking the “pencil” icon in the upper right corner of each shift block.
Employees have their own dashboard where they see when they work next. Each job is listed with the day and time it starts, so employees know when they need to be there. The system will automatically track the hours they clock in and out of each job, so you’ll know how many hours an employee worked each week.
Each manager and employee has a profile that contains their email address (and other information like phone number and location), assigned jobs, weekly/monthly earnings, hire date, and more. If you make any changes to their account (like adding a new job), it’ll be automatically updated across everyone’s profile, so every employee will know about it.
Setting Up QuickBooks Workforce
The first step of the setup process is choosing your staff size. You can either mark your staff as “Full Time Only” (meaning they can work no more than 40 hours/week) or “All Hours” (it doesn’t matter how many hours they work). If you chose to go with the latter, Intuit will create separate profiles for employees once per pay period. For example, if your business is only open 10 hours/day and you have ten employees, they’ll all have two profile pages in the system (one for 10/week and one for 20/week).
Does QuickBooks Workforce Cost Extra?
Yes, the system costs extra money. The first two users are free for the first 30 days of use (meaning you can try it out completely risk-free). After that, you’ll have to pay $5/user/month. A user is either a manager or an employee. There’s no way to switch between them after they’re created, so you’ll have to manually create a new user if you need an additional manager or employee.
FAQs About Working With QuickBooks Workforce
The workforce system is completely web-based, which means you’ll never have to worry about losing data due to computer crashes or misplaced/damaged CDs/DVDs. The software is compatible with most browsers (including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari) on both Windows and Mac. You can access your account on an iPhone or Android device as well.
It’s easy to print out reports for managers so they can see how many hours employees have worked each week/month/year, who the top earners are, etc. You’ll be able to see this from all areas of the software. There’s also a helpful dashboard that shows you how many hours employees have worked in the last 2 weeks/month/year, their average earnings per hour, and more.
The system lets you add multiple jobs for employees – it doesn’t matter whether they’re paid by the hour, shift, or commission. The time they clock in and out is automatically tracked, so you’ll know exactly how much they worked each week/month/year.
QuickBooks Workforce lets managers send shift reminders to their employees via email or text message. Plus, there are also features that let you keep track of shift trades, fill empty shifts, and message everyone in your workforce at once (if you need to make a company-wide announcement).
The software will automatically calculate the earnings of each employee based on how many hours they worked. Intuit does charge extra for this, though. If you only want the time tracking feature, it’s free; however, if you want employees’ earnings tracked as well, you’ll have to pay $5/user/month.