How timesheet hours reach payroll

Hours reach payroll one of two ways. Someone exports a file and loads it, or the two products are connected. Per Wikipedia, timesheets were originally developed so an employer could calculate payroll. They are also used for client billing and project costing.¹

What payroll needs from the timesheet

• Person. Who worked.
• Period. The dates that match your pay cycle.
• Hours by type. Regular, overtime, leave and so on, if your payroll tool pays them differently.
• Final status. Approved hours only.

What payroll does next, such as applying pay rates, overtime rules, tax and super or pension, belongs to your payroll product and to the law where you operate. This site doesn't cover pay law. Ask your accountant. Or ask the IRS, the ATO or HMRC, depending on your country.

Route one: export a file

• How. Run a report for the pay period and download it, often as CSV or Excel.
• Then. Load the file into payroll, or copy figures by hand.
• Good points. It works with nearly any pair of products.
• Weak points. Manual steps mean typing errors, and exports can go stale if hours change afterward.

Route two: a connection

Some time products link to payroll or accounting products. Clockify's QuickBooks page is one example, checked November 11, 2026.²

• How it's sent. From the detailed report, the user picks an action to send entries to QuickBooks Payroll.²
• What goes across. Name, date, project, duration, description and billing details.²
• Size limit. The most a single entry can be to send is 23 hours and 55 minutes. Longer entries will not sync successfully.²
• Status filters. The report can show entries not yet sent, or ones that failed to export.²
• Changes after sending. Entries exported earlier but edited afterward show up in their own filter, and if you want QuickBooks updated, send them again.²

Clockify's page says the add-on needs a Standard plan or higher plus a separate subscription, as checked November 11, 2026.² Other products differ, and not every pair of products has a link. Read the maker's own help page for your pair.

Why approval comes first

If hours can change after they've gone to payroll, you end up with two versions. Clockify locks approved timesheets from editing, so approving before sending reduces the chance of changes after export.³ Entries edited after sending show up under 'Show sent and updated entries' and have to be sent again.² See how approval works.

Before every pay run

• Are all timesheets for the period submitted and approved?
• Are there entries that run implausibly long? See missed punches.
• Do rounding and break settings match what staff were told? The rounding page explains why.
• Did the export or sync finish without errors?
• Do payroll's totals match the timesheet totals for a few people you pick by hand?

That last check is the cheapest way to catch a broken link.

Late changes

Hours sometimes change after sending. A worker spots a mistake or a manager corrects a shift. Decide who handles it:

• Before the pay run is final: fix the timesheet, then send the changed entry again.
• After pay has gone out: the fix is usually an adjustment in a later pay run. How to do that depends on your payroll product and local rules, so ask your payroll provider or accountant.

Keep a note of what changed and why. Official guidance on time and wages records is on the pages of the bodies named above.

Mismatch warning signs

• Payroll totals are always a little under or over the timesheets. This often points to rounding set in one product and not the other.
• Some people are missing. Check names or IDs match in both products.
• Long entries vanish. They may exceed a size limit, as in the example above.²