How to Export QuickBooks Time and QuickBooks Online Time Data to Excel

01

Which product to export from

QuickBooks Time and QuickBooks Online are separate products that share a name, and each one keeps hours in its own place. QuickBooks Time is the time clock: the crew punches in and out, and the punches live there. QuickBooks Online is the accounting product: hours entered in it, or pushed into it from a time clock, live there as time activities. The export you need depends on where the hours you want are sitting.

If your crew punches in QuickBooks Time and you want the raw punches, export from QuickBooks Time. If you want the hours that already reached the books, export the time report from QuickBooks Online. You may want both at the end of a pay period: the punch export to check the timesheets, and the QuickBooks Online report to reconcile what got billed. We cover how the two products connect in QuickBooks time tracking for field crews.

02

Export punches from QuickBooks Time

The procedure below follows Intuit's own article on exporting time data, Export and import time data in QuickBooks Time, as of September 8, 2026. The article starts from an admin login, so sign in as an admin before you look for the reports.

1. 1Log in to your admin account in QuickBooks Time.
2. 2Select Reports.
3. 3Select either Punch Time Export or Manual Time Export. If you have more than one report, it is under Custom in the Reports section.
4. 4Select the filters you want.
5. 5Select Download Report. The download is a CSV file.
6. 6Open the CSV in Excel and save it as an .xlsx workbook before you change anything, so the original download stays as it came.

Intuit's article names two reports and tells you to pick one. If you are not sure which one holds the hours you want, download both for the same period and compare the rows before you build anything on either file. Keep the two files separate until you know what each one contains.

03

Export a time report from QuickBooks Online

In QuickBooks Online you export a time report rather than a punch file: you open the report and export what it shows. The steps below follow Intuit's article Export reports to Excel in QuickBooks Online, read September 8, 2026. The two time reports, as of September 2026, are Time Activities by Employee Detail and Time Activities by Customer Detail.

1. 1Go to Reports, then Standard reports.
2. 2Open Time Activities by Employee Detail if you're paying people, or Time Activities by Customer Detail if you're billing jobs.
3. 3Select the Export/Print dropdown, then select Export to Excel.
4. 4Open the file. If you're missing data when you open the report in Excel, the file is in protected view. Select Enable Editing and the rows appear.

Before you export, make sure the report on screen covers the period you are paying or billing, because the file carries what the report shows. The protected view problem is easy to mistake for a failed export. The export worked; Excel holds a downloaded file in protected view until you select Enable Editing, and the report content shows up after you do.

04

Total the file by employee and week

The export gives you one row per time entry. Payroll wants one number per person per week. A pivot table gets you there in about a minute.

1. 1Click any cell in the data and choose Insert, then PivotTable, and accept the default range.
2. 2Drag the employee name field to Rows.
3. 3Drag the date field to Columns, then right-click a date heading, choose Group, and group by days with 7 days per group, starting on the first day of your workweek.
4. 4Drag the hours field to Values and confirm it says Sum, not Count.
5. 5Add the customer or job field under the employee name in Rows if you also want hours by job.

Before you trust the totals, check how the hours column is written. Some files carry decimal hours (8.50), some carry hours and minutes (8:30), and some carry both in different columns. A sum over 8:30 style values works in Excel only if the cells are real time values, and a sum over decimals only works if the cells are numbers, not text. The table shows the conversion you need when the two formats meet.

In Excel, a time value in cell A2 converts to decimal hours with the formula =A2*24, formatted as a number. A text value like 8:30 converts with =HOUR(TIMEVALUE(A2)) + MINUTE(TIMEVALUE(A2)) / 60, and Excel accepts the spaces around the operators. Most payroll systems want decimal, so convert toward decimal unless yours tells you otherwise. Our guide to importing timesheets into QuickBooks Online covers the column layout the reverse direction expects.

05

Common problems in the exported file

Three problems account for most of the cleanup time on a time export. Each has a two-minute fix once you know what you're looking at.

• Dates come in as text. The date column sits left-aligned, sorting puts October before September, and the pivot refuses to group by week. Select the column, choose Data, then Text to Columns, click through with the defaults, and pick Date as the column format on the last screen. Excel rewrites the cells as real dates.
• Hours are in one format, your sheet expects another. A column of 8.5 next to a column of 8:30 sums to nonsense. Pick one format for the workbook, convert the other column with the formulas above, and delete the original so nobody sums the wrong one later.
• A shift that crosses midnight shows as two rows. A 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift can appear as one row for each calendar day. The hours add up correctly, but a count of shifts doubles, and any per-shift rule you apply in the sheet (a lunch deduction, a show-up minimum) runs twice. Sort by employee and start time and merge the pairs before applying per-shift math.

One more habit is worth keeping: leave the downloaded file untouched in a dated folder and do the cleanup in a copy. When a number on the paystub is questioned in March, you want the original export and the version you edited side by side. If you're comparing time clock apps, our QuickBooks Time alternatives guide for contractors covers what changes when you switch.

06

What this looks like in Clox

Clox keeps the export on one page. Open Reports in the web app and set the date range with the presets: this week, last week, this month, last month, or a custom range. Choose Summary for one line per person or Detailed for every shift. A Format switch shows hours as h:mm or decimal, so you pick the format your payroll system wants before you download instead of converting in Excel afterward.

The Export menu offers CSV, Excel, and PDF, and Customize columns lets you choose what the file carries: Start, End, Breaks, Lunch, Regular, Overtime, Double-time, pay amounts, notes, certified, and meal-break review. Your column layout saves to your account. The same menu holds the payroll formats: QuickBooks Online CSV, QuickBooks Desktop IIF, ADP RUN, ADP Workforce Now, Paychex Flex, Gusto, and a universal payroll summary CSV. QuickBooks and Gusto match workers by name; ADP and Paychex match by Payroll ID. The reports and exports and export payroll docs list every column and format.

If you'd rather not move files at all, Clox has an optional live connection to QuickBooks Online. Under Settings, then Integrations, then Payroll, select QuickBooks and connect your company, then pick a date range and Push to QuickBooks sends completed hours over as time activities, matched to employees by name. Re-pushing a range is safe, because Clox skips anything it already sent. We walk through both the file route and the push route in how to export your hours to QuickBooks. If you're switching from QuickBooks Time, the workbook you export today is your record of the old hours, so keep it with your payroll files.

07

FAQ

Clox is free for 14 days with no credit card, and a 30-day money-back guarantee covers the first paid subscription. Start a free trial, run one pay period, and export it in the format your payroll system wants.