How Quickbooks Time works with Protiv: Complete Integration Guide

2. How Often Does QuickBooks Time Sync With Protiv?

Protiv automatically checks QuickBooks Time for updated information approximately once per hour.

This includes changes such as:

• New jobs
• New employees
• Updated employee information
• Newly recorded hours
• Corrections to time entries
• Updated project estimates

 3. How Jobs Move Into Protiv

Jobcodes

Jobcodes are the standard way to organize what employees clock into.

For example, a painting company might create a jobcode called:

123 Main Street – Interior Painting

Jobcodes can also have levels underneath them:

• 123 Main Street – Interior Painting
  • Preparation
  • Painting
  • Cleanup

Employees select the appropriate jobcode when they clock in.

When jobcodes are organized into parent and child levels, Protiv generally creates jobs from the lowest-level jobcodes—the ones that do not have additional jobcodes underneath them.

The top-level jobcode may act as a folder rather than an individual job.

Important limitation of jobcodes

4. Using QuickBooks Time Projects

Projects is an additional QuickBooks Time feature that adds more project-management information to a jobcode.

Depending on your setup, a Project may include:

• A customer
• Estimated hours
• Estimated labor costs
• Project status
• Budget-versus-actual reporting

However, simply having the Projects feature enabled does not guarantee that Protiv will receive budget information.

Confirming your setup

Before onboarding, determine:

1. Does your company use QuickBooks Time Projects?
2. Does your team enter estimates in those Projects?
3. Do employees clock into Projects or standard jobcodes?

If Projects is enabled but your company does not actively use estimates, let your Protiv representative know. The integration may need to be configured to use jobcodes instead of Projects.

5. Contract Prices and Labor Budgets

For Protiv to calculate a ProPay, the job must have the required financial information.

When budgets can be created automatically

Protiv may calculate a labor budget automatically when:

• Your company uses QuickBooks Time Projects
• Estimated hours have been entered
• A company average wage is configured in Protiv

Protiv uses the estimated hours and average wage to calculate the dollar labor budget.

When budgets must be entered manually

You will normally need to enter the job’s information directly in Protiv when:

• Your company only uses jobcodes
• Projects is enabled but estimates are not used
• The job does not contain estimated hours
• The contract price is not available from the integration

These values can be entered from the job’s settings in Protiv.

Why a Propay may not appear

One of the most common reasons a ProPay does not appear is that the job is missing a contract price or budget.

Employees may have correctly recorded hours, but Protiv cannot calculate the job’s performance without the required budget information.

When a bonus is missing, first review the job in Protiv and confirm that it has:

• A contract price
• A labor budget or hours budget
• Actual hours
• Eligible employees

6. How Employee Wages Work

Protiv may receive an employee’s hourly pay rate from their QuickBooks Time profile.

When an individual employee rate is available, Protiv can use that rate when calculating the labor cost associated with that employee’s hours.

Where to update an employee’s wage

QuickBooks Time should normally remain the primary location for updating employee pay rates.

After updating the wage:

1. Save the change in QuickBooks Time.
2. Allow the regular sync to run or select Sync All Data in Protiv.
3. Confirm the updated wage on the employee’s profile in Protiv.

7. Company Average Wage and Burden Rate

In addition to individual employee wages, Protiv uses a company average wage and burden rate.

These values are managed directly in Protiv.

Company average wage

The average wage may be used when:

• An employee does not have an individual wage available
• Protiv needs to convert estimated hours into a dollar labor budget
• A job is configured using an hours-based budget

Because QuickBooks Time does not maintain a single company-wide average wage for Protiv, this value must be entered and updated in Protiv.

Burden rate

The burden rate represents costs paid by the company in addition to an employee’s base wage.

Depending on the company, burden may include:

• Payroll taxes
• Workers’ compensation
• Insurance
• Employee benefits
• Other employment-related costs

For example:

• Base wage: $20 per hour
• Burden rate: 25%
• Burdened labor cost: $25 per hour

8. How Hours Move Into Protiv

Employees should continue clocking in and out in QuickBooks Time according to your company’s normal process.

Protiv imports the hours and associates them with:

• The employee
• The selected job or jobcode
• The work date
• The selected task or cost code, when configured

Correcting hours

Time corrections should always be made in QuickBooks Time.

After correcting the entry:

1. Save the correction in QuickBooks Time.
2. Select Sync All Data in Protiv or wait for the automatic sync.
3. Review the job or ProPay again.

9. Breaking a Job Into Tasks or Milestones

By default, Protiv may treat the entire job as one set of hours and one labor budget.

Depending on your QuickBooks Time setup, this field may be called:

• Task
• Service
• Service item
• Cost code
• Work type
• Another custom name

Although the names may differ, these terms refer to the field used to identify the type or phase of work being completed.

For example, a painting job could be separated into:

• Preparation
• Painting
• Touch-ups
• Cleanup

Configuring the task field

First, identify which field employees actually select in QuickBooks Time when they clock into a job.

Then, in the QuickBooks Time integration settings in Protiv, select that same field, or ask Support to assist with this request.

Protiv can then separate the job into milestones based on the employees’ selections.

For example, a painting job could be divided into:

• Preparation
• Priming
• Painting
• Touch-ups
• Cleanup

When task tracking is not needed

If employees do not select a task or cost code when clocking in, the task mapping can remain disabled.

Protiv will treat the work as:

• One job
• One budget
• One overall milestone

This is a normal setup and does not prevent the job from generating a ProPay.

10. Dividing the Budget Between Milestones

When a job is divided into multiple tasks or milestones, its overall labor budget must also be divided.

Protiv provides three options.

a. Manually allocate the budget

This option works best when some phases require significantly more labor than others.

For example:

Milestone	Budget
Preparation	$1,500
Painting	$4,000
Cleanup	$500

b. Split the budget evenly

For example, a $6,000 labor budget divided among three milestones would assign:

• Preparation: $2,000
• Painting: $2,000
• Cleanup: $2,000

This option is helpful when the tasks are similar in size or when you do not want to assign each milestone manually.

c. Turn off the milestone breakdown

When disabled, the job will use:

• One overall labor budget
• One milestone
• All hours recorded against the job 

 11. Drive Time and Travel Time

QuickBooks Time does not automatically identify which hours represent drive time.

Unless drive time is recorded separately, Protiv will see it as regular job time.

To track drive time separately:

1. Create a dedicated jobcode or cost code in QuickBooks Time, such as Drive Time or Travel.
2. Ask employees to use that code while driving.
3. Configure the drive-time incentive settings in Protiv.

In Protiv, go to:

Settings → Jobs → Drive Time for Incentives

From there, you can determine whether drive time should count toward an employee’s incentive.

The setting may be applied:

• Across the entire company
• To specific divisions
• To an individual job

Why a separate code matters

Without a separate drive-time code, Protiv has no way to distinguish travel from regular work.

It will simply count those hours as job time.

12. How a ProPay Is Created

A ProPay is Protiv’s job-based bonus opportunity.

The typical process is:

1. A job is created in QuickBooks Time.
2. The job syncs into Protiv.
3. The contract price is entered in Protiv.
4. A labor or hours budget is entered in Protiv.
5. Employees clock into the job through QuickBooks Time.
6. Their hours and wages sync into Protiv.
7. Protiv compares the budget with the actual labor cost.
8. A ProPay becomes available for review.
9. An authorized user reviews and approves the result.

The ProPay allows the company and employees to understand how the job performed compared with its budget.

When a job exceeds its budget

A job may exceed its labor budget because of:

• More hours than expected
• An incorrect estimate
• Missing or incomplete budget information
• Incorrect wages
• Time recorded against the wrong job
• Unexpected project conditions

Before approving a negative result, review the job’s hours, budget, employee wages, and original estimate.

If the overage was caused by an estimating issue rather than employee performance, contact your Protiv representative to discuss the appropriate way to handle the result.

13. Managing Employees

When QuickBooks Time is first connected, Protiv may import all users associated with the account.

This can include:

• Current field employees
• Former employees
• Administrators
• Office employees
• Users who have never clocked into a job

Seeing more employees than expected after the initial connection is common.

14. Summary

QuickBooks Time and Protiv work together by assigning each system a clear responsibility.

QuickBooks Time manages:

• Employee clock-ins and clock-outs
• Time-entry corrections
• Jobs and jobcodes
• Projects, when used
• Individual employee pay rates
• Task and cost-code selections

Protiv manages:

• Contract prices
• Labor and hours budgets
• Company average wages
• Burden rates
• Task and milestone configuration
• Milestone budget allocation
• Drive-time incentive rules
• Labor-performance tracking
• ProPay calculations
• Bonus review and approval

Accurate ProPays depend on maintaining accurate hours and employee information in QuickBooks Time and complete pricing, budget, and incentive information in Protiv.

 15. Best Practices

To keep the integration accurate:

• Create jobs in QuickBooks Time before employees begin working.
• Enter the contract price and budget in Protiv as soon as each job is created.
• Make all time corrections in QuickBooks Time.
• Keep employee pay rates current in QuickBooks Time.
• Review the company average wage and burden rate regularly.
• Use consistent jobcodes, tasks, and cost codes.
• Confirm whether Protiv should read Projects or standard jobcodes.
• Use a separate code for drive time when it requires different treatment.
• Review milestone budget allocations before work begins.
• Use Sync All Data after urgent changes.
• Review job details carefully before approving a ProPay.
• Archive inactive employees to keep your People list organized.