Author: John Cranston

Quickbooks Integration & de-duplication explained

One major issue when you connect critical data (like hours for payroll and billing!) is that you need to be sure that everything goes though AND that it only goes one time!

Technical steps to send data from SYNCrew to Quickbooks Desktop

1. Quickbooks user clicks the “Update selected” button in QB web connector.
2. QB Web Connector contacts SYNCrew and create a secure connection.
3. SYNCrew will then send the information over one Work Block at a time (think of each row of a Work Block report).
4. For each Work Block that SYNCrew sends, Quickbooks will validate that the employee and customer (& project if used) match.

IF THEY MATCH:
5. The hours are added to the Employee timesheet in Quickbooks
6. Quickbooks confirms this addition and SYNCrew notes that the Work Block has been send to Quickbooks. If the QB Web Connector connects to SYNCrew while the same time period is selected again, that Work Block will be skipped.

IF THERE IS NOT A MATCH:
5. The import process stops and QB Web Connector displays an error that describes what issue was found so the user can fix (usually by adding the Customer:Job or employee in QB.
6. Nothing is reported back to SYNCrew so that SYNCrew will try to send that Work Block next time.

What if additions or edits are made AFTER the sync to QB?

  • Work Block added AFTER sync to QB: If a work block is added to SYNCrew AFTER Web Connector has run, you can simply run the Web Connector again and only new events will be added to QB.
  • Edits made to a Work Block AFTER sync to QB: In this case, the Work Block as it was at the time Web Connector was run, will remain in QB and the updated Work Block will not be synced. This is because the Work Block has already been flagged as synced so the Web Connector skips it.
  • If you add time manually into QB or through another method (like an IIF file): These hours are NOT noted in SYNCrew as having been synced and so they will be sent again one time if you sync to QB.

Need Help?

We know this can be a bit complicated so if you something strange happened, please contact us with the details so we can detmine how it happened and advise on cleanup and also how to prevent going forward.

As always, if you have any questions, you can contact your account manager or email support@syncrew.com to get further details.

Quickbooks Desktop Integration

SYNCrew can export data to Quickbooks Desktop! This flexible integration will let you get hours your team enters in SYNCrew directly into Quickbooks

Initial Setup: The initial setup is a bit complicated due to the flexibility SYNCrew has built to make sure the hours get in how you need them. For that reason, we insist on helping you so please email support@syncrew.com and ask to get this going.

How to pull data: When you wan to pull data from SYNCrew to QB, just follow these steps. Note that most people run these at the end of each pay period but you can run at other times or use the custom dates. Regardless, we recommend not running while workers are still clocked in for that period.

START IN SYNCREW: Open SYNCrew and do the following:

  1. Open SYNCrew and click on Settings in the navigation section at the left (circled in yellow below)
  2. Select QuickBooks underneath Settings (circled in green)
  3. Select the pay period you want (circled in purple)
  4. Click Save (circled in red)

Configuration screen in SYNCrew before each QB export

MOVE TO QUICKBOOKS: Open QuickBooks and do the following:
5. Go to the file menu and select “Update Web Service”
6. You may be asked to approve SYNCrew’s access at this time, please approve.
7. A window will open that shows you available apps yous can update and use. Make sure the box next to SYNCrew is selected (circled in orange) and then click “update Selected” (circled in green)

8. Once you click “Update Selected,” it may take some time depending on how many employees you have and how long the pay period is, but status bars at the bottom will keep you posted. Once the progress bars get to 100%, you can check the status to see if it was successsful or if there were errors:

IF EVERYTHING GOES RIGHT, you will see a window like this that shows “last result: ok.” If you see this, you are done and all data should be in QB!

IF SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT, you will see a window like this that shows “last result: qbwc error:…” and then a description of the error. The error will usually be that the Customer:Project or Employee is not in Quickbooks. Once you fix the issue in QB, go back to step 7 and click “update selected.” If your projects and employees are not up to date in QB, this make take a few tries to get it fully synced.


Please note, we always recommend reviewing hours in QB to be sure they are correct!


Further reading: This integration was built to be as seamless as possible, but it is a bit complicated out of necessity due to the many ways our clients use both SYNCrew and Quickbooks.

Exporting Lists (Workers or Projects)

Occasionally, it will be convenient to export a list of Worker Users or a list of current projects. To do so, follow these steps:

  1. Click “Settings” in the navigation panel at the left, then select “Export” in the sub-menu that opens
  2. For both Workers and Projects, there is a menu to select whether you want to see ALL, ACTIVE, or INACTIVE
  3. Once you pick which group, click the appropriate “export” button for what you want to export. A CSV file will download immediately and this file can be opened in your text editor or spreadsheet program (typically Excel)

The screenshot below shows how to export INACTIVE PROJECTS:

Employee location is showing far away

Location is a fairly complicated issue and the SYNCrew team is always happy to help you look into any issues or questions you may have by contacting your account manager or our support team at support@syncrew.com.

There are a number of honest reasons why an employees reported location could be incorrect but hiding location is also a way that many employees have tried to cheat on their hours! This is another place where SYNCrew photos prove their worth – if the clock in or out in question has a photo of the job that you can identify, then that proves they were there, regardless of what the GPS position says.

Some notes about location: SYNCrew asks the phone for its latest location, but does not make the user wait. If the location is not ready right away, the app just takes the last-reported one location so that there is no waiting EVER to clock in. Many apps have “loading” screens that exist solely to make the users wait while the phone determines its location, but our product team decided it was better to let people get to work since we also have the photograph to prove location.

SYNCrew shows you the GPS status on the Teams page, see HERE for more info.

Here are some common reasons that location is slower:

  • Android Locations settings: Android phones have a few ways and we see “GPS only” selected fairly often because people think it will be more efficient for the battery (its not!). In this mode, for example, it can take up to three minutes with a clear view of the sky for it to work. Ideally, it would be set to “high accuracy mode.”
  • Wifi is off: Employees do this a lot to save battery, but its actually the main way that phones determine their location! When the phone is in “high acuracy mode” it will mainly use wifi to determine the phones location, so if wifi is off, you are practically in GPS-only mode.
  • Location is turned off: This is a quick setting that a log of people will flip off if they are not using it to save battery life. How much this helps save battery is not clear, but we see it often.
  • Old Phones:  Sometimes older phones just get really slow at reporting their location. There is not technical reason for this, but if its a really worn out phone, they often have trouble determining their location.

Reports: Activity Reports

Activity Reports are a simple report to show a view of all the events your workers make. There are no calculations performed as this report simple displays the events as they are. For example, a day where a worker clocked in, started lunch, ended lunch, took a progress photo, and clocked out would show as 5 rows in this report.

The report is most commonly used to find photos or make edits to events since its easy to view photos and make edits.

How to run a Work Block report:

  1. Select “Activity Report” from the Reports menu
  2. Filter your report for the projects, workers and dates you want. The time defaults to “Today” but you can select a lot of other pre-loaded times, like last week, Month to Date, etc. If you click on “Custom Time” you can put your own desired time period. Custom fields may appear below Worker and Project if they are enabled for your company.
  3. Click “Run.”
  4. Once the report loads, you should see a report that is a series of rows. Each row represents an event by your employees. You may edit the events or view the event photo using the buttons at the right. Also note that you may export the report to a Comma Separated Variable file that can be opened in Excel or other spreadsheet programs.
  5. The filters are still available on top in case you need to adjust something and re-run.

Limited Admin vs. Full Admin

When you create an admin user, you have the option to create a Full Admin or a Limited Admin. If you have questions about who should have what kind of admin login, please contact your account manager our our support team to discuss the details of your company’s situation.

Full Admin: A Full Admin can do and change everything. For small companies, it is usual for everybody to be a full admin.

Parent Admin: This is a special kind of admin that companies with multiple SYNCrew locations have. They are effectively Full Admin who can switch between locations. 

Limited Admin: A Limited Admin is exactly what the name says, limited in the following ways:

  • No Admin Access: No Limited Admin may access the “Admin” tab to edit settings, add/remove users, add/remove projects
  • Options: Depending on your goals, the limited admin can be further edited as follows: Full Report Access: By default, limited admin can run reports but will only see data from projects they have access to. There is an option to make them able to see report data for
    • Disable Editing Privileges: By default, a Limited Admin can edit data they can see. You may disable their editing privileges so they can not make edits. This effectively makes them a “view only” user
    • Disable Manage Menu: By default, limited admin users can access the manage menu. Clicking this option prevents the limited admin from seeing the menu or accessing its features (timesheets, worker time review, etc.)
    • Project Type: By default, limited admin can see all projects. If you select the option “Limited Projects” in this menu, you can then pick which projects this admin can see. Some companies use this to give their clients access to view activity for just that client’s locations. Others use this to make it easier for managers to see only the projects they are managing
    • Full Report Access: This option does two things:
      • 1) If projects are limited as described above, then this will allow the Limited Admin to run reports across all projects
      • 2) This allows Limited Admin to access Timesheets in the manage menu
    • Quick Add Menu: By default, Limited Admin do not have access to the Quick Add menu in the left-navigation. You can enable a Limited Admin to be able to add worker time OR add projects OR new workers (or any combination of the three). If none is selected, the Quick Add menu will not be shown to the Limited Admin

Here are the options you will see once you toggle an Admin user to be a Limited Admin:

  • Shown in green below is where you select whether a user should be a full or limited admin
  • Shown in red below are the options for a limited admin

How to see what edits have been made (aka how to view audit logs)

99% of events like clock ins, clock outs, and breaks are created by your employees and never edited. Sometimes, edits need to be made and SYNCrew keeps a log of the original times in case there is ever a reason you need to view the original times.

To see if changes have been made, follow these instructions:

  1. Run a Work Block Report
    1. go to the Settings menu and select “Work Block Report”
    2. Select the person(s) and date range you want to view
    3. Click “Run”
  2. At the far right side of the Work Block report, you will see a column that contains either who created the event or an “Audit” button. For the rows with just text, there have been no edits made and all events are original. Additionally, you can see whether the Worker, a Manager, or an Admin user made. In the image below:
    1. The first and last rows below have had edits made, as indicated by the “Audit” button
    2. Rows 2 and 3 were created by a Worker (Named John iphone) on their phone and no edits have been made
    3. Row 4 was created by an Admin user (name John Admin) and no edits have been made since
  3. To view the edits, click on the “Audit” button to see the changed made. In the example
    1. Example 1: start time was changed from 2:25pm to 10:25am on the same day. Note that “John Smith Admin” was the person who made the change and the change was made on 5/22/17 at 2:26pm.
    2. Example 2: This example has two changes. The clock in time was changed from 3:13pm to 2:13pm and the start break time was changed from 3:13pm to 2:13pm. Here, John Admin made the change at 2:26pm on 5/22/17 at 2:26pm.

To view edits made to projects, users, and other settings, please contact your SYNCrew account manager or support@syncrew.com as that information is available, but not visible to you just yet.

How to delete events (delete clock out, delete clock in, etc.)

SYNCrew is a management tool but it also serves as a valuable archive of all activities. As such, events cannot be deleted. In most cases, the issue can be resolved by editing the time to be a few seconds which effectively makes the time disappear. By editing, instead of deleted, the record is kept intact so that the editing history is complete and nobody can be accused of deleting information at a later date.

In certain circumstances, SYNCrew staff can delete things but it is typically limited to:

  • Events that were added by administrators
  • Events created for testing purposes by either SYNCrew or company administrators
  • Profane or pornographic images

Late Clock Out

Every so often, a Worker forgets to clock out at the end of the day. When that app believes that has occurred, it gives the Worker an opportunity to clock out at an earlier time to prevent their being clocked in for 24 hours or longer. The app alerts the Worker that it believes they forgot to clock out and asks the Worker to enter the time and date that they stopped working and explain what happened.

Since this happens after-the-fact, there is no photo taken and SYNCrew places the image below in place of the picture so its easy to see when this occurs. The GPS coordinate is taken from where the employee is at the time the late clockout is entered.