New in Timen: send an invoice straight to your accounting system
Timen has always turned tracked hours into an invoice. What happened after that was your problem: download the PDF, email it, then retype the same invoice into QuickBooks or Xero so the books agreed with the bill. Today that last step goes away. Every invoice now has an Export menu with eight options - four files to download, and four accounting systems to send it to directly.
What actually arrives in your books
Sending is not a file drop. Timen creates a real invoice in your accounting system: it finds your client there by name or creates them, puts each line item on the invoice with its quantity and rate, and carries the invoice number, dates, currency, discount and tax across.
Then it does the thing that matters most and is easiest to skip. It reads back the total the accounting system actually booked and compares it to the invoice you raised. If they differ by so much as a cent, the export fails and tells you, rather than leaving you with a bill that says one number and books that say another. This is not theoretical: QuickBooks companies using Automated Sales Tax recalculate tax from their own settings and ignore what you send, so an invoice can be accepted and still be wrong.
Edited the invoice after sending it? Send it again. Timen remembers which invoice it created on the other side and updates that one, so you get a corrected invoice rather than a duplicate to go and delete.
Timen does not sit in your accounting system
Most integrations ask for access once and keep it indefinitely. This one does not. Timen asks for access at the moment you send an invoice, and gives it up again when the send finishes - it does not hold a standing connection to your books between exports.
That is the reason you approve each send instead of connecting once. It is one extra click, and in exchange there is no time-tracking app holding an open door into your accounting system on a Tuesday when nobody is using it. The approval opens in a small window, so you stay on the invoice the whole time.
If you would rather have a file
Not everyone wants a direct connection, and plenty of accountants just want an attachment. The four downloads cover that:
- PDF - the invoice as your client should see it, with your company and bank details on it.
- CSV - one row per line item with the invoice details repeated on each row. The shape spreadsheets and generic importers expect.
- CSV for QuickBooks Online and CSV for Xero - laid out for those two importers specifically, because both are fussy about column names.
The invoice itself also grew up to make all of this work properly. It now carries a currency of its own, a tax label you can name (VAT, GST, or whatever your country calls it), a rate, and a discount - and the PDF still prints the symbol you typed, so an invoice raised in US$ keeps saying US$.
Where the edges are
Four accounting systems means four sets of rules that are not ours, and it is better to know them before you hit them:
- Wave will not take tax or a discount. Wave's public API has no invoice discount at all and needs tax rates that already exist in your business. Rather than quietly booking the plain sum of the lines - a smaller bill than your client received - Timen refuses the send and says why. Wave also has no way to update an invoice, so a corrected invoice cannot be re-sent there.
- Xero needs the currency added to your organisation. Xero rejects any invoice in a currency the organisation has not enabled, and we will not quietly restate what your client owes in a different one.
- The Xero CSV assumes a standard chart of accounts. It uses account code 200 ("Sales" in Xero's default chart). If yours is customised, change that column before importing.
- Xero connections are limited for now. Our Xero app supports a small number of live connections at a time; if they are all in use, the least recently used one is dropped to make room. Reconnecting takes a click, and this cap goes away once Xero certifies the app.
When a send does fail, you get a sentence explaining what happened and what to do about it - not a status code and a slab of JSON.
Try it on your next invoice
If you already build invoices from tracked time in Timen, there is nothing to turn on. Open an invoice, hit Export, and either download the file you need or pick where it should land. If you are still rebuilding invoices from a timesheet by hand, this is the shorter version of that job: track the hours, generate the invoice, send it to your books.
Full details on building and managing invoices are in the invoices guide, and all of it is included free.
Common questions
- Do I have to connect my accounting system before I can send an invoice?
- No. All four destinations are listed in the Export menu whether or not you have connected them. Picking one you have not connected opens the sign-in for that system, and the invoice is sent as soon as you approve it.
- What happens if I send the same invoice twice?
- Timen remembers which remote invoice it created, so sending again updates that invoice instead of creating a second one. Wave is the exception: its API has no way to update an invoice, so Timen refuses rather than duplicating it.
- Does Timen keep access to my accounting system?
- No. Timen asks for access when you send an invoice and gives it up when the send finishes. There is no standing connection sitting in the background between exports, which is why you approve each send.
- Does the CSV work with anything other than QuickBooks and Xero?
- Yes. The plain CSV puts one row per line item with the invoice details repeated on each row, which is the shape most spreadsheets and generic importers expect. The QuickBooks and Xero versions exist because those two importers want specific column names.
- Is invoice export part of a paid plan?
- No. Timen is free and every feature is included, invoice export and accounting destinations among them.