Australian QuickBooks Payroll runs on the Employment Hero Payroll engine, so one connection serves both. Connect once in Settings, Venue, Integrations, pair your team, and approved timesheets go in as approved payroll lines. Available for AU venues.
What goes across
Roster to payroll: approved timesheets, as timesheet lines against each employee - start and end time, breaks, and the venue's payroll location if you set one. Lines land approved, so they are picked up the moment you create a pay run with timesheet import switched on.
Payroll to Roster: your employee list, when you import your team (below) - name, contact, employment type and pay rate.
What stays in payroll: pay rates and leave. Roster sends hours; your payroll applies the rates and award rules it already has.
Setting it up
- Find your Payroll API key.
- QuickBooks: open the Payroll tab, then Payroll Settings (the payroll screen's own settings, not the QuickBooks cog). In the left menu, scroll to the last section, ADVANCED, and click My account. The key is at the bottom of that page. It is not under "Advanced Settings", which sits two rows below.
- Employment Hero Payroll: click your name (top right), then My Account, then Generate API Key.
- Connect. Settings, Venue, Integrations, Accounting & payroll, Employment Hero / QuickBooks Payroll, Connect, paste the key. Roster checks it live and connects the payroll business it can see; if the key sees several businesses you pick one.
- Pick a payroll location (optional). Groups with several venues tag each venue's hours with a payroll location so labour reports by site. Single-site venues leave the default, each employee's primary location.
- Pair your team. On the same card, match each Roster worker to their employee record in payroll. Roster suggests matches by email, then by name. Timesheets only export for paired workers - unpaired workers are named when you export, never dropped silently.
- Approve timesheets as usual, then in Timesheets open Export and choose Employment Hero / QuickBooks Payroll.
- Run payroll. In QuickBooks Payroll or Employment Hero, create the pay run with timesheet import on. The hours are there.
Bringing your team in from QuickBooks
From Team, open Invite and choose From QuickBooks. Roster reads the active employees in your connected payroll business into a review table before any invite goes out: name, mobile, email, employment type and hourly rate. Salaried employees get a derived hourly rate (annual salary divided by 52 weeks and their weekly hours) so their shifts still cost correctly on the schedule; the row says so. A rate Roster can't turn into an hourly figure (a daily or fixed amount) is left blank for you to enter, and anyone already on your team is left out. Nothing is created until you confirm.
Good to know
- Exporting twice cannot double anyone's hours. Every line carries the Roster timesheet as its external reference, and Roster checks what is already in payroll before sending. A retry after a dropped connection, or a second export over the same pay period, only sends what is missing. Hours typed straight into payroll are never touched.
- Breaks are placed mid-shift. Roster records how long a break was, not when it was taken. Exported breaks sit back to back around the middle of the shift.
- The key belongs to a person. It carries the access of whoever generated it. Generate it from an account that can see your payroll employees, and if that person leaves, disconnect and paste a new key.
- Revert export is not available for this provider yet. Exported timesheets are locked in Roster; fix anything after export on the payroll side.
Frequently asked
Every pairing row says "No employees in payroll". The connected payroll business has no employees set up yet. Add them in QuickBooks Payroll or Employment Hero first, then reload the card.
The export says a worker was rejected. A payroll-side setup issue for that person - usually a missing pay rate, location or employment detail. Nothing was written for them; fix it in payroll and export again.
"Employment Hero no longer accepts the saved API key." The key was revoked, or the person who generated it lost access. Disconnect, generate a new key, paste it.
I use QuickBooks Online in the US. This connector is for Australian QuickBooks Payroll. US venues export approved timesheets to CSV or Excel for now.