AccountLinx requires an additional purchase for your ExakTime account. For more information, please contact your sales rep/account manager at 1-877-463-7199.

AccountLinx is an application that we offer that allows you to export your ExakTime time data for your payroll/job-costing/accounting software. After the time data reaches your payroll/job-costing/accounting software, you are then able to utilize that time data for job-cost reporting, payroll, and more. 

Table of Contents

1. Review Time Records on ExakTime Connect
2. Open AccountLinx
3. Select the Date Range to Export
4. Perform Any Necessary Mappings
5. Select Employees to Export
6. Export Your Time
   • What AccountLinx Does After Exporting
7. Import Time Data into Your Payroll Software
8. Review Time Data in Your Payroll Software

Please Note

Before proceeding, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• This article assumes that you:
  • Have set up AccountLinx
  • Have some familiarity with AccountLinx
  • Are familiar with utilizing time data in your payroll/job-costing/accounting software.
• It can be helpful to use pay period closing to prevent any further time card modifications. This can help ensure that the data is consistent between ExakTime and your payroll/accounting software. 
• We will also refer to any payroll/job-costing/accounting software as "payroll software" in this article for brevity.
• The steps below are what we believe to be best practices for exporting from AccountLinx. If your company requires a different set of steps, we recommend you document your steps and why they differ. This can help with situations where you request assistance from us so we can better understand your process. 
• If you are new to using AccountLinx to import time data into your payroll software, we recommend going through the export process days before payroll submission in the event of any unexpected errors to try to resolve them in time for payroll. 

Review Time Records on ExakTime Connect

Before we can begin exporting any time from AccountLinx for your payroll software, the time for your employees should be reviewed and confirmed correct in ExakTime Connect. It is much easier to correct the time in our system before it reaches your payroll software and allows for consistent data between the two systems. If you are unfamiliar with time card details, you can refer to the following dedicated article.

Open AccountLinx

Once you have confirmed that the time is ready for export, open AccountLinx. The application should appear like below.

Select the Date Range to Export

Use the date range menus to select the start and end dates of the time data that you want to export, then click View. Only the time data records that are within this date range will be made available to export.

Perform Any Necessary Mappings

If you have added any new employees, locations, and/or cost codes to ExakTime Connect, you may need to map these ExakTime entities to their payroll software equivalents. This can be done by either entering the appropriate ID or performing direct mappings, depending on the accounting package.

For example, an employee may be known as "John Doe" in ExakTime Connect, but is known as Employee 1045 in your payroll software. The "Mapping" step allows you to help bridge that gap of information between two different systems. 

In the top left of AccountLinx will be a series of options depending on the payroll software you are using:

• Map Employees
• Map Locations
• Map Cost Codes

Perform any necessary mappings so the time data will be understood by your payroll software and populated properly. If you are unsure of how to map entities, you can refer to the following dedicated article.

Select Employees to Export

Select the employees you want to export time data for with the checkboxes towards the left of the employee names. Clicking the checkbox for an employee will also select all their time for the date range you are viewing. You can checkmark each employee individually or click All to select everyone. To remove a selection, uncheck the name or click Clear to unselect everyone.

If an employee's name is italicized and grayed out, the employee does not have eligible records to export. If an employee with no time data is selected during your export, nothing will be exported for them generally. 

A good rule of thumb is to click All to select all employees, then uncheck any employee that has time that you do not want to export. 

Special Consideration for Time Records with Same Date as Export

When selecting your employees or time to export, you will not be able to select any time records for the same day as your export. This is to help prevent accidental exports of the current date which may be incomplete or not corrected.

The only way to export time records for the same date as your export is to have closed your pay period with pay period closing. This will prevent any further changes to your time cards (from time card edits to new time records) for as long as your pay period is closed. If you have not enabled pay period closing for your ExakTime Connect account, please refer to the following article for more information.

Export Your Time

• Click Export from the toolbar when you are ready to export your time data.

  

• Depending on the payroll software, two different things will happen:
  • For software such as QuickBooks and Sage 100 MasterBuilder that we can connect directly with, the time data will be exported directly into the software.
  • For software such as Foundation, ADP, and ComputerEase, AccountLinx will generate a file that you will import into your software. You will be asked where to save the file to begin to export process.
    
    • We recommend making sure the file name is recognizable in case it is saved with past exports.
    • It may help to double-check if your accounting/payroll application requires a specific file name when importing.

  

• A window for the Export Progress screen will appear. As each employee's daily records are exported, the results are displayed on the screen. The Export Progress screen will indicate when the export process is complete. If you encounter any errors that would prevent the time data from exporting, note the error for further review. Click Close when complete.

  

What AccountLinx Does After Exporting

After AccountLinx successfully exports the employee records, the records will be marked as being exported. When marked as being exported:

• The time records will be "hidden" in AccountLinx to prevent duplicate exports. The employees' names will be grayed out if they do not have any eligible records to export.

  

• The time records will have an orange arrow icon arrow on the time card pages of ExakTime Connect.

  

As the records have been hidden on AccountLinx, you are not able to export the records again unless you reset the exported records. For more information on how to do this, please refer to the following dedicated article.

If Errors Encountered

If you encountered any errors when exporting your time data, see if you can resolve the errors to try to export again. If you encounter the same error when trying to export and are unsure of how to resolve it, feel free to contact us with the "Request Support" link at the top of the page. 

Import Time Data into Your Payroll Software

For software that we cannot connect to directly, you will need to import the file exported in the previous step into your software.

As the steps for importing time data into accounting/payroll applications can differ, we are unable to provide specific steps for each application. We have steps for certain applications such as Foundation and ComputerEase that can be found in the following section.

If you are unsure of the steps to import the time data, while we will try to assist you to the best of our ability, we recommend contacting the support staff of the accounting/payroll application as they would be more knowledgeable to assist you.

Review Time Data in Your Payroll Software

After the time data has been imported into your payroll software, we recommend reviewing the time data in your payroll software to ensure that the data is what you are expecting prior to submitting payroll. It can be easier to catch any issues prior to submitting payroll than after.