After I approve hours for Contractors and try to pay them for those hours, where does Quickbooks calculate the total that should be paid?

Welcome to the Community, Mike.

I'm here to provide information about tracking contractor time and paying them in QuickBooks Online.

When approving hours for contractors, the process differs from that of employees. For contractors, the Timesheet feature is only used for tracking purposes. This means that the total hours worked and the total amount to pay will not be reflected when writing a check, bill, or expense transaction. As a result, you'll need to record the payment for the contractor manually. A check can be used for this purpose.

Here's how to write a check:

1. Click the + New button.
2. Select Check.
3. Choose your contractor from the Payee dropdown.
4. From the Bank account dropdown, pick the account you want the money to come from.
5. Fill out the rest of the fields accordingly. Select the category or service items which you're paying the contractor for.
6. You can choose to print the check now or later.
7. Hit Save and close.

Alternatively, you can enter the payment as an expense.

To get the total amount due to your contractor, I recommend pulling up the Time Activities by Employee Detail report filtered to show your contractors.

Here's how:

1. On the left navigation panel, click Reports.
2. Search for Time Activities by Employee Detail.
3. Press Customize.
4. In the Filter section, tick Employee. Then, choose your contractors on the dropdown.
5. Hit Run Report.

You can also further customize the report to show specific a period of time. Now, the report should show you the total amount payable.

To save its customization settings, you can memorize reports for a more efficient workflow.

I'm always open to your replies if you have additional questions about paying your contractors in QuickBooks. Have a good one.