You're right, there's no way to get hours from a general journal entry. And while it's technically possible to import payroll transactions, the layout is so complex that I can't imagine any payroll service providing a file in this layout. So that leaves you with importing time tickets. But time tickets alone don't affect jobs because they don't post to the GL. They only show up on jobs after they get turned into payroll checks. Assuming you don't want to add a payroll subscription for Sage 50 and then double check each payroll to make sure it exactly matches the numbers from the payroll service, here's my suggestion.

Set up payroll with no taxes (you should be able to do that without a payroll subscription). You will have to set up one Employee Field as a deduction to zero out this check; call it Gross or All, or whatever makes sense to you. Assign it to the same expense account you use for the wages. (I recommend a separate account used just for these transactions) When setting up employees make sure their Pay Method is set to "Hourly - Time Ticket Hours". You'll also have to set up at least one Activity Item to use on your time tickets (set it up in Maintain Inventory Items). After you import time tickets you can go through the motions of doing payroll, the hours will automatically come in from the time tickets based on the pay period ending date and the pay frequency. All you need to do is enter the gross pay as a negative in the one deduction field you set up. That will make the check debit and credit the same GL account so there's no net change in the GL. But only the wages, not the "deduction" post to jobs so your job costs will be updated.

The best way to figure out how to import time tickets is to enter a few and them export them and examine the resulting file.

If you need help setting this up, or if you want someone to work with your payroll company company on the details of the time ticket file, you can contact me directly at 918-851-9713 or [email protected].