Quickbooks

Payroll is probably the most complex element of small business accounting. Not only are you directly responsible to your employees, but you also need to make sure you are handling everything related to benefits and payroll taxes correctly.

Whether you are switching from a manual system to QuickBooks Online, or you have just hired your first employee, you will soon discover that the site can make your payroll-related tasks much more organized and accurate–speeding up the process tremendously.

But before you start getting ready for your first payroll run, you have a lot of setup work to be done. Be sure to leave yourself time before those first paychecks are expected. This is not meant to be a payroll setup tutorial. While some step-by-step instruction is provided, initially, we just want you to see what information you will need to have available and how QuickBooks Online handles it.

Building a Backbone

There is no particular order set in stone for your payroll preparation tasks, although you will need to provide some background information about your company and its policies before you can start creating employee records.

QuickBooks Online does not walk you through the steps required; however, it does display a page with links to all of the data that you will have to enter. Click the gear icon in the upper right, and then click Payroll Settings. You will see this screen:

Figure 1: QuickBooks Online’s Payroll Settings screen displays links to the pages where you will manage your setup tasks.

You would have entered information about your Contact Informationand Work Locations (under the Business Information heading) when you first signed on to QuickBooks Online. At the same time, you would have been exposed to the Chart of Accounts, which already has accounts designated for payroll. You can see them by clicking Preferences | Accounting, but please do not customize these. If modifications are needed, we will do them for you.

Payroll Policies

How often will you pay your employees? Go up to the Payroll heading in the upper left and click on Pay Schedules. Click Createand open the drop-down list next to Pay Period to select the frequency desired. Then enter the date for the first payroll you will run in QuickBooks Online and the end date for the period that it covers. Click the box below if you want this to be the default setting for all employees. Then click OK to return to the previous page.

Open the Vacation and Sick Leave Policies window. If you do not yet have accrual rules for these paid days off, let us help you here. It is complicated. When you are done, click the back arrow to return to the Pay Policies window and select Deductions/Contributions. Are you offering benefits like health insurance? You will need to have your paperwork and information handy before you start completing this section.

Figure 2: Before you can pay employees, you will need to have entered information about the benefits you offer so you can withhold dollars for them.

Click the plus sign (+) in front of Add a New Deduction/Contribution and complete the fields here, then click OK. You will assign these deductions to employees on their individual records in QuickBooks Online. If there are any Employee Garnishments needed (like child support), click the down arrow next to Add Garnishment for and select the worker from the list. You will provide details for these in the window that opens. This information was most likely provided to you by the agency requesting it. When you are done, click OK.

Taxes and More

If you are new to payroll and have never dealt with payroll taxes before, you are going to need our help getting this complicated element set up correctly. Even if you have, we would recommend that you call and set up a consultation with one of the QuickBooks Online experts in the office. QuickBooks Online does a good job of providing guidance here, but failure to submit payroll taxes (or pay them incorrectly) can lead to penalties and fines–or worse.

In addition, there are other setup tasks you will need to complete, such as:

• Connecting your payroll bank account to QuickBooks Online.
• Creating employee records.
• Setting payroll production preferences.

Setup is by far the most challenging part of processing payroll in QuickBooks Online. Once that is done, you will just be entering hours and making modifications. Please contact the office if you are planning to take this on or have any questions.

• By Leon Clinton
• May 31, 2018

Last month, we learned about getting QuickBooks ready for time-tracking by activating it in Preferences and creating a record for a service item. This month, the focus is on using that record in the two different ways you will be using it in QuickBooks: to pay employees for their hourly work and to bill customers for services.

Recording Employee Hours

There are two ways to enter hours for your employees who provide services to customers and are paid by the hour. The first is to create a work ticket for a single activity. Click Enter Time on the home page, and then Time/Enter Single Activity to open this window:

Figure 1: Single-activity work tickets for employee hours are especially useful if you need to set a timer.

First, check the date to make sure it displays the day when the work was actually done, not recorded. Click the arrow in the field next to Name and select the employee’s name from the drop-down list that opens, then do the same in the Customer: Job field below. The Service Item field needs to display the name of the service performed by the employee.

If you want to time a period of activity, use the Start, Stop, and Pausebuttons under Duration. You can also replace the 0:00 that appears by default with the number of hours and minutes that were worked.

In the middle column, select the correct Payroll Item from the drop-down list. You can add a new employee if necessary without completing his or her entire record, but be sure to go back and complete it before your next payroll.

Hidden behind the drop-down menu is a field titled WC Code, which stands for Workers’ Compensation Code. It will only appear if you are using QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll and have that feature turned on.

Tip: If these two fields do not appear, you have selected an employee who is not timesheet-based.

In the upper right hand corner, you will see a field labeled Billable. Be sure you click in the box to create a checkmark if you will be invoicing a customer for the work done.

Save the activity record when you have completed it.

Using Timesheets

Figure 2: You can enter employees’ hours directly on a timesheet instead of creating a single activity record. 

QuickBooks offers a second option for entering employee hours: timesheets. You will notice that there is a Timesheet icon in the toolbar of the Time/Enter Single Activity window. If you click on it with a completed record open, a new window opens containing a graphical representation of a paper timesheet.

If you enter employee hours in a single activity record, they will appear on a timesheet, and vice versa. There are two advantages to entering hours directly on the timesheet, though. The first is that it is faster. Second, you can click the Copy Last Sheet icon if you are just going to duplicate an employee’s previous pay period’s hours. If you want to go there straight from the home page, click Enter Time | Use Weekly Timesheet.

Billing Customers for Time

QuickBooks makes it easy to transfer billable hours worked by employees to the corresponding customers’ invoices. After you have entered blocks of time spent on services, open an invoice form and select the customer. This window will open:

Figure 3: Once you’ve entered billable hours worked by an employee, simply open an invoice form and select that customer to open this window.

By default, Select the outstanding billable time and costs to add to this invoice? is checked. When you click OK, a new window opens displaying a grid that contains all of that customer’s billable time. You can Select All or click in front of each entry you want to include. You will notice here that there are also tabs on the grid for Expenses, Mileage, and Items that can be billed back to the customer.

If you choose not to carry billable hours over to the invoice at the present time, you can always add them by clicking Add Time/Costs in the invoice’s toolbar.

Questions? One of our QuickBooks experts is always available to help ensure that you are billing customers for all costs they incur–and to talk about any other element of accounting that affects your cash flow.

• By Leon Clinton
• April 30, 2018