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Chapter 12

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Employee Records

The List of Employees XE "List of Employees"  XE "List of Employees : employees, list of"  is accessed from List on the menu bar, or via the Navigator from the Payroll and Time tab.  The Employee Template XE "Employee Template" ” should be set up first, containing information common to most employees.  All of this information will pop up on each new employee, but may be changed where necessary.

ClickEmployee |New.  Enter in all the information on the Address Info tab.  The employee information checklist will be needed.

The employer is responsible for assuring that the records are not only complete, but accurate.  One user complained bitterly because the New Employee window let him save a record with no social security number.  He received little sympathy from me.  This window will even save a record with nothing but a name.  It is not possible for the program to verify all the information required here.

New Employee box comes with the Address Info tab empty; it gets nothing from the template. 

Mr./Ms./... (what do you call that?) can also receive Mrs., Miss, Sr., Sra, Dr., or be left blank.  It may be useful with names that are not gender specific.

First name, M.I., and Last Name will come back in the Information for line, in sequence determined from the Preference, set for either Payroll and Employee, or Data Entry.

Initials will be picked up from the names, but may be changed.  The principal use is on invoices to credit sales to individual employees.

Address area will initially have the employee’s name as entered above.  This may be edited.  The address area is not a single data field.  The various lines here are separate data fields, and are merely shown together.  This will become apparent if you try to copy and paste.  Note:  pay checks will bear the name from the address area.   

Released is a termination date which controls issuance of pay checks.   If they don’t work here any more, they don’t get paid.  (You can withhold your comments about people who show up but do no useful work.)  Pay checks will be issued only for dates prior to the release date.  If someone leaves, and you fail to enter this date, QuickBooks will keep trying to issue the next pay check.

Next button performs the expected function, if it is present.  In the Edit view, it is replaced by a Notes button (below.)

Additional Info tab gives access to custom fields, which are described in the Building Blocks chapter.

Payroll Info tab provides a subscreen for entry of payroll items and other controls.  The illustration is from QuickBooks 5, which allows multiple salary items.  It is also an Edit view, which differs only by having the Notes button.  The check box for Use time data to create paychecks appears only in the Pro versions.  All other functions are the same.

Pay Period relates to how often this employee is paid.

Earnings area accepts items for earnings, and pay rates.

Name column takes the names of one or more payroll items.  An hourly employee would typically have items for straight time and overtime rates.

Hour/Annual Rate takes the rate individually assigned to this employee for this item. For salaried employees, the Annual Rate should be set as described in the next paragraph.

Yearly Salary box is in QuickBooks 3.1 and 4.0, but the same function applies in versions 5.0.  It will receive the annual salary amount.  The number entered here will be divided by the number of full pay periods in a year .  As an example, consider a salary of $62,400 per year, using the various pay periods:

Pay period                    Periods             Pay per period

Yearly                          1                      $62,400

Quarterly                      4                      $15,600

Monthly                        12                    $5,200

Semi-monthly               24                    $2,600

Bi-weekly                     26                    $2,400

Weekly                        52                    $1,200

Daily                            260                  $240.

Weekly and bi-weekly periods actually pay a bit more than the annual salary.  On average, they pay about 0.3 % more.  The average year is 365.25 days, or about 52.143 weeks.  An extra weekly pay period will occur about once every seven years, and one extra bi-weekly pay period in about once every fourteen years.  On the other hand, do people often work all of a calendar year at the same salary?

Use time data to create paychecks shows that this view is from QuickBooks Pro.  In regular QuickBooks, hours can be entered into the Preview Paycheck box.

Additions, Deductions XE " Deductions" , and Company Contributions XE " Company Contributions"  XE " Additions, Deductions, and Company Contributions " is a home for items of those types.  Amounts and limits may be adjusted for each employee.  Commissionsn s also go here.  When payroll includes these items in a pay check, commissions are added in first.  Next, all of the other items in the list are considered in turn.  A percentage deduction from gross will deduct from an addition to gross, if and only if, the addition precedes the deduction.

NOTE

The amount entry can be made as either a percentage XE "Percentage"  or as a number (dollar value).  Be sure to use the “%” sign if that is what you want.  An entry of 1.4% put in as 0.014 would result in a value of slightly over one cent.  After leaving the field, look back and see that the content is correct.

In older versions, if an annual salary is paid from a different expense account, the “commission”  method is preferred, because commissions are always added in first. An addition is all right, provided you (and your successors) take care to keep it at the head of the list.

Taxes XE "Federal Taxes"   button with the Federal tab accesses a subscreen for Federal Withholding Tax XE "Federal Withholding Tax" , Social Security (FICA,) Medicare, and FUTA (Federal Unemployment Tax. )  Most of us must pay all of these.  The other information will be what the employee supplies on the W-4 form .

 If the employee claims ten or more withholding allowances, refer to IRS publications for special rules.  The government seems to think that withholding is essential to their cash flow, and takes a dim view of under -withholding.  A few taxpayers have used the allowances to set up a fixed amount of withholding.  They have claimed a high number of allowances, and then a large amount of extra withholding. This usually involves the employee signing and certifying a W-4 stating an incorrectly high number of allowances.

State tab in the Taxes window begins with boxes for unemployment and disability insurance, as local laws require.  The Filing Status XE "Filing Status" , Allowances XE "Allowances" , and Misc XE "Misc"  windows must be handled individually for each of the forty-two states with income tax, plus DC and Puerto Rico.  Generally, the employee information should come from a signed form, similar to the W-4.  QuickBooks 5 varies the boxes in this window, according to filing state.   

In the older versions, a table in the back of one of the QuickBooks manuals gives the details.  Also look for leaflets mailed with tax table subscription disks, updating these tables.

Connecticut and Maryland require particularly close attention. XE "State taxes"

Washington State Labor and Industries Tax XE "Labor and Industries Tax"  (L&I) can’t go here.  It must be set up as a company contribution, based on quantity, and go into the additions and deductions table.

Local taxes XE "Local taxes"  are set up for a short, fixed list.  If an employee is in one of the areas in that list , Local Tax 1 should be used. Local Tax 2 will be rare, and used only if local Tax 1 is used and another local tax applies.  The view is from QuickBooks 4.  In QuickBooks 5, the Local tab takes the same information, if there are any local taxes in the filing state.

Sick/Vacation XE "Sick/Vacation" button on the Payroll Info screen provides another subscreen that allows adjusting the benefit hours available to this employee, as of the current date.  Note the Accrual Period carefully.  If you select Beginning of year, the accrual period will be a calendar year.  The hours specified in Hours accrued per accrual period will be added on the first pay day of each year.  The other choice is Every pay period, which would cause accrual each pay day, based on the number of hours per period, (with a finest resolution of 0.01 hour}.  When hours accrued reach Maximum number of hours, no more will be added. If  Reset hours each new year is checked, accrued hours will go to zero at the beginning of each year.

Sick Pay and Vacation Pay policies can be implemented in QuickBooks, if they conform to the format of this dialog box. Accrual per period can be set up with a resolution of 0.01 hour or one minute, depending of the setup in Preferences|Data Entry.

Notes button is provided in place of the Next button when the Employee Info screen is brought up in edit mode.  It calls up a notepad. QuickBooks provides viewing of these employee notes.  Beginning with QuickBooks 5, the notes are printed when the List of Employees is printed.

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Last modified: May 21, 2004