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.
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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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