Over time we have explored the creation of payroll liabilities to solve the issues that arise when QuickBooks is the solution for a company’s payroll. Things like wage garnishments, health insurance coverage, and retirement plans must be accounted for from time to time.
Once those payroll items are created and functioning though, how does one pay the amounts that are collected from employee’s paychecks?
If you do payroll in QuickBooks you are familiar with the Payroll Center. Above is the Pay Liabilities tab. It tracks the tax amounts that employers need to pay. It tells us when those payments are due.
When we setup payroll in QuickBooks, the payroll setup wizard helps us set these parameters so these tax items are tracked. It makes it easy for us to pay them on time.
When we add a new payroll item though, it doesn’t appear in this window unless we set it up to do so.
We do that by clicking on the Change Payment Method link.
The above screenshot shows where the link is located. Click on that and the payroll setup program will start.
The left panel of the window shows the areas available for editing. First are tax payments. The indented step below that allows us to schedule tax payments.
We are interested in the next section, Benefit & Other Payments. A click on the menu link opens a window showing the payroll items we have created.
In earlier posts we created payroll items for the deduction of SIMPLE IRA contributions from an employee’s check. The last post explored how we could match that with a company contribution portion for the SIMPLE IRA.
Those payroll items still exist in the sample file. Choosing the SIMPLE IRA-Company Portion and clicking on the Edit button brings up the following screen.
We have made a selection in this window. We want QuickBooks to show the SIMPLE IRA company contribution amounts to show as due by the 10th of the following month. We should set the employee deduction item for the IRA contributions to the same schedule.
It’s a simple process. Once the selection is made, click Finish then Finish again in the payroll setup program window.
Once this is complete, amounts for the SIMPLE IRA contributions will show in the payroll center as a scheduled payment, just like our tax items. It can be paid easily at the appropriate time by selecting the payment just as we do when we pay payroll taxes.
Hector Garcia, CPA
Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor
954-414-1524
hector@garciacpa.com
