QuickBooks Payroll Tip – Voiding Paychecks

A QuickBooks payroll tip about voiding paychecks – you should be very careful when choosing to void a paycheck because payroll checks have associated tax and other liability calculations and payments that need to be taken into consideration and it will result in changing payroll year-to-date amounts.

A common, and acceptable, reason to void a paycheck would be if the employee or someone else in your company notices an error on the check before it is cashed – in this situation voiding the check is acceptable because it will not have a negative impact on payroll liability calculations – because those liabilities have not yet been paid.

Be VERY careful about voiding a check if the employee has never picked it up – or it cannot be delivered to the employee because as an employer you have certain responsibilities regarding unclaimed paychecks.

You’ll find that there are several ways in which to make corrections to a paycheck that has already been printed, but not given to the employee OR given to the employee but not yet cashed; this is the method that I recommend:

Open the QuickBooks check register, find the check that you wish to void, click on the line entry to highlight/select it, right-click on the entry and choose the Void Paycheck option.

You can then make any timesheet entry changes, if necessary, and reissue the check by going to the Payroll Center and selecting the Unscheduled Payroll option.

Another method would be to simply open the paycheck in QuickBooks, make the necessary changes and reprint the check, giving it a new check number.  This method leaves you with having to also record the already printed check as a voided check

• by opening the Write Checks window
• entering the check number of the check to be voided
• setting the correct date
• selecting the employee name and then dealing with a warning message about  “If you want to create a paycheck for this employee, please use the built-in payroll features”
• clicking the Edit menu and choosing the Void Check option

You will also need to go back and make changes to the Employee Weekly Timesheet, if applicable.  This method creates a lot of extra work and some of the necessary steps may be overlooked – which is why I’m not fond of it.