A payroll tip that discusses the hazards of having one payroll wage item in the QuickBooks Employee Record multiple times – with each entry having a different rate of pay. This question was originally submitted through the “Ask the Expert” form.
I have employees who have several different pay rates and, therefore, I have the same payroll item in their QuickBooks employee record multiple times but with different rates of pay. When I generate Payroll Summary Report, it might show that I paid 20 hours at $60.00 (one of the rates) when I really entered the hours in the Pay Employees Screen at the $30.00. How can I get the reports to match the hours to the rate that I entered. I’m so frustrated!
Any help or suggestions that you have would be appreciated.
A. I’m sure that you are frustrated, you have quite a situation on your hands.
I’ve found that when you have a single payroll wage item, perhaps called Hourly Wage, and you enter it into the Payroll & Compensation tab of the Employee Record in the Earnings section multiple times with different rates of pay — that QuickBooks gets VERY confused – just like you are right now; and it doesn’t really know which rate you want to use for that payroll item.
Payroll is a crucial piece of your company, as I’m sure you realize, so is paying your employees the correct rate of pay for the task that they perform; and generating accurate reports is also important – you shouldn’t have to second guess yourself over whether or not you really did enter hours against the task that deserved $60.00 or the one that warranted $30.00.
Personally, I think that it’s a bug in QuickBooks – you shouldn’t be able to assign different rates of pay to the same wage item; there is just too much room for error and confusion.
The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to create some new wage items in QuickBooks – with names that describe the $60 task versus the $30 task. Remove the old wage items and rates from the employee record – replacing them with the new items and their appropriate rates.
Yes, it’s a little more work for you up front – you’ll have to create the items and clean up the employee records; but once that’s all done everything will be much easier and accurate!
I hope you have found this QuickBooks payroll tip to be helpful; if so, please take a moment to leave a comment or to share it with others on your favorite social media site using the buttons below.
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