This QuickBooks tip explains where you can easily access employee payroll forms; including the Federal I-9, W-4, and W-9′s.
Having used QuickBooks for many years, I can remember when needing an I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification), a W-4 (Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate), or a W-9 (Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification) meant a trip to the appropriate website to obtain the most current form – and depending on how busy I was at the moment, that could be a royal pain!
The I-9, Federal W-4, and W-9 are now available to anyone with a current payroll subscription using QuickBooks Pro/Premier 2009-2012 or Enterprise 9.0-12.0 from the Employees menu -> Employee Forms option; you’ll also find a Direct Deposit and Pay Card Authorization form.
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NOTE: If you don’t see the Employee Forms menu option; choose the Get Payroll Updates option and get the latest payroll update. Restart QuickBooks after the update has been installed.
The forms open in a “fillable”. pdf format, so employees can type in their I-9, W-4, Direct Deposit or Pay Card Authorization information and it will be legible!
You can easily send W-9′s to your vendors as an email attachment {once the .pdf of the W-9 is open and visible, from the File menu -> choose Attach to email}.
You will still need to obtain the current version of the State W-4 from their website and have that on hand.
These are certainly handy forms to have quick access to and will save you from having to worry about whether or not you have a copy of the form, the most current version of the form, or from having to go searching on the internet to download the most current version that is available.
Critical note: You MUST have a .pdf creator/reader installed on your computer in order to open/use these forms. If you currently don’t have a pdf creator/reader, check out Foxit Reader – it’s free!
We hope you’ve found today’s QuickBooks tip to be helpful; if so please take a moment to leave a comment or share this tip with others via your favorite social networking site using the buttons below.
A QuickBooks for contractors tip about receiving and applying joint checks from a general contractor to pay a lower tier subcontractor or material supplier for work completed or materials on a construction project.
Quite frequently, in the construction industry, a contractor will receive a joint check from a General Contractor to pay their lower tier subcontractors or material suppliers for work completed and/or materials delivered to the construction project’s job site.
Unlike many high-end construction accounting packages, QuickBooks doesn’t have a way to handle this automatically — or easily.
This QuickBooks for contractors tip provides what we consider to be a best practice when a situation like this arises.
Problem:
Your company, Sam Subcontracting, received a $10,000.00 joint check from Joe’s General Contracting; which is made out to both your company AND O’Fallen Gravel {your Vendor/Material Supplier} who delivered sand, gravel, and crushed rock to a jobsite. The $10,000.00 was included in your most recent invoice totaling $45,000.00 that you sent to Joe’s General Contracting AND you have a $10,000.00 invoice from O’Fallen Gravel in Accounts Payable. Amy, your bookkeeper, isn’t sure how to correctly receive this payment against your own Accounts Receivable AND correctly apply this payment to your Accounts Payable.
Solution:
When Amy is ready to receive the payment against the invoice issued to Joe’s General Contracting AND record the payment to O’Fallen Gravel, she should do the following:
- Verify that she has a special “Clearing” Account in her QuickBooks Chart of Accounts that is a “Bank” type – if one does not exist she should create it by going to the Lists menu -> Chart of Accounts -> Account -> New -> Type = Bank -> Continue -> Account Name = Clearing -> Save & Close.
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- Click the Receive Payment icon on the QuickBooks Home Page – OR – from the Customers menu -> choose Receive Payments. Received From = Joe’s General Contracting -> Amount = $10,000.00 -> Date = Current Date -> Pmt. Method = Check -> Check # = Check Number -> Memo = Joint Check issued to O’Fallen Gravel -> Deposit to = CLEARING ACCOUNT. Click Save & Close.
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- The balance in the Clearing Account should now be $10,000.00.
- Click the Pay Bills icon on the QuickBooks Home Page – OR – from the Vendors menu -> choose Pay Bills. Choose the O’Fallen Gravel bill -> Method = Check -> Select Assign check number -> Account = CLEARING ACCOUNT.
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- Click Pay Selected Bills.
- In the Assign Check Numbers window – enter the number of the check that you received from Joe’s General Contracting.
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- Click OK
- The balance in the Clearing Account should be 0.
Make sure that you also have the proper Lien Waive and Release forms.
We hope you found this QuickBooks tip to be useful — if so please take a moment to leave a comment, share it on your favorite social media site or click the +1 button below.
A QuickBooks for contractors tip about issuing joint checks to a subcontractor and a lower tier subcontractor or material supplier for payment for work completed on a construction project.
Quite frequently, in the construction industry, a contractor needs to issue a joint or two-party check to a subcontractor and a lower-tier subcontractor or material supplier for work completed and/or materials delivered to the construction project’s job site.
Unlike many high-end construction accounting packages, QuickBooks doesn’t have a way to handle this automatically — or easily.
This QuickBooks for contractors tip provides what we consider to be a best practice when a situation like this arises.
Problem:
Joe’s General Contracting, Inc. needs to issue a $10,000.00 joint check to Sam Subcontractor AND O’Fallon’s Gravel for sand, gravel, and crushed rock which was delivered to a jobsite. Sam Subcontractor is one of Joe’s regular subcontractors and is already in the QuickBooks Vendor List; O’Fallon’s Gravel is not a normal supplier and is not setup in the Vendor list. Sarah, Joe’s bookkeeper isn’t sure how she should handle a joint check.
Solution:
When Sarah is ready to write the joint or two-party check, she should follow these steps:
- Edit Sam Subcontractors Vendor record in QuickBooks and in the Print on Check as field, she should add AND O’Fallon Gravel. She should also edit the Billed From Address so that it to displays Sam Subcontractor AND O’Fallon Gravel. Clicking the OK button to save her changes.
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- From the Write Checks window, select Sam Subcontractor, enter the dollar amount. In the Memo field type in Joint Check issued to Sam Subcontractor AND O’Fallon Gravel and then job cost as usual.
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- Print just this check.
- Immediately go back to Sam Subcontractors Vendor record and delete all references to O’Fallon Gravel, click OK to save the changes.
- Customize the columns to display in the Vendor Center to include the memo field.
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Make sure that you also have the proper Lien Waive and Release forms.
We hope you found this QuickBooks tip to be useful — if so please take a moment to leave a comment, share it on your favorite social media site or click the +1 button below.
A QuickBooks Tip for creating Lien Waivers, Releases, and other Contract Documents from within the software by using the Letters function.
QuickBooks doesn’t have the ability to automatically generate a Lien Waiver & Release form, or any other Contract Document, like many of the more costly construction software packages, this means that QuickBooks users must find an alternative method to generate these vital contract documents.
Let’s say that you are a Subcontractor and need to generate a very simple Lien Waiver and Release form to a General Contractor.
One method is to create a Word document that has to be manually updated each time you need to generate the form.
Another method is to take that existing Word “template” and bring it into the QuickBooks Prepare Letters and Envelopes function – or create a new template if one doesn’t exist.
We’ll talk about bring the existing document into QuickBooks first:
- From the Company menu -> choose Prepare Letters with Envelopes
- Choose Customize Letter Templates
- Choose Convert an Existing Microsoft Word Document to a Letter Template, click Next
- From the Choose an Existing Microsoft Word Document window, use the Browse button to locate and select the document that you want to use as your Lien Waiver and Release Template
- Check the Customer option for #2 – Choose the type of letter for which you want to create a template.
- Click the Next button
- Enter a new name for the letter or let it default to the file name and click Ok.
Word will now launch in the background and display your basic Lien Waiver form, which you can now add QuickBooks merge fields to.
In Word 2010, click on the Add-Ins menu item along the top where you can choose to insert My Company Fields and Customer Name Fields into the document.
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As with any document created through QuickBooks you may not have access to all of the information that you need, so make sure that you do something to call out pieces of information, such as a payment amount, that you will have to enter when you actually create the letter. One way to easily identify pieces of information such as this is to simply place an “underline” at the spot in the template.
When you need to generate the Lien Waiver:
- Go to the Company menu -> Prepare Letters with Envelopes -> Customer Letters – OR – from the Customer Center -> click the Word icon -> and Prepare Customer Letters
- Choose the Customer OR Job that you want to create the Lien Waiver for and click Next
- Select the Lien Waiver template and click Next
- Enter the name and title of the person who will sign the letter and click Next
- QuickBooks will now create your Lien Waiver and open it in Word so you can add any missing information
You may need to “tweak” your template in order to make sure that everything looks correct. If so, go back to the Company menu -> choose Prepare Letters and Envelopes -> choose Customize Letter Templates -> choose View or Edit Existing Letter Templates -> click Next -> choose the Type of Letter -> select the template -> click Next -> and when the template opens in Word, make any necessary changes.
To create a new Lien Waiver template:
Go to the Company menu -> choose Prepare Letters and Envelopes -> Create a New Letter Template from Scratch -> click Next -> choose the Letter Type and give the template a name -> click Next -> Word will launch. Create your template, selecting fields from the Add-In tab.
We hope that you have found this QuickBooks Tip to be helpful, while this doesn’t solve the entire problem, it does help you to automate a time-consuming task.
If you have to generate AIA type billing as well as issue various contract documents, be sure to check out Construction Application for Payment Solution, a QuickBooks integrated add-on that will produce AIA Billing on actual AIA G-702/G-703 forms that you purchase or similar plain paper forms; which has a built-in Contract Document Manager which can gather even more information for your Contract Documents.
Top 10 Tuesday features our favorite QuickBooks, social media, construction and business tips from around the web.
It’s tough to choose just 10 and even tougher to read everything that is of interest – if I did ……. well I wouldn’t ever get anything else done!
This week’s Top 10 include:
Carrie Kahn
Darren Slaughter
Intuit Small Business Blog
Top Notch Bookkeeping
A Bookkeeper’s Corner
ProBlogger
BNET
QuickBooks and Beyond
These were our favorites, what were yours?
