Payroll Tips
Payroll is one of the MOST critical pieces of your business.You need to:
pay your employees correctly and on time to keep them happy
pay your payroll taxes and other liabilities on time
be prepared for a payroll audit and know what records you have to keep for how long
deal with wage garnishments and employee loans
Most importantly, you NEED to get the payroll dollars into your QuickBooks® job costing reports!
Automating Job Costing Overtime, an 800 pound gorilla with an attitude
Calculating and distributing employee overtime is a burdensome process that many business owners and payroll administrators have to deal with on a weekly basis. Everyone has a different opinion on just "HOW" that overtime is to be calculated and distributed. By everyone, I mean the business owner, the payroll clerk, heck even the Federal and State government. No wonder it's just a problematic situation!
Continue readingConfused About Payroll Deductions and Payroll Liabilities?
Are you confused about payroll deductions and payroll liabilities? If so, don't feel alone! They can confuse a lot of people.
As bookkeepers we see a lot of things that we feel to be "odd" when dealing with payroll deductions. From the normal employee advance and repayments, to deductions for Fed-Ex or UPS fees, tool repayments, voluntary disability payments, you name it!
The question always seems to center around - is this really a company expense and how the heck do I record these transactions? Continue reading
Entering Historical Paychecks – Payroll Taxes and the Accounts They Post To
Setting up QuickBooks payroll and entering historical data can be quite confusing. Thankfully, there is a built in Payroll Setup Wizard that will help you through the rough spots; like creating payroll tax items and accounts and entering historical payroll data.
Still there are choices to make. Will you be processing future payrolls through QuickBooks - if so you'll need a payroll subscription. If you use an outside payroll service and just want to get that payroll data into your company file - then turning on manual payroll might be the way to go.
When it comes to entering historical data, there are a couple of ways to do it. But the method you choose should be based on how valuable job-costed payroll is.
Continue readingJob Costing Payroll When Using a Payroll Service
Using an outside payroll service, such as Paychecx or ADP, is a popular option for many business owners. While using a payroll service often provides many benefits one of the biggest challenges or drawbacks is for the company that needs job costing. See this question submitted by a reader.
My company uses a 3rd party to do all of our payroll. We receive an itemized report back showing what we spent for the week. I am having trouble trying to get this information charged out to individual jobs. I track all of the hours separately in Excel, with estimated costs. How can I job cost this information?
Continue readingQuickBooks 2013 Revamped Employee Record
Big changes to the employee record, including convenient left navigation and the ability to actually see more items in the payroll info section - which means less mouse clicks and scrolling for you!
However, these changes also mean that you need to size QuickBooks differently on your monitor in order to be able to see everything. We'll show you side-by-side comparisons of each section of the employee record.
What do you think of these changes?
Continue readingTracking Timesheet Hours vs Hours Invoiced
A reader asks - I'm looking for a report so I can compare hours reported via the timesheet or really hours that have been paid out Vs. the hours that have been paid for or Invoiced.
See what reports we've suggested.
Continue readingReporting Fringe Benefits Paid in Cash on Certified Payroll
Reporting fringe benefits paid in cash on the Federal WH-347 Certified Payroll Report has specific requirements which the built-in QuickBooks report cannot handle. Here is a question from a reader who is using the certified payroll report provided in the QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll subscription asking how cash fringes should be reported because her reports are being rejected because they aren't reporting the cash payment correctly.
This article will explain how any cash paid in lieu of fringe benefits on prevailing wage projects is supposed to be reported on the WH-347 form and why the built-in QuickBooks certified payroll report isn't handling it correctly.
Continue readingBreaking Down Payroll by Job, Phase and Cost Code
Breaking down payroll by job, phase, and cost code is something that I'm often asked about by the construction clients/customers that I work with. Construction payroll is probably one of the more complex payrolls that anyone can encounter, see this question submitted by a reader - and my suggestion on how to resolve this.
Continue readingWage Restitution and Certified Payroll Revisions
Wage restitution and certified payroll revisions happen when you miss an update to the wage determination which increases the prevailing wage rate and the fringe benefit rate or perhaps you weren't informed until after working on the project for several weeks/months that this project was subject to prevailing wage.
Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of clear guidelines for submitting revised certified payroll reports, however, I've had experience in following two different sets of requirements, which I've outlined in this article.
Continue readingWeekly Wrap-Up: News You Can Use 6/15/2012-6/21/2012
Weekly wrap-up of news and information from around the web – there’s so much information out there that it’s difficult (at best) to keep up! I’ve added a WordPress plug-in that grabs information from my Twitter stream to help me (and hopefully you as well) keep up with everything. Look for the Weekly Wrap-Up: News You Can Use every Friday. I'll try to be consistent and organize the information into the same categories each week.
See what caught my attention this week in these topics: Accounting & Taxes, eBooks/Webinars/Videos, Payroll/Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, QuickBooks, Small Business/Organization/Productivity, Construction, and Social Media/Marketing/Website Design.
Continue readingWorker’s Comp Increases 45% in California, Beginning 7/1/2012
Worker’s Comp and payroll taxes take a huge bite out of a contractors profit when working on Public Works construction projects – especially if the contractor is paying the full fringe benefit rate of the prevailing wage to the employee in cash and not to the Union Hall or into bona-fide plans.
Public Works Construction and Prevailing Wage projects require advanced financial planning methods and tools along with an understanding of the ever-changing compliance requirements — so that you can reduce your overhead and get paid on time.
Continue readingThink You Can’t Afford to Pay Your Payroll Taxes-Think Again
Payroll for Work Hours & Drive Time Invoicing Problem
Entering payroll for normal employee work hours and drive time and passing only the work hours through to client invoices is not only important but confusing. The following question was submitted by a reader who pays from the start of the first job till the end of the last job of the day (not including lunch break). I have my employees fill out a time tracker sheet each day that shows the time started at the first job till the end, drive time in between jobs, so on and so forth. I enter this into QuickBooks but I can't figure out where to enter in drive time to pay the girls their hourly wage on payroll but to not invoice anyone for drive time. Continue reading
Deducting the Cost of Lost Equipment from an Employee’s Pay
Can you deduct the cost of lost equipment from your employee’s pay? As a business owner I'm betting that on more than one occasion you have had an employee who has lost his company provided cell phone more than once and you've have to replace it.
Perhaps you want to recover the cost of the phone via a payroll deduction - before you do, read the rest of this article, because the answer depends first on state and federal restrictions and second on how much you want to deduct.
Continue readingConstruction Payroll, Should I Do It In-house or Outsource It?
Nancy Smyth, Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc.QuickBooks Construction & Payroll Expert
I've been using and supporting QuickBooks products since the early 1990's. I've worked with thousands of contractors, assisting them with QuickBooks setup, Certified Payroll Reporting requirements, AIA Billing and Weighted-Average Overtime.
QuickBooks is a powerful product, but learning how to use it in your construction business can be difficult. I hope you find resources available here to be helpful.
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