08Apr 2014 by Nancy Smyth
Technology is Changing How We Submit Certified Payroll Reports

Technology is Changing How We Submit Certified Payroll Reports

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, New Technology, QuickBooks Add-Ons, The "Sunburst" Website
Technology - computers, software, and the internet - has changed how we create and submit certified payroll reports over the last decade. For many years a paper certified payroll report - either the Federal WH-347 or a state specific form - was what you needed; and then you dug out the typewriter and typed the information onto the form - or - you painstakingly handwrote the information onto the form. Then along came computers and programs like LOTUS 1-2-3 and Excel and we would recreate the layout of the paper form using the program and fill it in each week – it was faster, neater, easier to correct typo's, and we felt that we were automating the task at hand. Then, some of the software companies created a “certified payroll…
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09Oct 2013 by Nancy Smyth
New Product Announcement: QuickBooks IIF Inactive Cleanup Utility

New Product Announcement: QuickBooks IIF Inactive Cleanup Utility

QuickBooks Add-Ons, QuickBooks Corner, The "Sunburst" Website
We are very excited to announce the release of our newest software program - the QuickBooks IIF Inactive Cleanup Utility! Necessity is often the "Mother of Invention", it's why all of our software programs have been created.  We often find ourselves in a situation where we encounter a repetitive task that just screams for the need of automation. I'm fairly certain that the following story will hit home with many QuickBooks ProAdvisors and Consultants: A customer or ours recently hired me to help him start a brand new QuickBooks Enterprise file - his old one was so corrupt that even Intuit Data Repair couldn't fix it and it couldn't be opened/upgraded by the new version of QuickBooks Enterprise that he wanted to use in his company.  The file contained nearly…
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18Sep 2012 by Nancy Smyth
EEOC Reports & Government Funded Construction Projects – Q & A

EEOC Reports & Government Funded Construction Projects – Q & A

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Construction News, The "Sunburst" Website
EEOC Reports are just another compliance requirement that must be met when you perform work on government funded/prevailing wage jobs - in addition to the submission of a weekly certified payroll report. In this Q & A we'll discuss your obligations, what types of forms you might need to file, and when you have to file them. What is the EEOC and what do they do? The U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is responsible for enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee because of the person's race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetic information. What is an EEOC Report? An EEOC Report is really nothing more than than a report that includes how many employees you…
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09Aug 2012 by Nancy Smyth
Reporting Fringe Benefits Paid in Cash on Certified Payroll

Reporting Fringe Benefits Paid in Cash on Certified Payroll

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers, The "Sunburst" Website, Webinars & Training
Reporting prevailing wage fringe benefits paid in cash to the employee has specific requirements when completing the Federal WH-347 Certified Payroll Report.  Here is a question from a reader who is submitting the built-in QuickBooks certified payroll report and is being told that she is not correctly reporting the cash fringe benefit amounts. Hi, I found your blog through a Google search and can't believe all the information you have here about certified payroll, prevailing wage and using QuickBooks - so far I've learned so much!  I could really use some help and couldn't find anything that I thought fit our specific situation.  We are a non-union contractor working on prevailing wage jobs and we pay the full fringe benefit amount to the employee in cash.  We use the QuickBooks…
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10Apr 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Employee Social Security Numbers on Certified Payroll Reports

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Questions from our readers, The "Sunburst" Website
  Displaying employee social security numbers and addresses on certified payroll reports, which are ultimately public documents, causes privacy and identity theft concerns for many employers and employees  - not to mention confusion over reporting requirements.  This question was submitted by a blog reader.   The instructions for the Federal WH-347 certified payroll report say - The payrolls submitted shall include the following information: Name of each employee A unique individually identifiable number for each employee, or as it was suggested, the last 4 digits of the employee social security number His/her correct classification Hourly rates of pay, including any cash fringe benefits paid Daily and weekly number of hours worked Deductions made and actual wages paid Can we accept a unique individually identifiable number on payroll and is there…
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28Feb 2012 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks 3rd Party Applications – How Integration Works

QuickBooks Add-Ons, The "Sunburst" Website
  The integration between QuickBooks and a third-party application is transparent, the communication between the two programs takes place behind the scenes leaving very little to be seen - often only the end result of a report or task done outside of QuickBooks OR a transaction created in the 3rd party program that is posted into the data file. As the QuickBooks developer I'm asked, almost on a daily basis, how our software integrates with QuickBooks.  Providing an explanation is not an easy task - integration was designed to be transparent with most of the actual communication between the programs going on behind the scenes - within the thousand of lines of software code written by the developer. Everyone says "I need to SEE how IT (the integration) works". It's…
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01Feb 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Certified Payroll Reports & Bi-Weekly Paychecks

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Payroll Tips, The "Sunburst" Website
Generating weekly certified payroll reports when you issue bi-weekly paychecks to your employees can be difficult unless your accounting software will accurately accrue the wages for each week - QuickBooks doesn't have this ability and quite often this causes problems. Payroll is one of the largest expenses that a company will have.  Most companies, when they start up, will find out what the minimum requirements for paycheck frequencies are for the state that their business resides in - earlier this week we discussed paycheck/payroll frequencies by state - and they will follow those rules.  This will work fine unless you are a contractor who makes the move to Public Works/Government Construction projects and become subject to prevailing wage laws.  This is when problems can occur. Under the Federal Davis-Bacon and…
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14Apr 2011 by JProfitt

Prevailing Wage Jobs and the Compensation Package

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, From Our Guest Bloggers, The "Sunburst" Website
A prevailing wage job is typically a government funded project.  The Davis-Bacon and Service Contract Acts govern federal projects.  Most states have a prevailing wage law, but there are some that do not so it is a good idea to know the rules before you bid a project. Governments, in their idea of fairness, mandate union rules and compensation packages on the jobs.  So, one of the simple ways to prepare yourself to do prevailing wage jobs is to have an action plan at the ready that will allow you to cope with the requirements.  We will briefly discuss the compensation package. All prevailing wage projects will come with wage determination schedules that detail the base rate and fringe rates for all craft and trades.  The base rate most likely…
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13Apr 2011 by Nancy Smyth

New Certified Payroll Solution Support Article

The "Sunburst" Website
A new Certified Payroll Solution support article has been added to our main website - Matching Your QuickBooks Paycheck Totals With Your Certified Payroll Report Totals A guide for verifying and troubleshooting the accuracy of your final certified payroll reports before you submit them is an important step in your overall success in using Certified Payroll Solution and getting paid on time. This mini-manual focuses on the Federal WH-347 form - which everyone has access to, 99% of the time, if the WH-347 form is accurate, any other state specific form that you are required to complete will be also.  It will teach you how to: Match your QuickBooks paycheck totals with your Certified Payroll Report totals Correct the 6 most common problems, based on over 10 years worth of…
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28Mar 2011 by Nancy Smyth

Are Your QuickBooks Certified Payroll Reports Accurate? How to Check

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Corner, The "Sunburst" Website
Verifying the accuracy of the certified payroll reports that you can generate from QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise versions - IF you also subscribe to Enhanced Payroll, is a must for anyone in the construction industry. I've been watching the posts on the Intuit Community Forums about the alternate, substitute U.S. Department of Labor WH-347 certified payroll reports that can be generated if you have QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise AND an Enhanced Payroll Subscription.  It seems like many people want to know how to generate the reports, if the reports are approved through the DOL (Department of Labor), why they have suddenly stopped working, how to issue "No Work Performed Reports", and how to tell if the reports they are generating are accurate. This article will focus on the requirements of…
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11Mar 2011 by Nancy Smyth

Freebie Friday – AIA Billing (G-702/G-703) Training Exercise

Be A Better Bookkeeper, Customers & Accounts Receivable, Free & Fee-Based QuickBooks eBooks, The "Sunburst" Website
Freebie Friday!  The work week is just about over (for some of us, that is). This week's item is a fee-based AIA (G-702/G-703) Billing Training exercise. Have you ever been asked to complete a G-702 and G-703 billing form and don't know where to even start?  If so, than this training exercise is just what the doctor ordered! Most anyone will tell you that completing the AIA G-702 and G-703 forms by hand is frustrating and difficult.  To fill out one correctly, you pretty much have to: forget about any basic accounting principals you've ever learned ignore change orders that have been submitted or approved, but not processed ignore money that is still outstanding from previously submitted applications for payment You need to realize that the payment applications that you submit…
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23Feb 2011 by Nancy Smyth

Looking for Guest Bloggers

From Our Guest Bloggers, The "Sunburst" Website
We would like to invite our subscribers to write a guest blog article that we will post on our blog.? We know a lot of our subscribers are experts in their own fields and have tips and best practices that everyone could benefit from. What to Write About? We are looking for articles that provide valuable information to the business professionals that subscribe to our blog.? The post could pertain to business lessons you’ve learned that would be valuable for others to hear about, tips for handling certain situations more effectively, compliance issues to avoid or anything that would help business owners run their companies more efficiently.? The articles don’t have to be geared towards payroll or construction, but should relate to using QuickBooks, owning, operating or managing a business.…
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16Aug 2010 by Nancy Smyth

Happy 10th Birthday – Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc.

"Maad" Rants & Other Stuff, The "Sunburst" Website
Back 2000 who would have thought that developing a QuickBooks integrated add-on would become a very popular trend among software developers? Heck, there wasn't even a widely known, let alone an "Intuit approved method" of accessing QuickBooks data at that time, so WHY would anyone want to form a company that would read QuickBooks data to generate certified payroll reports for construction contractors? Yet, on August 16, 2000 that is exactly what Ben & Nancy Smyth of Sunburst Software Solutions, Inc. decided to do - write QuickBooks integrated software that would produce Certified Payroll Reports for government construction projects. Ten years and almost 4,000 contractors using QuickBooks later; Sunburst is still going strong. We would like to say "thank you" to all of our current and past customers for their…
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09Aug 2010 by Nancy Smyth

Closing for vacation – 8/11 through 8/18/2010

"Maad" Rants & Other Stuff, The "Sunburst" Website
I'm so excited.  We are closing the office at the end of business day on 8/10/2010 and taking a well deserved vacation from 8/11/2010-8/18/2010. We are going to trade in the sound of a ringing telephone and looking at a monitor all day to the sound of the ocean and looking at the "flower pots" (better known as Hopewell Rocks).  More info at https://www.thehopewellrocks.ca/English/gallery.php Cell phone service will be non-existent and internet will be sketchy at best. See you all when we get back.
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