employment | QuickBooks for Contractors blog

23May 2013 by Nancy Smyth

I-9 Form Updated – Make Sure You’re Prepared

An updated Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification form was released by the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on May 8, 2013. As an employer you are required to complete a Form I-9 whenever you hire a new employee, so make sure that it is part of your New Hire Packet. The employee must complete Section 1 of the I-9 on the day that you hire him and you must review the employee’s supporting documentation and complete Section 2 of Form I-9 within 3 business days of the hire date. You can photocopy the documents that the employee provides you and you can keep them with the completed I-9 or store them with the employee’s records. Important Note: If you hire a person for less than 3 (three) business days,…

07Nov 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Job Costing Payroll When Using a Payroll Service

Job Costing Tips, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

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? Thank you – Michelle Hi Michelle I bet you are having trouble getting payroll information charged to individual jobs, that’s one of the…

28Aug 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Tracking Timesheet Hours vs Hours Invoiced

Job Costing Tips, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers, Reports

Tracking timesheet hours vs hours invoiced is crucial for a companies cash flow. See this question submitted by a reader. Hello Experts, 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. I've also noticed it is possible to add time to timesheets that have already been billed. Is there a way to prevent this? Thanks for your time and energy. Brian Hello Brian Thanks for stopping by and submitting a question. QuickBooks has some good time tracking reports, here are my recommendations for some reports for you to look at. The Time by Job Detail Report is available in all versions/flavors (Pro, Premier, Enterprise); access it from…

16May 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Payroll for Work Hours & Drive Time Invoicing Problem

Job Costing Tips, Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers, QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

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. Hello - I own a residential and commercial cleaning company. I have several employees. I pay 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…

24Apr 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Certified Payroll – Employees, 1099 Workers & Subcontractors

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Questions from our readers

Certified Payroll reporting requirements for employees, 1099 workers and subcontractors causes confusion for many contractors working on prevailing wage/government funded construction projects. This question was submitted by a reader. I'm very confused about certified payroll reporting requirements. My workers are 1099'd so what do I put in the hours and withholding part? What if I hired a subcontractor for the completion of the job? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you ~~ Diane Hi Diane, The certified payroll report that your company submits to a general contractor, project owner, or contract administrator should contain information about your W-2 employees, the ones that work directly for you, are paid via payroll checks issued by your company and who you provide a W-2 for wages earned at the end of the…

02Apr 2012 by Nancy Smyth

More New Hire Reporting Requirements Go Into Effect 4/21/2012

Payroll Tips

New hire reporting requirements are becoming overwhelming and there are new obligations that become effective on April 21, 2012. I hadn't heard anything about this until my April copy of The General Ledger (a publication put out by the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers - AIPB) arrived on Saturday. Your new obligations for new-hire reporting: The Trade Adjustment Assistance Extension Act of 2011 (Public Law 112-40), which amends Section 453A (a) (2) of the Social Security Act, includes a revised definition of "newly hired employees" to include any worker: not previously employed by the employer; or previously employed by the employer but separated from such prior employment for at least 60 consecutive days (For the full text of the act, visit https://gpo.gov/fdsys, search for H.R. 2832 (ENR), click on…

16Mar 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Prevailing Wage-Paying More Than the Wage Decision Requires

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Questions from our readers

The Wage Decision provides you with the minimum amounts (base rate and fringe rate) that you must pay your employees when they work on a Prevailing Wage job - but confusion often happens when you actually pay your employees more than what the Wage Decision requires. See this question from a reader. We pay up and above the wage decision that we have. I need to know how to account for fringe benefits in cash that are already included in the base pay for us. For example the wage decision for an operator is $12.98 base with $3.31 fringe. I pay my operator $22 an hour. So the pay is up and above the rate. So on the form how to I show that? Do I have to show…

20Feb 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Payroll Tip – Handling 1 Employee with 2 Union Benefit Packages

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Questions from our readers

A payroll tip for handling one employee with two different wage rates and union fringe benefit packages on a single paycheck. The following question was submitted through our "Ask the Expert" form. How do I setup one employee to be paid weekly, with two entirely different wage and benefit rates, depending on the customer or item; through a single paycheck? I would like to set it up to just select one rate or the other and have the appropriate wage rate, benefits and contributions be automatically selected. This is for one employee working with two different unions, so the fringe benefit liabilities go to different parties on different liability checks. Any suggestions would be appreciated. A. While the expensive construction specific software programs can handle this easily, QuickBooks will…

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…

30Jan 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Paycheck/Payroll Frequencies by State

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Payroll Tips

Minimum payroll frequencies are determined by each state and can be quite confusing. I'm often asked "How often do I have to pay my employees" during a Certified Payroll Training Webinar. State minimum paycheck frequencies are shown below - this information comes directly from the U.S. Department of Labor's website. It's difficult to thoroughly cover the requirements of all 50 states in a 2 hour webinar, but it has crossed my mind that a series of blog posts on the differences between what State Laws are for how often payroll must be generated and how that can effect the generation of a certified payroll report would be a good thing to do. While I could have simply started this series and talked about the complexities of generating certified payroll reports…

16Jan 2012 by Nancy Smyth

QuickBooks Weekly Timesheet – Service vs. Payroll Item

Job Costing Tips, Payroll Tips

The QuickBooks Weekly Timesheet can cause a lot of confusion for users who are implementing employee time tracking for the first time, mainly because the timesheet contains both a Service Item and a Payroll Item. This article will explain what each column is used for and some common pitfalls that can happen. Job costing and employee time tracking are important aspects of many businesses - not just construction businesses. However, when you initially set up timetracking there are many things that can cause confusion. About Service Items: The Service Item column represents the type of work that is being performed and allows you to select/enter/choose the name of the service item/cost code from your Item List that you want to use when your charge/bill your customer for this work -…

04Jan 2012 by Nancy Smyth

Prevailing Wage Jobs – Fringe Benefits Question

Certified Payroll/Prevailing Wage, Questions from our readers

Payment of fringe benefits on prevailing wage jobs frequently cause a lot of confusion - such as the question submitted below from a reader. My boyfriend is being told that the company he works for will be taking half his pay each week to put in a 401k HALF!!! I wanted to know if this is legal---they say if he doesnt sign the paper he will be fired so it is mandatory. Is this legal? He is in construction and works for a prevailing rate. Thank you very much - Janelle Hi Janelle There may be some confusion and/or miscommunication going on here and NOT knowing the full details I can only provide you with basic information. When an employee works on a prevailing wage job {rate job}, he has…

07Dec 2011 by Nancy Smyth

Payroll Tip-Worker’s Comp Tracking on Vacation, Holiday & Overtime Pay

Payroll Tips, Questions from our readers

Payroll can be one of the most complex duties of any bookkeeper's job - especially when you need to OR want to track your Worker's Compensation costs for job costing purposes and pay your employees Vacation, Holiday and Overtime wages. Just take a look at this question, submitted by one of our blog subscribers! I have set up the Workers Compensation tracking in QuickBooks for a construction company with no problem, it seems to be working fine. My question is - how do you keep track of Holiday, Vacation, and Overtime pay? Do I set up each payroll item with the Workers Comp {WC} rate for each class? For example Carpenter-Holiday and Carpenter-Vacation? Thanks, Kathleen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Answer: Hi Kathleen; That's an excellent question! One of the first things that you…

30Nov 2011 by Nancy Smyth

Office Policies & Your Business-How Do You Handle These Situations?

"Maad" Rants & Other Stuff, Be A Better Bookkeeper, Payroll Tips

Creating office policies for your small business can be difficult, as most of us are well aware. How do you handle sick time, vacation time, personal time, or a death in the family? Better yet, how do your clients and/or customers handle it when it happens to you? I was reading a very interesting article yesterday about "Can You Require Sick Employees to Stay Home"? My first reaction was "Wow! Good question" quickly followed by "as a small business owner I should be able to". After all, it is officially cold and flu season and already every where you go people are coughing and sneezing; do you really want them bring that to work? I know I don't want that to happen! Sunburst, like many other small businesses consists of…

17Nov 2011 by Nancy Smyth

Payroll Tips – Answers to 7 Holiday Pay Questions

Be A Better Bookkeeper, IRS Information, Payroll Tips, QuickBooks Corner

Payroll and holiday pay can be confusing and overwhelming and here we are right at the height of the upcoming holiday season! I found these great tips from HR Matters and wanted to share them with you. These tips provide answers to common questions such as: Do you have to provide paid holidays? What about for new employees? Do you have to pay overtime to employees who have to work on a holiday? We’re officially heading into the holiday season with Thanksgiving coming up next week and Christmas and the New Year just around the corner. If you are like most employers, you may be dealing with holiday pay issues. To help you out, the HR Matters E-Tips Editors have put together the top seven holiday questions that they answer…

Tag: employment