Many of my clients believe that setting up payroll in QuickBooks for job costing is frustrating and difficult. There are several steps that need to be taken in order for payroll to flow properly to the job costing reports, especially if you want to include payroll taxes and benefits. The step-by-step instructions below will help guide you through the setup. Then you won’t have any problems.
These instructions assume you have a subscription to QuickBooks payroll. If you are trying to use job costing with a non-QuickBooks payroll provider, you will not only make your bookkeeping more time-consuming, but also introduce opportunities for errors to be made.
Please try L & R Tax Preparations on line payroll service if you do not have one at this time. We’re using Intuit web hosted Payroll service for our online payroll clients.
Here are the steps:
Set up Preferences:
1. Go to Edit > Preferences > Company Preferences and select Payroll & Employees
2. Select “Full Payroll” or “Complete Payroll Customers”
3. Check “Job Costing, Class and Item tracking for paycheck expenses”
4. Go to Time & Expenses
5. Select Yes under “Do you track time?”
6. You may also want to check “Create invoices from a list of time & expenses”
Set up Payroll Items:
1. Go to Lists > Payroll Items
2. Edit every Addition and Company Contribution item to ensure that “Track expenses by job” is checked
3. Payroll items can only map to one expense account, so you may want to setup separate ones for COGS and overhead payroll expense
4. You can’t assign or have two payroll items for payroll taxes
Set up Employee Records:
1. Go to the Employee Center and double-click on employee name
2. Change Tab to Payroll & Compensation Info
3. Check “Use time data to create paychecks”
If you want to Set up Default for New Employees:
1. Go to the Employee Center and select Manage Employee Information > Change Employee Default Settings
2. Check “Use time data to create paychecks
Set up Workers Comp:
1. Setup workers comp at Employees > Workers Compensation > Setup Workers Comp
2. Setup your workers comp codes at Employees > Workers Compensation > Workers Comp List
3. Go to Lists > Payroll Items to double-check that the Workers Comp payroll item has “Track expenses by job” checked
Using Timesheets
1. Go to Employees > Enter Time > Use Weekly Timesheet
2. Complete all information including both a payroll item & a service item (these are different) – mark as billable if you do time & material billing
3. You may want to add a customer job for overhead
4. Consider using Time Tracker or WorkTrack Time Card so employees can enter their own time.
L & R Tax Preparation also offers TimeTrackingSalesSheet for its payroll clients.
If you have more questions concerning payroll or setting up payroll please feel free to contact us at L & R Tax Preparation.
For more readable information:
© 2010 – 2011, Bruce Mc. All rights reserved.
