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dsliesse
July 23, 2021
Question

Quickbooks Desktop payroll in conjunction with external payroll service

  • July 23, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 0 views

For historical reasons unknown to me, we have a client who does his own payroll on a biweekly basis.  I haven't been able to identify the service he uses, but they apparently don't handle the tax forms and payments.  Since we do his bookkeeping we take care of all his taxes, as well.

 

What I've noticed is that the semiweekly 941 deposits calculated by the other system tend to be off by a few pennies.  They're calculating the 15.3% on gross payroll and adding the withholding, rather than adding the withholding from each check.  The maximum difference has been 6 cents.

 

We enter his payroll into QBD so that we can generate the tax forms, but how do I adjust the payroll tax liability payments to reflect what was actually paid?  WIthout some kind of correction the 941 is a little bit off, and I'm of the school that believes there's no excuse for the books being off by even just a penny.

 

Is this going to be a convoluted process like Washington excise taxes where I have to create a clearing account?  I haven't found any way to create a payroll item to adjust taxes (this would obviously be the most convenient way to do things).  Maybe I shouldn't be trying to figure things like this out at the end of the week!

1 reply

D
DebSheenD
July 24, 2021

Hi there, dsliesse.

The 6 cents difference on your payroll is not due to rounding in the calculations. You don't need to worry if the report indicates that you owe or make a payment off by pennies. The government understands the rounding discrepancies and ignores the penny differences.

If you would like to make an adjustment, I have two options to provide that'll help adjust payroll liabilities:

  1. If you are using Basic, Standard and, Enhanced Payroll for your client you can read and follow the steps on this article: Adjust payroll liabilities in QuickBooks Desktop.
  2. If your client did the manual entry of payroll you can create a journal for clearing the account: Set up a clearing account.
     

I've included some articles in case you need some ideas about creating a payroll summary report in QuickBooks, as well as running a payroll checkup:

Don't hesitate to leave a comment if you have any other questions about payroll adjustment. I'm one post away. Take care.
 

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