How do you post critical worker benefits through payroll into quickbooks online?

Hi honkerspub,

This is a great question. In looking at the Critical Worker Benefit, I see that it's an initiative in Alberta to recognize essential workers in the province. I can appreciate wanting to make sure this is recorded properly for your employees when you run the payroll through QuickBooks Online. I'll point you in the right direction for this.

When working with QuickBooks Online Payroll, it's possible to set up a number of different pay types, and it sounds like that may be what you need to do here since it's money paid out to the employee. What I recommend doing is starting with the following article to learn what sorts of pay types the program can handle: Supported pay types and deductions explained. If you'd like to take a closer at potentially setting up such a pay type, here's how you can go about that.

1. Select the Payroll tab from the left menu.
2. In the Employees section, click the name of an employee.
3. Click Edit employee.
4. Select the pencil icon next to Additional pay types for the section How much do you pay [employee]?

There, you'll see where you can add more wage-type payroll items, as well as additional types at the bottom. You may need to work with something like the Other earnings type in this case. Once you've got it set up for one employee, it'll just be a matter of going into the other relevant employee profiles to add it; you won't need to configure it again from scratch.

I strongly recommend working with an accountant to ensure you have the right setup for this, in particular if what you need to achieve isn't available in QuickBooks Online Payroll. We don't have a recommended workflow or setup for handling this benefit, but an accountant may be able to offer guidance.

The My Accountant tab allows you to work with an existing accountant by adding them as a user to your books or you can use our Find a pro to help button to research QuickBooks-certified accountants in your area. You may also receive some responses from other users here in the QuickBooks Community, but for more immediate help, an accountant may be best.

Don't hesitate to stop by again if you have more questions!