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Tretan
Tretan
January 27, 2021
Question

Tracking different work locations for employees

  • January 27, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 0 views

I have employees who work on different provinces. I have set up different work locations for them.

When I run payroll reports by location, it allocates ALL payroll to the location that the employee is currently set up at the moment.

Basically, it doesn't keep the location history of the employee, and my reports are all wrong.

How can you fix this?

Thanks.

1 reply

Rebecca R
Rebecca R
January 27, 2021

Hi there Tretan and welcome to the Community!

 

I love that you've set up multiple work locations for your employees in order to better distinguish between where each job took place. That's a fantastic way to stay organized but I can see how it isn't working as you expect. Let me go over another QuickBooks Online feature that might suit your needs a little better.

 

Rather than setting a work location within your employee profiles, I'm confident that getting started with Class Tracking will be the right feature for you. You can use classes to track your transactions by meaningful segments within your business in order to get insights and run reports.This feature can be used with Payroll as well. You simply have to turn the feature on then assign classes to your employees.

To get started, you can check out our comprehensive article below. It goes over every step of the process and provides links to additional articles that'll be of use to you:

 

 

When you're ready, you'll want to turn on class tracking in both your Account and Settings and Payroll Settings. Here's how to turn on class tracking:

 

  1. Navigate to the Gear icon, then choose Account and Settings.
  2. Choose the Advanced tab, then choose the Categories section to edit it.
  3. Turn on Track classes and select Warn me when a transaction isn't assigned a class if you want to.
  4. Decide how you want to assign classes under Assign classes.
  5. Hit Save, then Done to save this change.

 

Once that's set up, you can get class tracking turned on within your Payroll Settings:

 

  1. Navigate to the Gear icon once again and choose Payroll Settings.
  2. Under Preferences choose Accounting, then Accounting Preferences.
  3. Locate the classes section or hit Customize to find it. Choose if you want to use the same class for all employees, or different classes for each. 
  4. Assign employee classes.
  5. Save your preferences by hitting OK then OK again.

 

Now you'll be able to set up your class list, track your transactions and run reports by class, and even create a budget by class. All this and more can be found in the article shared above.By setting up class tracking this way, you'll be able to run reports more accurately and won't run into the issue you're experiencing whereby all of your payroll is showing as run under the same location. 

 

If you'd like to submit feedback on the Work Location feature, in order to express how it might be changed to suit your needs better, please do so by navigating to the Gear icon, then hitting Feedback. These messages go directly to our product development team who take them into consideration when implementing improvements and new features. I'll pass this along on my end as well, because I know how important it is to have features functioning as expected.

 

Let me know if you need any more guidance when it comes to using Class Tracking. There are loads of resources and I'm happy to help. Take care!

Tretan
TretanAuthor
January 28, 2021

Hi Rebecca,

 

Thank you for your extensive and detailed response.

We are considering adding classes now.

So I understand that I will assign the employees to the class according to location in our case.

Questions:

1 - Once that employee changes location, do I change the class under Payroll settings again?

2 - If I run an annual report by classes, will the right payroll show in the right class for that particular employee?

 

Rebecca R
Rebecca R
January 28, 2021

Hi there Tretan,

 

Thanks for getting back to me and I'm glad to hear that you're considering using Classes to keep your employees and their locations organized when running payroll. I've done some further testing, and it appears that an employee can only be assigned one class. In this situation, changing the class would result in all payruns for that employee being assigned to the new class that's saved. This is the same result you experienced when changing the Work Location in your employee's profile, so I don't think this is the solution. I do have one other idea that just might work for your situation. 

 

While you can't assign multiple classes to one employee, you can track time using different classes or locations. For example, if you've turned on Class Tracking and Location Tracking in the Advanced section of your Account and Settings, you or your employees will be able to enter a Single time activity or Weekly timesheet with a location or class specified. From there you can run a Time Activities by Employee Detail report and customize it to see exactly what you're looking for. Since you're using QBO Payroll, the time activity that you enter will automatically populate into your weekly pay runs. Let me explain this in further detail.

 

Once you've set up either Class Tracking or Location Tracking in QuickBooks Online Plus, you can begin adding Classes and Locations by navigating to the Gear icon, then choosing All Lists. You'll find both Classes and Locations from that page, and can select either option to add to your list. For clarity's sake, let's say that you'll choose to track Location. When you navigate to the list of locations, you can hit New to enter as many as you'll need to track. 

 

In order to track your employee's hours by location, you'll want to hit the + New button and select either Single time activity or Weekly timesheet. You'll notice a dropdown for location, so you can select the appropriate location that your employee worked at for a specific time entry. Once saved, you'll be able to view this in report format. 

 

Navigate to the Reports menu, then use the search field to locate the Time Activities by Employee Detail report. In order to see time entries for each employee sorted by vacation, you'll want to use the following steps to Customize the report:

 

  1. Hit Customize.
  2. Under Rows/Columns choose to Group by Location (if you opt with using Classes, you'd select Class here).
  3. Choose to Filter the report and select the checkmark for Employee.
  4. Use the dropdown besides Employee to decide if you'd like to see time activity for all employees or just specific employees.
  5. Select Run report.

 

You'll now be viewing the time activities you or your employees have entered, by location. When you run payroll, these time activities will migrate over and reflect under the hours your employees are paid for each pay run. 

 

Let me know if this option hits the mark. I also want to encourage you to submit Feedback by navigating to the Gear icon. I think it's important that our product development team hears from users like you regarding how the Work Location or Payroll Class preferences could be better suited to your business' needs. I'll be sure to pass this along on my end as well.

 

I wish you the best, and am here if you should have any further questions.

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