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oakwood1
May 29, 2024
Question

Desktop to online migrations questions (especially re: payroll)

  • May 29, 2024
  • 2 replies
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We are a small church with a preschool. We're one entity in the eyes of the government (one EIN number) but pay church employees and preschool employees from separate bank accounts. But we file and pay taxes together, with the church reimbursing the preschool for their portion of the tax payment each month.

 

I didn't set it up this way -- not sure who thought it was a good idea 10+ years ago -- but we have had Quickbooks Desktop installed on two separate computers, under the same license and Intuit account, but therefore creating two company files, one on each computer.

 

The church computer houses ALL of its bookkeeping EXCEPT payroll -- income, expenses, reports, etc. The preschool computer ONLY uses QB to run everyone's payroll, for both the church and school employees, and for filing and paying taxes.

 

Now that we're being asked to switch to QBO, I was able to migrate the church company file (without payroll information) to online, but am I able to also migrate the other file (payroll) as well, or will that overwrite the income and expenses that have already been imported?

 

If we can't merge the two files into one QBO account, does that mean we will have to manually re-input all of the payroll we've already run this year (about 100 paychecks) so that W2s will be correct at the end of the year? And if we do that, will it try to make us file and pay the quarterly taxes we've already submitted??

 

I hope these questions make sense, let me know if you need clarification. I'm not an accountant, I'm barely even a bookkeeper (I only took over because I'm the church secretary and they needed someone to write checks and record deposits).

2 replies

JoesemM
JoesemM
May 29, 2024

Hi there, oakwood1.

 

When converting from QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT) to QuickBooks Online (QBO), most of your payroll data doesn't transfer to QBO. Paychecks created from QBDT will be converted into regular checks. There will be a lump sum import of the current year's paycheck information and may need to enter a prior payroll for the past year-to-date payroll info for each employee.

 

It's important to note that the data being entered is for the current calendar year, and there have been no paychecks processed for the employee(s) yet.

 

Here's how:

 

  1. Sign in to QuickBooks Online as the primary admin.
  2. Navigate to the Payroll tab and select Overview.
  3. Add all of your employees paid this year in the Tell us about your team task. Include all employees that no longer work for you. Make sure to set up each pay item, deduction, contribution, and tax showing on their pay stubs or reports.
  4. Next, to Add your payroll history, select Start.
  5. Enter the necessary information.

 

Check out this article for more details: Add pay history to QuickBooks Online Payroll. I'll also share this article that talks about moving data from QBDT to QBO: Learn how features and data move from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online.

 

Additionally, I'd like to provide you with this Getting Started Guide to facilitate your navigation through the feature:

 

 

Keep in touch if you need more help with migrations or adding payroll, I want to make sure you're taken care of. Thanks for reaching out, wishing you all the best.

4
4Gal
May 30, 2024

@oakwood1 

If we can't merge the two files into one QBO account, does that mean we will have to manually re-input all of the payroll we've already run this year (about 100 paychecks) so that W2s will be correct at the end of the year?

 

You can purchase a 3rd party service to merge your data into one QBO account. But I would recommend to stay with QB Desktop for your case.

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