Top 5 Questions - Year End Payroll

Happy New Year! Welcome back to another Year End Top 5. Are you wondering how your employee can go about accessing their paystubs, how you can add historical payroll information within QuickBooks Online, or how to record a loan made to an employee? If so then you’ll want to keep reading as I will be covering a few of the most asked questions on the topic of payroll!

So let’s get started and walk through these together! 

1. How does my employee access their paystubs?

Great question!

Let me show you how to identify which email should be used so that your employee can view their pay stubs in QuickBooks.

First, you’ll want to check and see that the email your employee would use to access their pay stubs is correct within their personal information in QuickBooks.  You can verify that by following these steps:

1. Go to the Payroll or Workers menu, and select Employees.
2. Select the employee’s name, then click Edit ✎ next to Pay.
3. Verify the email if it's the same as what your employee is using upon signing in.
4. If it's not the same, you can ask for a new email and enter it there.
5. Select Done.

If the email is correct and you’ve already sent an invite once, then I recommend letting them use an incognito browser or clear the cache before accessing it again. This will clear those obsolete data that have been accumulated over time and fix any browser-related issues.

To send a Workforce invitation, here's how:

1. In the left menu, click Payroll.
2. Go to the Employees menu.
3. Locate the employee.
4. In the Personal info section, Select Resend next to "Invite this employee to view their pay stubs and W-2s online."
5. Hit Done.

Once done, have your employee open the email and select Get access to paychecks to accept the invitation. Also, please know that they can only use the link once.

For more information about the process above you can check out the following articles:

• View your paychecks and W-2s online in QuickBooks Workforce
• Invite employees to see pay stubs and W-2s online

2. When emailing the employees their paystubs, for the first time some are being required to enter a p...

I’m happy to provide you information about the enter password requirement when employees' trying to view their pay stubs.

if you email pay stubs from QuickBooks Desktop, they are delivered as password-protected PDF attachments to increase the security of the employee information.

An employee's password are composed of:

• The first 4 characters of the employee's last name. These 4 characters are always lower case.
• The last four digits of the SSN.

An example is, Sandra Bullock's Social Security Number was 123-45-6789, her password to view the emailed pay stub would be bull6789. 

Please note that this is a system generated information and can't be disabled due to employee privacy issues.

For more insights about this matter, look into this article: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/community/Employees-and-payroll-taxes/Email-pay-stubs-from-QuickBooks-....

Additionally, emailing pay stubs in QuickBooks Desktop 2016 R7 and later, here's an article for the password requirements now: https://community.intuit.com/articles/1772279.

This information should help your employees access their pay stubs. I'll be on the lookout for your reply and to further assisting you if you have other questions. Wishing you and your business continued success. 

3. Can I add historical data to payroll QB online from the current paystub or do I have to start from t...

Yes!  You can enter historical payroll information for the current calendar year. However, entering prior payroll data can only be done if no paycheck has been run yet.

You can follow these steps for the complete instructions.

1. Log in to your QuickBooks Online account.
2. Go to the Payroll menu.
3. Within the Employee tab, select the employee to open the information. Under How much did you pay [employee] this year?, select +Enter [year] prior pay details.
4. Enter the necessary information.

You can read through this article for additional information:  Set up a prior payroll.

If you have already paychecks created, you can contact our payroll specialist. They have tools that can help you add historical data to payroll QuickBooks Online from the current paystub. Here's how:
 

1. Go to Help at the upper-right corner.
2. Click Contact us.
3. Enter a short description of your concern.                                                                 

1. You can then choose how you want to start a conversation by choosing Chat, Callback, Call us.
   

    

Also, you can run your payroll reports from time to time to have a quick view of the transactions that you've created so far. You can check this article as a guide and to get more details on how you can use each report in the program: Run payroll reports.

4.  Can you make an existing employee a contractor?

Totally! I've got the steps on how to transition your employee to a contractor in QuickBooks Online.

First, you'll have to change the employee's status to Terminated. Follow these steps:

1. Click the Employees tab, and find the employee to be terminated.
2. Click the employee's current status.
3. Under Employment, select Terminated from the Status drop-down list.
4. Optionally, click the date icon to select the employee's last day of Active status.
5. Click Save.

Once done, you can proceed by adding a contractor by following these steps: 

1. Go to Employees/ Workers in the left navigation bar.
2. Select Contractors.
3. Click the Add a Contractor button at the upper right side.
4. Enter the Name and Email address.
5. Make sure to check the box to email contractors, so they can complete their profile and get their account to safely share their details.
6. Click Add Contractor.

5. How do I record a loan made to an employee?

Thanks for asking! We can set up an Other Current Asset account to record the loan you've made to an employee. Here's how:

1. Go to Accounting on the left panel.
2. Within the Chart of Accounts tab, click the New button at the upper-right corner.
3. Choose Other Current Assets in the Account Type and select Employee Cash Advances in the Detail Type.
4. Then, click Save and Close.

Once done, you can create a deduction item for the repayment. If you don't want to deduct the loan repayment to your employee's paycheck, you can create a deposit for it.

Also, you can check this article for additional details: Set up a loan in QuickBooks Online. Also, I'll add some articles for additional details about handling accounts in the COA:

• Learn how to delete bank, income, and other types of accounts from your chart of accounts.
• Move your chart of accounts to QuickBooks Online. 

That’s all for today! I hope the answers to these top year-end payroll questions were helpful and informative. Feel free to ask any further questions in the Community.

Until next time!