Top 5-Year End Payroll Questions

Hello Community! Happy December. If you’ve been wondering how to go about accessing your direct deposit forms, running bonus checks, canceling a payroll that you already ran, & more, then you’ll want to keep on reading. 

This time around I’m going to be focusing on the top Year End Payroll questions asked directly from our community as we’re now officially entering our end of the year season. 

Let’s go through these together. 

1. How do I access a direct deposit form for my employee? 

Great question!

If you’re trying to access the direct deposit authorization form for your employees, just visit the Payroll tax section in QuickBooks Online. This way, your employees can start to fill out and sign.

Here’s how:

1. Go to Payroll and select Payroll Taxes.
2. Scroll down to Payment Resources and select All Payment Resources
3. Then look for Setup Forms
4. Click on the Employee tab
5. Scroll and select Employee Bank Verification
6.  Then View and Print.

Also, you can directly use this information to print an authorization form for direct deposit. Then refer to this guide to enter the employee's bank account information in QBO: Set up direct deposit for employees.

Once everything is set up, you can visit these resources to learn more on how to process payroll and to make sure your employees get paid on time when there’s a holiday:

• How do federal holidays affect my direct deposit?
• Create and run your payroll

2. How do I find copies of all forms 941 filed last year?

 Here are the steps  to view your Form 941: 

1. Go to Payroll, then Payroll Tax.
2. Under Forms/Filings, Find your Quarterly Forms or View and Print Archived Forms to see the archived ones from prior periods.
3. Tap the 941 link.
4. Click Preview, then download the form in PDF format or print it.

See this article for more information about viewing tax payments and tax forms: Access payroll tax forms and tax payments.

You'll want to read about filing federal forms in QuickBooks Online. These will provide you with tips on how to file them before their due dates as well as managing differences:

• File quarterly tax forms.
• Why do I occasionally notice penny rounding differences?

3. What account would Holiday Gifts for Employees go under?

I’m glad you asked! It all depends on the nature of the gifts and the dollar value.

You might be surprised to know that even $25 general merchandise gift cards given to employees are gross wage, taxable in all forms. Better to gift a physical ham or turkey, anything larger, such as a phone or a tablet will be taxable fringe benefits. 

You can check out this article on How to set up taxable fringe benefits in quickbooks here: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/community/Employees-and-payroll-taxes/How-to-create-taxable-fringe-ben.... Otherwise you’ll want to post the minimal value of the gifts as Non-Taxable Fringe Benefits. 

4. How do you cancel payroll that you already ran?

I’ll show you how!

Canceling payroll that you already ran depends on the processing state that you use. If you're using a manual paycheck, you can delete or void this. Depending on your processing time, and payroll service, QuickBooks may allow you to delete the transaction. 

If it's a direct deposit, let's proceed to the paycheck list and void this. Ensure to do this before 5:00 PM PST. Beyond that, your payroll will be processed and can't be canceled.

For QuickBooks Online Payroll Core, Premium, and Elite, here's what you need to do:

1. Go to the Payroll menu.
2. Choose the Employees tab.
3. Go to the Paycheck list and set the date range 
    

   

4. Select the paycheck(s) you'd like to delete or void, then select Delete or Void.

5. Read the warning and select Void Paycheck to confirm.

If you're using other payroll services, you may check out this article for the detailed steps: Delete or void employee paychecks.

However, if the direct deposit is already offloaded for ACH, we’re unable to stop the process. Moreover, the processing depends on the funding time set up for your account. You can wait for the money to settle into your employee’s bank account. Then, perform an internal agreement to return the amount or request for a reversal. See this article for more: Reverse direct deposit.

5. How do I run a bonus check? 

I’m glad you asked!

I'm happy to provide the steps needed in creating a bonus check to pay your employees.

In QuickBooks Online, you have two options for running a bonus check. It's either creating bonuses along with the employee's regular pay or through a separate paycheck.
 

If you choose to pay a bonus along with the employee’s regular pay, add the Bonus pay type before you run payroll. Here's how:

1. Go to Payroll, then Employees.
2. Select your employee.
3. Proceed to the Profile tab.
4. From Pay types, click Edit.
5. In the Additional pay types section, mark Bonus.

6. Click Save.

Once done, here's how to pay out the bonus.

1. Go to Payroll, then Employees.
2. Click Run payroll.
3. Select your employee, then enter the amount in the Bonus field.
4. Select Preview payroll, then Submit payroll.

If you choose to give the bonus through a separate check, follow the steps below.

1. Go to Payroll, then Employees.
2. From the Run payroll ▼ drop-down, select Bonus only.
3. Choose how you’d like to enter the bonus:
           * As a net pay: the employee gets the exact bonus amount. Taxes are still calculated but they’ll be company-paid tax.
           * As a gross: We’ll figure out the net amount for you.
4. Choose the employee, then enter the Bonus amount.
5. Click Edit ✎ next to Payroll options.
6. Select the payroll options you want, then hit Apply.
7. Click Preview and Submit payroll.

Please know that if you enter the bonus amount “As net pay”, you don’t have the option to deduct retirement, HSA, or garnishments. 

Now it's time to file your returns. I'm adding these resources for wrapping up and preparing this year’s payroll.

• Pay and file payroll taxes and forms in Online Payroll
• Year-end checklist for QuickBooks Online Payroll.

That’s a wrap for this week’s Top 5! We’ll be back next week with more but in the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this Q&A and got some useful information out of it. As always, please feel free to let us know if you have any other questions here in the Community.