Thank you for your reply. 

I can actually still get the hours that we need -- by Class (our locations) rather than by employee -- using the original Payroll Summary report. What I truly need is the Payroll Summary report to work as it always has in the past with hours by Payroll Item and the associated pay in the top section with the withholdings and deductions netted out next and finally the employer taxes at the bottom of the report.  

We are having to piece together the report from More Payroll Reports in Excel/Payroll by Department/Class (with withholdings and deductions) with the original Payroll Summary by Class report (with payroll hours worked), when a WORKING Payroll Summary report that we already had would give us everything we need in one report if ONLY it would work! 

My concern with this piecing together of reports is, of course, human error. The Payroll Summary report has formulas that carry totals throughout the report whereas the More Payroll Reports in Excel/Payroll by Department/Class report shows only values where totals' formulas should be. What could go wrong? LOTS! And no formula-calculated amounts to be verified and to possibly point out inaccuracies. Any time you must manually add data there is the possibility (probability?) of errors...

Anyway, thanks for the effort.

The only true solution would be for Intuit QBks to find the glitch with the Class by Earnings Item option in conjunction with the Payroll Summary report that causes this disappearing data problem. I'm surprised they would allow a report to generate inaccurate data!

Thanks for listening... my frustration level is intense when we had exactly what we needed in our Payroll Summary report and yet now through some weird glitch we can't get that same report without a LOT of manual manipulation. Aggravating! 

A useful note in your list about exporting into Excel (of which we do a lot), was, "select Advanced, then uncheck the Space between columns checkbox." That might be helpful in our combining of reports when adding the hours. Thanks! 

The link you added for "import customized reports from Excel to QBDT" doesn't seem to have much if any info on that topic unless it's Option 2? Are you saying that if we were able to design a combined report that gave us the info that we need, we'd be able to import that report into QBks and reuse it for our payrolls going forward? And reuse it without doing all of the manual manipulation? 

Thanks again!