New, Easier Year-to-Date Payroll Process
Intuit QuickBooks has developed a new, more efficient Year-to-Date Payroll feature to simplify the often time-consuming process of entering historical payroll data. This new process is available to Intuit QuickBooks Payroll subscribers who use QuickBooks 2008 or QuickBooks 2009. The new Year-to-Date Payroll feature will replace the existing Step 5: Payroll History in the Payroll Setup interview.
Why Year-to-Date Payroll Is Important
Year-to-date payroll is the information that businesses retain regarding employees' year-to-date (YTD) paycheck information, as well as payroll tax payments and non-tax payroll liability payments.
If you have been processing payroll yourself and recently moved to QuickBooks, you may have prior payroll information for the current tax year. So year-to-date payroll is critical for you to accurately pay employees as well as pay and file payroll taxes.
The updated Year-to-Date Payroll feature is designed to improve your overall historical data entry experience by reducing necessary task time and increasing accuracy. It uses just six simple entry screens to enter all your YTD data—compared to the potentially hundreds of screens that the old YTD workflow required. This shortened process may reduce tax notices due to incorrect YTD data entry and may reduce your need for help from others. You will be able to enter YTD payroll data with accuracy, ease, and confidence.
Capabilities and Benefits
The updated Year-to-Date Payroll feature offers a wide range of new capabilities and benefits. The feature allows you to:
- Enter all historical paychecks for an employee in a single grid.
- Enter all tax payments in a single grid.
- Enter all non-tax payments in a single grid.
- Customize the sequence of items in the paycheck data entry grid.
- Access year-to-date payroll summary and detailed reports without leaving the Payroll Setup interview.
- Access improved in-product assistance, including a new Coach interface, tool tips, and improved Help topics.
- Navigate by skipping around in the Payroll Setup (skip steps 1 through 4 to get directly to year-to-date payrolls).
- Save your work, and then return later to finish up where you left off.
- Calculate employer liability adjustments.
- Automatically calculate employer taxes by individual employee.
- Enter summary data ("fat" paychecks) instead of detailed transactions.
New Reports
The updated Year-to-Date Payroll feature includes two new reports:
- The Paycheck Summary report shows all historical paychecks; automatically calculated company-paid items; and pay date, monthly, quarterly, and annual totals.
- The Advanced report shows company- and employee-based liability adjustments.
You can access these reports directly in Payroll Setup to verify and troubleshoot data entered as you go.
Saving you time and making your job a little easier—that's why Intuit QuickBooks designed the improved Year-to-Date Payroll feature.