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JUNE 2005 Reporting -- Payroll This month, we'd like to review some of the payroll reports that are available. When considering payroll reports, you really need to think about reports in two groups:
In this article, we're not considering the Quarterly 941 Form, the Annual 940 Form, or the Annual Form W-2 as "reports" for the sake of this discussion. Instead, we'll be looking at the reports that appear when you open the Reports menu and point to Employees & Payroll. Also, in this article, we also won't be considering Workers Compensation reports, since Workers Compensation is a subject of its own.
Reports of Interest after Each Payroll When you open the Reports menu and point to Employees & Payroll, you'll see eight payroll reports listed. Although we're showing these reports using the default dates supplied by QuickBooks, you can set both the beginning and ending dates on the report to the date of the current paycheck (not the pay period) to see these reports for just this payroll. Payroll Summary: The Payroll Summary report, shown in Figure 1, shows you the amounts accumulated over the report period from each employee's paycheck for each payroll item. Payroll items appear down the side of the report and employees appear across the top of the report. The report doesn't list individual paycheck details; instead, it summarizes paycheck details for each employee and payroll item.
Figure 1. The Payroll Summary report.
Payroll Item Detail: The Payroll Item Detail report, shown in Figure 2, lists each payroll item and then the payroll transactions that affected that item during the report period, which defaults to the current calendar quarter. You can use this report to identify the payroll checks affected by a particular payroll item. Amounts that appear in the Wage Base column represent the total earnings on which a payroll tax item is based.
Figure 2. The Payroll Item Detail report.
Payroll Detail Review: The Payroll Detail Review reports lists, by employee, each payroll item and the payroll transactions on which it appeared during the default period of the current payroll year. As you can see in Figure 3, the report identifies the Payroll Tax Table version used to create the transaction along with some other very valuable information, such as the User Edit? column. The Y or N in this column indicates whether the user entering the transaction changed any of the amounts on the transaction from the amounts QuickBooks calculated. A Y in this column often explains amounts appearing in the Amount Difference column, which is the difference between the Amount and the Calculated Amount columns. This report is very useful when you suspect that a particular payroll item was not calculated properly during a payroll run. From the report, you can see when QuickBooks adjusts a tax amount (possibly to correct an error in payroll data), when someone makes manual adjustments, or when a tax has reached an annual wage base limit.
Figure 3. The Payroll Detail Review. (click to enlarge)
Employee Earnings Summary: You can think of the Employee Earnings Summary report as a flipped version of the Payroll Summary report. On the Payroll Summary report, payroll items appeared down the side of the report and employees appeared across the top (refer to Figure 1). On the Employee Earnings Summary, Employees appear down the side and payroll items appear across the top (see Figure 4). This report helps you focus on each employee's earnings and other payroll items. At the far right, as well as along the bottom, QuickBooks provides totals.
Figure 4. The Employee Earnings Summary report.
Employee State Taxes Detail: This report focuses on the wage information and state payroll taxes withheld on each payroll transaction. This report is most useful when preparing quarterly state reports, so we'll discuss it in more detail later in this article. Payroll Transactions by Payee: This report shows you all checks written related to payroll and their amounts. For employees, you see the net amount of each paycheck. You also see liability checks you've written and their associated payees (see Figure 5). This report is useful when you are trying to determine if a particular payroll-related check was written. The default report period is the current calendar quarter.
Figure 5. The Payroll Transactions by Payee report.
Payroll Transaction Detail: This detail report shows you each payroll transaction that occurred during the default report period of the current month; for each item that appears on the transaction, you see a line on the report (see Figure 6).
Figure 6. The Payroll Transaction Detail report.
Payroll Liability Balances: This report shows you any amounts your company owes on any payroll liabilities (see Figure 7). The default report period covers the current calendar year, and the negative numbers on the report indicate that you owe the dollars shown.
Tip: To see what you've paid (not what you owe) in payroll liabilities, click the Modify Report button and, on the Filters tab, set the Transaction Type filter to display Payroll Liability Check.
Figure 7. The Payroll Liability Balances report.
Reports of Interest Each Quarter Each quarter, you need to prepare Federal Form 941 and you need to calculate and pay Federal and State Unemployment tax. To help you with these tasks, we suggest that you use these reports: Payroll Summary: Modify the Payroll Summary report to eliminate the detail on the report and display only totals so that you can verify the numbers on the Federal Form 941. To make this change, click the Modify Report button and, on the Display tab, open the Display columns by list and select Total Only. When you redisplay the report, it will show payroll items down the side, but no individual employees will appear across the top of the report. Instead, you'll see only the total columns that appeared on the default version of the report in the right-most column. Employee State Taxes Detail: The default version of this report shows, for each employee, every state tax. However, if you modify the report to show only the state unemployment tax (open the Payroll Item list at the top of the report and select the state unemployment tax), you'll have the information that you need to complete state unemployment reports (see Figure 8). In this form, you also can easily see when wages exceed the wage base, as they do for Shane Hamby on his last check in the first quarter. A better version of this report appears when you use the Summarize Payroll Data in Excel command, which we'll cover next month.
Figure 8. A customized Employee State Taxes Detail report.
Summary We hope this overview of payroll reports helps you select the reports that will best suit your needs.
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