 QuickBooks Desktop 2023 Employee Center. Let's do it. Within two it's QuickBooks Desktop 2023. Here we are in QuickBooks Desktop sample rock castle construction practice file provided by QuickBooks going through the setup process we do every time maximizing the home page. We're going to go into the view drop-down and note I have the hide icon bar checked off and I've got the open windows checked off we're then going to be opening up our major financial statement reports with the reports drop-down company and financial P&L profit and loss tab range change 010124 to 123124 and then we'll customize it fonts and numbers so we can change the font size I'm bringing it up to 12 okay yes please okay reports drop-down again company and financial bring it on down to the balance sheet changing that date to 123124 customize in the report again fonts and numbers change the font and we're bringing up to 12 okay yes please and okay that's our setup process we do every time going back to the home page we've been focusing in on the employee cycle or the payroll cycle noting that when thinking about payroll you want to make sure that you set it up as best you can up front because payroll being one of those things that you would rather measure twice cut once would be the analogy as opposed to kind of tinkering with something until you get it correct because it's just one of those things where that process is typically better because fixing the problems at the end of the year is more difficult than trying to get it right the first time typically the decision when you start the payroll will be do you want to have the payroll done through quickbooks or do you want to have payroll done by an external third party that's going to be doing some of the payroll the withholdings possibly some of the human resources help and then you enter the stuff into quickbooks just what you need in order to populate the financial statements so that you have the proper reporting on the financial statement side of things here of course we're assuming that we're running the payroll through quickbooks to turn payroll on that's going to be the edit drop down the preferences down below and you can go into the payroll here and then company preferences now you have some choices of the payroll we might go into this in more detail later when we talk about payroll in more depth but it's an add-on feature we in the practice problem will actually be using the manual payroll when we when we talk about that later but payroll like many other things when you start to work for a company and you work in the accounting department if you start working in payroll in the accounting department it will typically have already been set up and you'll work with whatever setup has been put in place meaning do they pay people weekly bi-weekly monthly semi-annual it'll already have been set up and you'll go forward with it at that point in the second half of the course we'll start you know a new company's file from scratch and we'll kind of set up the manual payroll it's one of those things where the setting setting up of the payroll gives you a lot more understanding of how the payroll works so we'll talk about that later once the payroll set up we've got the full payroll here then we can go into the process of of basically our payroll process so we talked about the process last time we could enter time that's not required in the payroll but then we would have the pay employees this is what would happen bi-weekly semi-monthly and so on whatever the payroll is set up we would have withholdings and our payroll taxes we'd had to deal with there and then we would have to pay the liabilities for the withholding and our payroll taxes and then we process the payroll forms which would happen quarterly and yearly typically so now we're going to go to the center which you can do that here or you can go to the employee ease and payroll center here this is also another button that basically takes you to the same spot in other words if i go to the pay employee ease center we're going to have then three tabs up top it looks similar to the vendor center the customer center but we got this other tab for the payroll so that's going to be a new kind of tab depending on the payroll you have set up and if i close this back out and i was to go to this button the payroll center then it's going to take me basically to the same spot but it takes me to that third tab the payroll tab where we can basically go through the processing of the payroll so that's probably the main place you would go when you're kind of processing through the payroll but we have the similar kind of stuff with our employees and vendors notice that the employees are kind of like you can think of them as a type of vendor because at the end of the day we're paying money money's going out from the company for goods and services that we've received in this case services of the employee the reason that we have to put them in the special zone and not just as a vendor is because mainly taxes right because we've got to we've got to do with the withholdings and stuff and that made a bunch more complications so we've got its own it's got its own area now its own field of accounting due to that in most regards so we got our three employees looking very similar as with the vendors and the customers so we've got active employees versus all employees so if you have an employee that is no longer active then you can go to you can you know you could toggle between them so that you can then make an employee inactive you don't want to delete their data in the past but you might now of course want them to be populating all the time when you're kind of trying to toggle through the current employee stuff we've got the items up top new employee then we'll sit we'll look at this a lot more when we set up new employees it looks like a lot like a vendor setting up a new vendor or setting up a new customer except that this one's going to have required fields to put this information in unlike the vendor and the customer where you really only need the name to enter the transaction at least here we're going to need all this stuff to process the payroll because we've got to do that from like a human resources and tax withholding perspective we also have the tax tab which is going to be one of the more confusing tabs and unique to employees because this is where we're going to be setting up the payroll items payroll items being similar to inventory items those being the things we have to set up in order to kind of drive the processing of the payroll to make the payroll processing as automatic in a similar fashion as the items make invoicing and so on sales receipts as automatic or the date of input as easy as possible so we'll do more in that later closing this back out we'll just review what's in here this time so then we have the manage employee information so you got the sales rep if applicable you can change the new employee default settings meaning when you set up a new employee what are going to be kind of like the defaults from a pay for payroll kind of perspective that you can then change if so choosing when setting up an employee from there we got the printing the printing of the checks print send paychecks and so on noting that when we actually process the payroll then we're going to have to pay them in some way shape or form the check form is the form that's usually going to be a decrease to a checking account these are going to be kind of special check forms which will be the paycheck forms which also need the information with regards to the withholdings from like a human resources perspective we have to tell the employee typically what their gross earnings were and what we took from them and why with regards to things like taxes and then we've got the time sheets use weekly time sheets uh enter time so we can enter the time here there's a couple different way we can we can go into the entering of the time so we can go into it here we can go into the employee ease and enter the time here as well and i believe there's a tab on the home page that we can go into there too so there's a bunch of different ways like with other cycles to get to in essence the same spot we've got the excel which basically can give us some kind of reports that can be exported to excel we can prepare letter and so on as well then within here we've got the employee ease on the left hand side we've got the information for the employee ease looks similar to the information when we enter a vendor or a customer the detail up top or in the transactions tab we can add an attachment if we so choose here for our records if we want to change the information for the employee we can edit in the edit tab and that gives us what we saw kind of when we set up the new employee information so that we can add that information here so then on this side we've got the we've got the transactions most common kind of place we're going to go to because if there's questions from the employee we're probably going to go to the employee go to their name and check out the checks and see if any individual check has an issue with them we can see all transactions we might just look at the paychecks we might look at the the liability if there's any kind of adjustments so we can kind of sort but most of the times we would have the checks there for our employees is the main transaction you would expect from an employee you can then change the date range as well to like all for example on the range they also give you some nice summary reports that might be useful on a person person by person so you can get the quick report here this is basically a report you can go through and find in the report center using some filtering options but it's a little quick report here the payroll summary report again it's a nice little quick way to get there you can get there as well you can find these reports in the report center and use some filtering paid time off and so on so those can be some useful links to get to those quick reports a little bit more easily so then we have the two dues we've got the notes and we've got the sent emails clearly most of the time you're going to be spending here will usually be on the transactions tab so we can also then go to the second tab which is the transactions tab it looks similar to what we saw in the in the payroll area the customers and vendors in that now it's going to list out those kind of forms that take place in the cycle of payroll just like we saw in the homepage we see the forms the processes that are going to be happening remember the forms are the things that create the transactions so we can sort this information going back to the employee center by that data so we normally we would most likely be looking well we could filter it by the payroll checks and then we can check out the payroll checks over here we might also go to the liabilities you know the liability checks these being the checks that we're going to be paying for the payroll liabilities the withholdings in our payroll taxes and we can sort that data by transaction rather than first by the employee and then we have the third tab which is something we don't have on the other two cycles which is going to be the vendor and customer cycle and this is where we can basically go oftentimes to process the payroll so note the three tabs up top pay employees pay liabilities file forms that's in essence the flow that we saw in the homepage so if you go back to the homepage you've got then the entering of the time which is kind of optional because you might enter time in some other way or pay people salary but then you're going to be paying the payroll biweekly semi monthly monthly or whatever your payroll cycle is pay the liabilities and process the forms if you click on one of these items depending on the payroll setup you have it might then take you to the payroll center to the applicable tab right so it's going to this tab if I click on the homepage to the pay the liabilities then it's going to take me to the pay the liabilities tab in the payroll center so let's go back to the first tab note that up top you've got the options of the time tracking any payroll updates you got the payroll items those are going to be the things that kind of you have to set up to drive the payroll that we talked about before you've got the payroll setup preferences support and help and some of these options and some of the look and feel may differ depending on the kind of the type of payroll that you're paying for because there's different tiers of payroll when we do the practice problem we'll set up the manual payroll which might look slightly different but the general concepts will remain the same and then down here you've got the creating of the pay checks so that would be happening on a monthly basis biweekly basic semi weekly or whatever let's click on one of these items so if I click on this it's got a bunch of kind of error signs because we are in a practice file but I'm going to say okay and just go continue so we can just click a look at the data input now we'll get into the data input on a little bit more detail later but this would be kind of like the form in quotes the thing that would be used to for us to process just basically the paychecks checks representing for quickbooks decreases to to a cash account because we're going to be processing payroll checks and we would use a check kind of form even if we have like an electronic transfer or something like that this then recording the transactions of money going out to the employees as well as the withholdings of one of the most complex transactions in normal bookkeeping because of all the withholdings that are involved and the number of checks that might be issued even three employees can get quite complex given all the data that you have to basically track for payroll taxes and all that kind of stuff we'll talk more about that later closing this back out and so that would be the the general process and then after you process the payroll usually then within a certain time frame dependent on your circumstances like a week or something you would have to then pay the payroll taxes right and it would be dependent upon where you are and when the payroll taxes are due and how large your payroll liability is and whatnot but then this will track the liabilities for the payroll taxes so that's going to be social security medicare federal income tax these are stuff that you took from the employee and you have your own payroll taxes that you need to process and then you can go here to process these forms which again are kind of like special special check forms because they're going to be a decrease to the checking account even if they're electronic transfers we think of them kind of like a check form because that's a decrease to the checking account but these are going through the special widget which are paying off and are connected to the liability for payroll liabilities and then you've got the payment history and the e payment down below and then after that happens that's the normal payroll cycle that happens periodically whenever the period may be weekly biweekly semi monthly monthly then you got to file the forms and this is another great tool that QuickBooks helps with it allows you to helps you to process the payroll tax forms and track all this information information and then compile it into the appropriate payroll tax forms now normally you've got the 941 forms that need to be filed on a quarterly basis every three months and then you've got the yearly forms which are the 940 for the federal unemployment tax and you've got the the w2s and the w3s so clearly that stuff is great that if you have a system to help you compile that data because you want everything to kind of tie out you want that stuff to be checked off correctly and you don't want to have an error that is found at that point in time because again you want to measure twice cut once typically with the payroll instead of try to figure it out by tinkering with it because that costs and takes a lot more time and cost now if we go back on over here to the first tab you've got some other resources they give you so you've got some guides so you quick guide before you hire so it gives you some tips on hiring payroll tips direct deposit these are just pdf files other activities set up a direct deposit so clearly you might be trying to pay someone by direct deposit even if you do that you still have in essence a check form when you write the check but now it's going to be a direct deposit kind of activity in terms of the actual payment going from one person to the other if you do direct deposit you still need to make sure that you give the employee the payroll stub from a human resources law perspective because they have to have that information you can add the employees another place to add the employees we've seen multiple we've got add void paychecks print paychecks create a termination check then we've got the reports payroll summary so these are reports that you can find in the reports dropdown just another way to basically get their summarized payroll data they give it to you in excel this is actually a really nice format of the report if you have paid payroll they give you a quite a detailed summary report in excel which can be overwhelming we'll talk about it more in depth in the future but it's similar to the kind of reports you might get if you hire a third party payroll like an adp or paychecks so then we got the report center we've got the supplies and services we could order checks we can order labor law posters so again there's remember with payroll for us we're going to be concentrating on the bookkeeping which is hard enough in and of itself and then of course we'll talk a little bit about human resources as it is tied to bookkeeping like you got to give them the paycheck stub you got to tell them what the withholdings are you got to you've got to do the withholdings these are all kind of laws with regards to your employees and whatnot but there could be other things outside of just recording the payroll that you got to deal with from a human resources perspective and some sometimes having you know the information on that can help and that's also when small businesses that start to get fairly mid-sized businesses might look for like a third party payroll like an adp or paychecks not just to process the payroll although that could be quite helpful too but also to deal with some of the human resources stuff get work comp quotes so where comp workers compensation can be different from locale and from business to business so that's another kind of kind of another little wrinkle with payroll so that's the general payroll center and future presentations we'll take a look at it from the home page perspective and we'll think about what would happen in the flow when we enter time into the payroll and liabilities and so on on a form by form basis considering the impact then on the financial statements balance sheet income statement and some subsidiary reports to it