Generating delinquent certified payroll reports can be fairly easy or fairly difficult depending upon how well you have or have not used the QuickBooks software and its functionality.

Generating delinquent reports may not be possible if you are using QuickBooks Assisted Payroll; as it is difficult to edit the earnings items in the Employee Paycheck Detail Screen and you may still need to generate these old reports manually.

Generating delinquent reports is possible if you are using QuickBooks Pro/Premier 2003-2007 or Enterprise 3.0-7.0 and issue paychecks on a bi-weekly basis.  However, gross wages, deductions, and net pay will be shown as the actual amounts from the paycheck - meaning - the amounts will not be split or accrued for each individual week.

Generating delinquent reports is possible if you have not previously used the QuickBooks weekly time sheet function.  However, you will have to go back and enter hours into the weekly time sheet.

An enhancement to Certified Payroll Solution, made in January 2005, will alleviate some but not all of the difficulties that one would encounter when generating delinquent reports.  HOWEVER, the enhancement does not replace proper setup.  The enhancement will assist you if you have only used the QuickBooks standard Hourly Rate payroll item for all of your employees; by allowing you to create and assign a Work Classification in the Wage Reconciliation section of Certified Payroll Solution that will "defer" to the Work Classification that was assigned to the Employee as his/her most often used Work Classification during the Employee Reconciliation.  While this will work in some instances, it will not work if the employee works under more than one work classification during a given work week. 

Certified Payroll Solution is really designed to work from this point forward; due to setup requirements that are outlined in the Demonstration and in the manual that you will receive with the program.  While it is not recommended to go backward in time; it is possible to catch up on old reports.

Due to the amount of technical support required to do this; this is not considered to be part of your normal initial free technical support and we will charge you a fee - see our Support Policy.  However, we do offer these detailed instructions free of charge.

Overview of Requirements

1.  Certified Payroll Solution requires that QuickBooks payroll items be used to determine the Work Classification that is shown on the completed certified payroll report.  This allows employees to be properly reported when an employee works two or more different classifications on the same job in the same day or week; for example - a Supervisor one day and a Journeyman the rest of the week; or a Laborer in the morning and an Equipment Operator in the afternoon.  Therefore, using a payroll item of "Hourly Rate" in QuickBooks for all employees will not work unless ALL of your employees only perform work under the same SINGLE work classification; for example - Joe is always an Equipment Operator and Fred is always a Laborer.  The payroll items that you create and use for these various classifications must match in 3 places within the QuickBooks program:  the Employee Record - Payroll & Compensation tab, the weekly time sheet, and within the paycheck detail.

As mentioned previously, an enhancement to Certified Payroll Solution, made in January 2005, will alleviate some but not all of the difficulties that one would encounter when generating delinquent reports.  HOWEVER, the enhancement does not replace proper setup.  The enhancement will assist you if you have only used the QuickBooks standard Hourly Rate payroll item for all of your employees; by allowing you to create and assign a Work Classification in the Wage Reconciliation section of Certified Payroll Solution that will "defer" to the Work Classification that was assigned to the Employee as his/her most often used Work Classification during the Employee Reconciliation.  While this will work in some instances, it will not work if the employee works under more than one work classification during a given work week and you will need to follow the detailed instructions provided later in this document. 

• Each different Work Classification your employee would work under should have its own unique payroll item.  These payroll items will exist in each individual QuickBooks employee record, Payroll & Compensation tab - with the appropriate hourly rate of pay.  Wage Manager Solution has been designed specifically to help you quickly and efficiently perform this requirement.
• The QuickBooks Weekly Time Sheet must have the proper payroll item, hours and job assigned for each classification the employee work that week.
• The Paycheck Detail must reflect the same payroll item, hours and job assignment that are in the time sheet.
• All three of these places must match for Certified Payroll Solution to generate accurate reports for that week.

2.  The pay period ending data and the date the paychecks were issued for that week must be correctly entered in Certified Payroll Solution.  In most cases the week ending data and paycheck data will be on a consistent day of the week; for example: a pay period ending date of Saturday and paychecks issued the following Friday.  Occasionally paychecks are issued on a different day of the week or with a different pay period ending.  When this happens, the hours may not be reported for the proper day, or amounts will be missing from the certified payroll reports.  If the reports are "wrong" like this, the first thing you should do is very that the dates are correct, by going into QuickBooks and looking at a paycheck for the week in question.  If the hours are being reported in the wrong column you can temporarily change the last day of the pay period in CPS, by accessing the System Setup Menu, choosing System Preferences, and clicking on the Settings Tab.

3.  Start from the oldest week you need to print and work forward.  Do not jump around, as this will not only you, but confuse CPS as well and as a result the payroll numbers will not be correct.  Make sure that your first week is correct and that you have your deductions assigned properly before moving forward.

Detailed Instructions

The printed manual and training demonstration that you received; as well as the Product Details and Flash demonstrations offered on this site; provide you with the setup requirements that must be done in both QuickBooks and in CPS for the program to function effectively.  Follow the Quick Start Guide provided with your manual carefully, do not skip items on this list.

1. In QuickBooks have in place or following the instruction in the manual create new payroll items that you will associate with the specific Work Classifications(s) that need to appear for each employee on your reports.
2. In QuickBooks go to Lists, Employee List, and Edit each employee and add the newly created payroll items to the Earnings section.   Include the appropriate rate of pay for the employee and be sure that you have checked the box for "Use Time Data to Create Paychecks".
3. In QuickBooks choose Edit, Preferences, scroll to Payroll & Employees, select the Company Preferences Tab, and be sure that you have chosen the option to Report All Payroll Taxes by Customer:Job, Service Item and Class, and Assign One Class Per Earnings item if you will be using classes.
4. In QuickBooks choose Edit, Preferences, scroll to Time Tracking, select the Company Preferences Tab, verify that you have selected Yes for Do You Track Time, and that you have the correct First Day of the Work week.
5. In Certified Payroll Solution, Choose System Setup, System Preferences, and Settings Tab and select the appropriate Last Day of Pay Period from the drop down list.
6. Make a backup of your QuickBooks company file - Do Not Skip This Step
7. In QuickBooks, determine the oldest pay period that you need to use to generate reports.
8. Create a Payroll Summary report for that week and PRINT if out - Do Not Skip This Step
9. For each employee paid for that period, go to their Weekly Timesheet and re-assign hours worked on job using the new payroll items that you have created.   If you have not created Timesheets previously, you will need to do so at this time.
10. To verify that you have correctly assigned the new payroll items to all hours worked by all employees, in QuickBooks choose Reports, Jobs & Time, and Time by Job Detail.   When this report comes up on your screen, click the Modify Report Button, on the Display Tab place a checkmark next to Payroll Item, and uncheck Billing Status, click OK.   Back at the report, change the date range to be that of the Work Week you will be using.   Review this report to verify that you have no entries for No Job Assigned and No Item Assigned.   If you have entries under these categories, double-click on them in the report and correct the entries.   Leave this report up on your screen or print it out.
11. Go to the paycheck for each employee for that time period, click on the paycheck detail and in the earnings section change the payroll items to correspond to the newly create payroll items that you entered in the timesheet.   Use the Time by Job Detail Report you created in #10 to verify the jobs, hours and payroll items.  Use the Payroll Summary report you created in #8 to verify that the newly edited paycheck matches the actual net paycheck that the employee did receive.   When you have verified this information, choose OK to save your changes.
12. On a sheet of paper, create columns for Pay Period and Check Date.   Looking at the Employee Paycheck Summary write down the Pay Period From and To information in the Pay Period Column and write down the date of the Check in the Check Date Column.   This will assist you when you actually start to generate your Certified Payroll Reports.   Select Save & Close.   QuickBooks will give you a warning message that you have changed the transaction; select Yes to Save your changes.
13. Repeat Steps 9-11 for each employee who was paid for this time period.   Verify that the Pay Period and Check Dates are the same for each employee.
14. Repeat Steps 8-12 for each week that you need to generate.

Words of Advice:

Correct only one week at a time in QuickBooks.

Because you are changing already saved and cleared information in you QuickBooks data file, when you have completed one week; from the Window Menu in QuickBooks, choose Close All.  Then from the File Menu, choose Utilities and Rebuild Data.

Payroll information must be retrieved one week at a time from QuickBooks.  Use the information you created in Step 12.

After you have pulled in the oldest weeks payroll information into CPS and generated your reports, verify that all amounts are showing in their appropriate boxes on the report and that they match the employees' actual paycheck.  The easiest way to do this verification is to look for an employee who only worked on one job for the entire week.  If his/her earnings/deductions, and net pay match what is in QuickBooks, all other employees will be correct.