Outsourcing Payroll

If you use QuickBooks to process your payroll, all the payroll expenses and payroll tax liabilities are already entered in your company's financial records. If, instead, you hire an outside service to produce your payroll, the payroll expense and the liability amounts must be entered in your QuickBooks file.

Record Payroll Expense and Payroll Liabilities

Select Make General Journal Entries from the Company menu.

Enter the date of the payroll.

Enter an optional journal entry number or accept the number QuickBooks has assigned to this entry.

Enter the name of the payroll expense account.

Enter as a debit the amount of the gross payroll (total salaries and wages, before being reduced by tax withholdings).

Enter a brief description of this transaction. The description you enter will automatically be copied to each line of the journal entry.

Enter one of your payroll tax liability accountsfor example, enter Taxes:Federal.

Enter as a credit the amount of tax withheld from the employee for this type of payroll tax.

Repeat steps 5 and 6 for all of your payroll tax liabilities affected by this payroll.

Enter the cash account that will be affected by this payroll.

QuickBooks automatically calculates the remainder of the journal entry and enters it as a credit for the net amount of the payroll. Verify that this amount agrees with your calculations.

Click one of the save options.

Record Payroll Expense and Payroll Liabilities

See Also