User Support Forum

In Payroll we deduct money from a staff member's check for her additional contribution to a pension fund. At that time we credit a Liability account for Pensions Payable. When we send money to the Pensions fund I want to be able to set up the Vendor Accting information so that it defaults to a debit to Staff Pensions and a debit to Pensions Payable for the for the amount we are sending. The setup only allows me to debit expense accounts - is there a way around this? Thanks!

Ellen Mykkanen
St. Matthias Episcopal Church

The field is labeled Expense, but it will allow you to choose a Liability.

When I typed the liability account number directly into the account field, it told me that I was entering a number that was out of range.

ellenmykkanen wrote:When I typed the liability account number directly into the account field, it told me that I was entering a number that was out of range.

Ellen .. you should have two things setup for this to work properly. This is for a voluntary deduction to retirement. You mentioned in the first post that you are deducting money from the check. Then you mention that you want to 'debit' Staff Pensions. That sounds like a employer retirement payment not a 'voluntary' retirement deduction. If that's the case, check this topic here, as it shows how you set the Payroll Item Description for that: https://www.powerchurch.com/forum/viewt ... =3&t=12472 . The setup of the vendor would then be the same as shown below.

The two things you need to have setup are:

1. A Payroll Item Description of other deduction
2. The vendor (retirement fund) setup to use the proper checking account and the liability account.

The Payroll Item Description should look like this:



Note the type of Other Deduction and also the Liability Account associated with it. This allows you to be able to show a 'pre-tax' deduction to a retirement account that allows this, and have it reported on the W2.

The Vendor should look like a normal vendor with the Debit account setup to use the Retirement Liability account.

Here's how the vendor should look:

ellenmykkanen wrote:When I typed the liability account number directly into the account field, it told me that I was entering a number that was out of range.

It warns you with that text, but you can still click Save and it will be accepted.

Thanks - I'll give it a try the next time I'm in. I saw another place where it worked that way, so your answer makes sense to me.

I'm pretty sure we have our Payroll set up the way you say, and I should have clarified that the other A/P account was only for the voluntary contribution. So when we send money to the Pensions fund we draw our share from the general fund and debit the pensions expense, and we debit her additional contribution from the payable account.

Really appreciate all your help! Thanks
Ellen

ellenmykkanen wrote:Thanks - I'll give it a try the next time I'm in. I saw another place where it worked that way, so your answer makes sense to me.

I'm pretty sure we have our Payroll set up the way you say, and I should have clarified that the other A/P account was only for the voluntary contribution. So when we send money to the Pensions fund we draw our share from the general fund and debit the pensions expense, and we debit her additional contribution from the payable account.

Really appreciate all your help! Thanks
Ellen

Ellen .. you shouldn't be debiting anything manually if you have the voluntary deduction setup as shown above. The system will deduct the amount you indicate on the employee's Voluntary Deduction pay item from the employee's pre-tax salary and put it in the liability account. So you should only need to write one check to cover all employee payments to retirement, that is if you're using the same firm to cover all retirement accounts.