correcting payroll liabilities on balance sheet

[MonMemSec09]

My liability accounts (Fed w/h,ss, med) accounts on my balance sheet are not correct. This is due to several mistakes, improper setup when checks were written, improperly voided checks, etc. I have tracked as much as I know how but still am off on the amounts. I think I need to do a journal entry to get these to the proper amounts but I am not sure how to do this. I need help please.

[JohnDMeyers]

Do you think that you have your Payroll items set up correctly with the correct account numbers for the DB and CR, or is that something you are not sure of.

In other words, is it just the amounts that you entered, or is it the account numbers themselves that may not be correct?

[MonMemSec09]

Several issues:
1. When I wrote the checks for the tax deposit, I did not code them to the proper accounts put all into Fed. W/H, none into ss or med. I went back and did a journal entry to post amounts from Fed w/h to the ss & med month by month; Then we had a pastor that there was confusion about paying the ss & med so those amounts fluctuated for a few months.

2.When I wrote some checks I had a printer glitch and the checks were written with the wrong numbers, then voided them incorrectly which did not clear the amounts equally in payroll and fund accounting.

There may be other issues that I am not aware of - I am not a book-keeper or an accountant and am trying to figure this out as I go. I had support for 3 months and they helped a lot, but now I am on my own.

[JohnDMeyers]

You'll find help here from many of us with a variety of experience that comes from doing stuff like you just did.

1)Do you think that you have your pay items correctly set with the appropriate fund accounting numbers at this point?

2) You have a lot of clean up to do.

You should try to get your payroll cleaned up first. Otherwise, you will be very very frustrated at the end of the year when you go to run W-2's etc.

Make sure you have done item #1, where all your pay items are set up correctly.

Next, run payroll reports and make sure you have paid everyone the correct gross amount.

Next, run payroll reports and see if your withholdings are correct per employee (you will probably have to do some calculations by hand to verify this).

You can make corrections in payroll by turning off items in each employees pay items that do not need to be changed. You can enter negative social security amounts, if necessary, for example.

Do a payroll run or two, as necessary, with the corrected amounts only turned on, and everything else turned off.

After you get payroll corrected, you will need to go into fund accounting and make corrections.

Run your reports, and make journal entries to get everything accurate.

That is basically the procedure. If it's any consolation, many of us have had to do this many times. It does take time, but I'm confident you can do it.

[MonMemSec09]

Thanks John,
I am not sure about the correct amounts - we just had a payroll change and I am trying to see what the difference is between what the payroll unit says the amounts are and what the CPA says they should be - I am off about 3 dollars something. I have been running reports and trying to see what should have been entered, what has been entered and what has been paid. But I do not know how to make an entry into payroll - this is one of the reasons I have issues. I made a journal entry in fund accounting to correct the missing payments in ss and med but I discovered that does not necessarily affect the payroll unit with corrections. Compounding the issue is that we have made monthly tax payments, and then the quarterly report done by the CPA sees a difference so corrections were made by simply deducting that amount from the next check paid which leaves the accounts in both fund accounting and payroll incorrect. And I do not know where the CPA saw the improper amount. I have written to her to see if she can give me that info. I am wondering if I could just do a journal entry to correct from where we are to where we should be.
Elizabeth

[JohnDMeyers]

Making a change in Fund Accounting will not affect payroll, unfortunately.

To make a change in payroll, you have to go into employee pay items (not sure if you are in ver 10 or ver 11), and turn off the items that you do not want to change, and put in the amounts of the items that you do want to change, and process the payroll and post in payroll and fund accounting. This is why I suggested that you make your adjustments in payroll first.

If you don't make the changes in payroll, you can still make journal entries and get your fund accounting correct.