User Support Forum

We recently purchased Powerchurch Online and we currently outsource the processing of our payroll to a third party. In order to record the transactions within Powerchurch, is it necessary to utilize the payroll module or can everything be captured using the Accounts Payable module? Also, which method would be better? We are going to continue to outsource the payroll function and they provide the W-2s annually.

wcdavenp wrote:We recently purchased Powerchurch Online and we currently outsource the processing of our payroll to a third party. In order to record the transactions within Powerchurch, is it necessary to utilize the payroll module or can everything be captured using the Accounts Payable module? Also, which method would be better? We are going to continue to outsource the payroll function and they provide the W-2s annually.

Here's the question:

1. Who does your Federal/State/Local tax deposits ??
2. Are you just cutting checks ??

If as I'm assuming the answer to 1 is the church, it may be easier to setup payroll, create the payroll items as all manual entries, and just plug in the numbers as given you by the payroll outsourcer. In this way, you can properly credit all the liability accounts that are accessed when the monthly tax payments (and health insurance,etc) are paid.

If the answer to both is yes, then using the payroll module would also allow you to have a local reference for payroll information, as well as provide a good pay stub to the employee.

The question then becomes, why not use the built-in payroll module, as (when setup properly) it does all the calculations, and will print the checks. Just good stewardship of funds if your church has less than 10 or 20 employees.

ADP handles the Federal/State/Local tax deposits and they handle processing the checks to the employees. I receive a semi-monthly payroll summary from ADP which shows a breakdown of the taxes withheld and the employee liability for each pay period. I do not have to cut any checks since ADP handles that for us.

Since ADP handles all payroll and tax deposits, should I still use the payroll module for tracking the expenses in Powerchurch?

You don't need to use the Payroll module.

You can setup the transactions as Repeating Transactions in Fund Accounting with approximate dollar amounts. Each month, after you release the transactions, but before you post them, put in the correct dollar amounts.

Fund Accounting / Setup / Maintain Repeating Transactions to do the setup.
Fund Accounting / Modify Unposted Transactions to change the amounts after releasing them.

Thanks Neilz and JohnDMeyers for your prompt responses!