Payroll Liability Reminders for QuickBooks Desktop 2020

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Until recently you had to rely on QuickBooks Desktop to exclusively tell you when your Payroll Liabilities were due unless you manually kept a 3rd-party calendar system and entered the dates yourself. But a few months back, when most of us were focused exclusively on either the holidays or COVID-19, an enhancement was made (and then updated) to QuickBooks Desktop with Payroll (specifically QuickBooks 2020) that allows you to set up reminders/alerts for Payroll Liability due dates in 3rd-party applications like Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, iCalendar and Windows Calendar. You can even export these events as .ics files so they can be imported into essentially any calendar application.

Preparations Required

Before you try this make certain you are on the latest release of QuickBooks 2020 and that you have the most current Payroll update and tax tables. You also need to make certain that you have your payroll liabilities set-up correct in QuickBooks to report when liabilities are properly due, if they don't show up as due in QuickBooks they are not going to show up properly as due on your calendar application.  You also must be in Single-user Mode to post the Payroll Liabilities to your Calendar.

2 Options Available to You

There are two ways to post Payroll Liabilities to calendars with this functionality. The first is to add a reminder to a compatible calendar on your computer, the same computer where QuickBooks is running. The second is to export a reminder that can be imported into a calendar application.

To Add a Payroll Liability Reminder to Your Calendar on Your Computer:

  • Open the Payroll tab from the QuickBooks Employee Center
  • Select Pay Liabilities and choose the Payroll Liability (or liabilities) for which you want reminders.
  • Click the Set payment reminders drop-down at the bottom of the Pay Taxes and Other Liabilities list, then choose Add Reminder to Calendar
  • When QuickBooks displays the Liability payment reminder pop-up with the liability (or liabilities) listed, click OK, your calendar App will be displayed so you can select the appropriate App to which you wish the reminder added.
  • Save to add the reminder to your chosen calendar.

To Export Payroll Liability Reminders as a Calendar File:

  • Open the Payroll tab from the QuickBooks Employee Center
  • Select Pay Liabilities and choose the Payroll Liability (or liabilities) for which you want reminders.
  • Click the Set payment reminders drop-down at the bottom of the Pay Taxes and Other Liabilities list, then choose Export Reminder in Calendar File
  • Choose OK on the download notification
  • Select where you want to save the download file and choose Save
  • After locating the downloaded file, right-click to open it.
  • Choose Open with and select your specific Calendar App
  • Select Save to post the downloaded file to your Calendar App

Most QuickBooks users didn't even see this enhancement when it was rolled out on the very last working day of 2019 in Release 5 for QuickBooks Desktop 2020. The holidays could certainly have something to do with it, but even bigger matters were incorporated in that release, compliance with the new W-4.  Even the majority of our 'Release update' article was focused on the W-4 and other compliance issues.

But I did note in my notes concerning this calendar interface feature that this was, "Another 'big deal' for many users who wanted QuickBooks Payroll reminders to interact with their preferred calendar system rather than simply provide a reminder within 'the product'."

I regret that I have taken so long to get around to tell you more about this feature. You can find even more details on this feature along with setting-up payroll liabilities pay schedules and custom liabilities in this QuickBooks Help Learn & Support document1.

1- The associated Intuit website URL was current and active as of the original date of publication of this article. Insightful Accountant is not responsible for any changes to Intuit website pages or URLs that may render the website inactive or invalid at any time or on any date subsequent to our original date of publication.