Recently QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll users began reporting that they had begun experiencing problems preparing Employer Quarterly Tax Form 941 Returns when the return had zero dollars of payroll associated with it, even though this was previously NOT a problem. You might wonder why you would do this, but there are legitimate reasons... for example, you might be in business but you simply did not have any report-able payroll that quarter.
Some QuickBooks users have advised that when they contacted Intuit support they were told that "they could never do this", or "that the software was behaving normally" and that they would have to prepare the form manually.
But one ProAdvisor indicated that she was subsequently notified by Intuit that 'they' were indeed aware that this was a problem and that engineering was addressing the issue. It seems that it must have gotten the attention of 'higher ups' when enough people finally brought it to the attention of a sufficient group of Customer Support personnel and let them know that "we know what the software has done in the past, and it's working differently now."
I want to thank those of you who wrote in to make us here at Insightful Accountant aware of this issue so that we could pass it on to our readers. I can say that Intuit will get it resolved in time for the filing deadline right away, but perhaps it will get resolved before the next deadline.
UPDATE: Consider this 'Work Around'
A reader wrote in to tell us about a work around they use in this situation...
You must first create a payroll check, even if its only for $1.00. Save it, build a 941 form and save it. Then go back and delete the payroll check. When you go back into the 941, create a new form (do not open the draft). This will generate a zero return.
While I myself (Murph) haven't tried this, I will say that the particular 'QuickBooks ProAdvisor' who emailed it in is pretty savvy so I suspect that it works just fine. If you have other work-around suggestions you can post them in the comments section of this article.