QuickBooks 2021 - Payroll Related Enhancements

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Intuit recently released the 2021 QuickBooks Desktop Product line-up. Insightful Accountant has been evaluating various pre-release versions of these products for months and has spent hours communicating with Intuit personnel, including product managers and developers, so we can help you learn about the new products. This article is one in a series of intended to provide additional content to that within our QuickBooks Desktop 2021 product synopsis.

QuickBooks Desktop 2021 Payroll Related Enhancements

There were a couple of 'Payroll' related enhancements that came along with the roll-out of QuickBooks 2021 Desktop. One of enhancement expands upon improvements first made in the QuickBooks 2020 Product Release with Enhanced Payroll, and one was a slip-stream upgrade to QuickBooks 2020 products with Enhanced Payroll.

QuickBooks Enhanced Desktop Payroll: Simplified Payroll Setup

QuickBooks 2020 began the roll-out of Simplified Payroll Setup (AKA: Easy Payroll Set-up with Employee Self-Setup) for ‘new payroll subscribers’.  It provided a simplified guided set-up experience for both QuickBooks Payroll users and their employees.

QuickBooks 2021 expands upon that functionality for Payroll Subscribers by providing an enhanced payroll setup experience that helps get them quickly ready to run their first payroll. It is available in all versions of QuickBooks Desktop but only to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll Subscribers.

This enhanced payroll experience is accessed by choosing Employees from the QuickBooks menu bar and then selecting Payroll Setup.

One aspect of this 2020 feature was the ability to invite employees to fill out their personal payroll-related information.

The new setup experience also provides a more complete self-enrollment allowing employees to access and enter additional information supporting the payroll process like personal tax withholding details, banking information for direct deposit, etc. (examples shown below).

The expansion of this feature means that employees can complete forms from a convenient location (as long as they have internet access) where they not only have information readily available to use in completing the forms but where they can discuss appropriate decisions with appropriate family members in privacy.

Another aspect of the 2021 enhancements to payroll set-up involves streamlining of the ‘historical payroll’ records when payroll is begun in the middle of the year. While there has been a complex way of entering historical payroll in the past, and some people even entered actual paychecks into a clearing account which they offset against opening balance equity, this new method is far easier. Within Payroll Setup is the Payroll History tab which begins by asking if you have or have not paid employees for the current year (as shown below)?

Based on that question the wizard displays the appropriate input screens for data entry. Payroll history gives you the opportunity to enter payroll information for your employees which you’ve paid through an accountant or payroll service (for the current payroll year) before your first QuickBooks payroll run.

You can elect to enter the consolidated payroll data for previous quarters on a monthly basis, or

you can elect to enter payroll data on a pay-check by pay-check basis.

Enter the level of detail that corresponds to how you intend to track payroll for your various payroll items.

Regardless of your methodology, QuickBooks will calculate and check all the payroll data you enter against the payroll tax tables for the period as well as the payroll information the employee has provided to determine if everything conforms.

Any errors in payroll data are accurately identified with sufficient guidance so that they can be fixed before the end of the setup process.

All of the historical payroll information can be reviewed and checked from one of two new ‘Historical Paycheck Reports’, a ‘Basic’ Report (shown below), and an ‘Advanced’ Report that can be accessed simply by switching using the prompt on the Basic Report.

This live action report gives you the ability to view the historical payroll data you entered including quarterly data, monthly data, or individual paychecks; view the gross pay and the various deductions, as well as the net pay. You can print and export (to Excel) this report.

Feature Availability: At the time of the initial 2021 release Simplified Payroll Setup will be available to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll Subscribers using QuickBooks Pro and Premier, QuickBooks Accountant, QuickBooks ProPlus, QuickBooks PremierPlus, and QuickBooks Enterprise (all subscription levels). The feature is presently only available within the United States.  Note: This feature is also available to all 2020 product users with Enhanced Payroll Subscriptions.

QuickBooks Enhanced Desktop Payroll: Payroll Liability Reminders

This Payroll Liability Reminder feature was actually a slipstream update to QuickBooks 2020 (found in Maintenance Release R5) that is now being released as part of the ‘new product release’ in QuickBooks 2021. It is available in all versions of QuickBooks Desktop but only to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll Subscribers.

Before this feature, 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. This feature allows users to set up reminders/alerts for their QuickBooks Payroll Liability due dates in 3rd-party applications like Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, iCalendar, and Windows Calendar. You can even export these events so they can be imported into essentially any calendar application.

Be aware that before you try to set this up in QuickBooks you need to make certain that you have your payroll liabilities set-up correctly in QuickBooks to report when liabilities are properly due. If your liabilities don't show up as due correctly in QuickBooks they are not going to show up as due correctly within your calendar application.  You also must be in Single-user Mode to post QuickBooks Payroll Liabilities to your Calendar.

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 which is the same computer where QuickBooks is running. The second is to export a reminder that can be imported into a calendar application on a different computer, this can also be used for most other calendar types than those specifically mentioned above. Both procedures are outlined in below in this feature.

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

This feature lets you track payroll liability deadlines and get reminders in a timely way using the calendars you typically rely on for your business including those on your phone or tablet. As a result, you may find that you can more accurately time your liability payments and thereby improve your overall cash-flow by not necessarily paying those payments any earlier than required.

Feature Availability: At the time of the initial 2021 release Payroll Liability Reminders will be available to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll Subscribers using QuickBooks Pro and Premier, QuickBooks Accountant, QuickBooks ProPlus, QuickBooks PremierPlus, and QuickBooks Enterprise (all subscription levels). The feature is presently only available within the United States.  Note: This feature is also available to all 2020 product users with Enhanced Payroll Subscriptions.

You will find Insightful Accountant's summary of QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Enterprise for 2021 along with other related features in the 'Related Links' at the bottom of this feature.

Editor's Acknowledgements

Special thanks go out to my good friend Laura Madeira who allowed me to cross-check my articles with advance copies of her features to make certain that we were consistent in providing accurate information regarding the 2021 release. Laura, and her co-author Karen Siewert, have written three separate articles this year covering different aspects of the QuickBooks 2021 release, please be certain to check them out at Intuit's Firm of the Future blog:

I also want to thank the following Intuit personnel for their dedication in providing information, numerous briefings, and responding to my questions, as well as in guiding the actual product developments within QuickBooks Desktop and this release: Rachna Arya, Nipun Bhatia, Aditya Dixit, Sowmya Murthy, Madhumita Tayade, Muthuraj Thangavel, Tulasi Vijay Kumar Thulluru, and Raman Verma. I also want to say thanks to Michelle Berg, Mindy King, and Shawn Sturgeon from Intuit for additional product briefings and information along with the various members of Intuit's Alpha & Beta Product Testing Teams for QuickBooks 2021.

Of course, there are entire teams, composed of hundreds of Intuit personnel behind all of these people that make the magic happen and we so often forget to say, thank you, to them, so to all involved, “Thank You for Another Great Product."

Notes:

Some images used in this feature are displayed directly as provided by Intuit, others may have been modified from the source material Intuit provided.

In addition, some images herein were furnished to us exclusively by Laura Madeira to complement images within Intuit furnished content or source materials she had prepared.