Once you’ve set up your QuickBooks Payroll software, you’re probably ready to actually start paying your employees. Setting up Payroll in QuickBooks though can be a bit complicated for the uninitiated. Take a look at our quick guide to setting up payroll in QuickBooks if you need help getting started.
There are, additionally, two things you’ll need to do before running payroll for the first time:
- Enter Employee’s Hours
- Create A Bank Account
- To run your payroll, first make sure that all of your employees have recorded their time within QuickBooks. If you need help with this, check out How To Track Time In QuickBooks.
You’ll also want to make sure that you’ve added the business bank account you pay employees from into QuickBooks. To learn how to do this, read How To Add A Bank Account To QuickBooks.
Steps:
Step 1: Navigate To Payroll In QuickBooks begin, go to ‘Employees’ at the top left of your screen, select ‘Payroll Center’, and click ‘Pay Employees’. If it’s your first time using QuickBooks Desktop Pro.
Step 2: Choose The Type Of Payroll To RunYou’ll need to decide whether to run an unscheduled or scheduled payroll shown in the below photo before you can start entering your payroll information. Starting an unscheduled payroll will immediately take you to the screen shown under Step 3. Running a scheduled payroll also takes you to the screen shown under Step 3 but first requires that you assign one or more specific employees to a payroll schedule. To do this, navigate to the ‘Employees’ tab shown on the very left-hand side in the below photo. Select the name of the employee(s) who you wish to assign to a payroll schedule, navigate to their ‘Payroll Info’ tab, and assign them a payroll schedule from the ‘Payroll Schedule’ dropdown list.
Step 3: Enter Payroll InformationEnter all of your payroll information, beginning with the pay period end date and check date. Select the bank account you want to pay employees from (QB will show you the existing account balance). Select whether you will print checks using QuickBooks or if you are going to handwrite your checks.
Step 4: Review and Create PaychecksNext, review the information to make sure everything looks correct. QuickBooks will tell you how many paychecks will be issued on the left-hand side, underneath ‘Payroll Information’. It will also total up the gross pay, taxes, deductions, net pay, employer tax contributions, total hours, and direct deposit amounts for the pay period. After you review all of the information, click “Create Paychecks.”
Step 5: Confirm PayrollCongrats! You’ve officially run payroll in QuickBooks Desktop Pro. This screen will tell you how many paychecks have successfully been created, how many are ready for printing, and how many are ready to be directly deposited.
