QuickBooks 2005: The Missing Manual

Running Payroll

Paying your employees is crucial. Once your payroll setup is complete, generating payroll checks each pay period takes only a few minutes.

Tip

When you use direct deposit services, you must run payroll at least two banking days before the actual pay date so the service can process the payroll and transfer money into your employees' accounts.

Selecting Employees

The first step in running a payroll is choosing the employees to pay for the period. Usually, you'll select all your employees. But if you pay employees by the hour, you might want to select only the employees who worked during the pay period. Either way, you must choose Employees→Pay Employees to open the Select Employees to Pay dialog box (Figure 11-7) and get a payroll run rolling. Data for the last pay period is blank when you run payroll for the first time. However, when you have previous payroll runs, you can use the previous values to generate the next payroll.

In hte Select Employees to Pay dialog box, head to the Paycheck Options section and then choose "To be printed" to add checks to a queue. If all the employees you select use Direct Deposit, choose "To be handwritten or direct deposited" and, if necessary, in the First Check Number box, type the next check number for the account. Click Mark All to select all the employees listed. Or, to select some, turn on the checkbox in the row for each employee.

Note

Employees that are set to inactive in the Employee List don't appear in the Select Employees to ...