How Lee County Clerk of Court Balances QTD To The Penny |
In another few weeks the end of September will be here – the weather will get cooler, leaves will begin to change and OH NO another quarter will be over! Are your QTD totals in balance? Or do you close your eyes and pray that when year-end comes they will be?
Our payroll manager has balancing QTD totals, for the 4 companies that we do payroll for, down to a science and manages to balance all quarters and year-end down to the penny. How does she do it? Well it all starts when she runs a payroll.
Step 1 – Run the payroll register two ways during every payroll (the Clerk’s office runs it after the G/L steps are done).
The 1st run is for “only” employees paid during that payroll.
The 2nd run is for ‘all’ employees paid during the year.
After the last payroll of the quarter, (Regular, Void, or Manual) open the ALL Report version from the second run in Microsoft Word and go to the end of the “paspr56” PDS report and copy up to the header above “All Checks Corporate”: Save this into a folder.
Step 2 – Run ‘Fake W-2s’ for all companies. Do NOT check the box for ‘Update EMPW2 table’.
Note: Use the current year (2016) when you run the W-2 job. You will receive a warning message that the year you entered does not match current year – select OK
Save the totals page from the W2 Proof.
Step 3 – The Payroll Office maintains a spreadsheet with wage and tax amounts for FIT, OASDI and Medicare totals after each payroll.
This spreadsheet automatically sums up each category by quarter.
Step 4 – Create another spreadsheet with 5 tabs – 1 for each quarter and one with 1 payroll to go.
Enter the YTD amounts from the last ALL register for that quarter to manually balance each Company.
Step 5 – Compare the results from the “Fake” W-2’s, the YTD “All” Register, and the Tax Deposit spreadsheet totals again the manual reconciliation. Verify that there are no differences.
These 5 steps will confirm that QTD and YTD totals are in sync, that the system is treating the various earnings, fringes, and deductions correctly. Armed with this information you can confidently move on to Step 6.
Step 6 – Clear QTD
By doing a few extra steps at the end of each quarter and when there is only one payroll left to be processed in the year…you can be sure that when year-end rolls around you will be in balance and you will not have to take stock in Rolaids!
Barbara Cobb
Application Architect
Lee County Clerk Of Courts
bcobb@leeclerk.org