Assessing Year-End Data
Table of Contents
First, it’s important to know that the information on all quarterly and Year-To-Date payroll reports is pulled from the Payroll Check History file, not the General Ledger.
Employee Master
The Employee Master file [F3] has the YTD tab, which shows all Earnings, Deductions, Company Costs, and Taxes.
H-10 Totals by Detail Code
You can also find YTD information by running the # 20 Reports > Historical Tab > H-10 Totals by Detail Code report. This report will show you all Earning and Deduction detail codes, along with tax flag switches for those codes and amounts. You will also see totals for taxes paid by the employee and company costs.
Enter the needed date range. For example, to refer to the W-2, enter the date range using the month, day, and year format.
To get employee details, make sure to select the box to Print Copy for each Employee. If this box is not selected, only a company summary page will print.
You can use this report to tie back to the employee’s W-2.
Box 1 Wages, tips, other compensation is the net of the Earning and Deduction codes with the tax flag set to yes.
You may be wondering why the Wages and Tips are less than the Social Security and Medicare wages. The answer is in the switches. When comparing the switches for FICA, Medicare, and Federal Withholding, we can see that the 401k Flat detail code is set to pre-tax, meaning it will reduce the federal taxable wages.
With this switch set to yes or turned on, the calculation for box one reflects the pre-tax deduction.
Reviewing this report can be a good tool for spotting errors. For example, if there is a duplicate earning or deduction code that may have a tax flag that was changed sometime during the year, a correction may be needed.
Another excellent tool for finding errors is the Edit Listing.
See Correcting Cycle for more information.