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New Member
September 10, 2026
Question

Overpaid an employee via direct deposit

  • September 10, 2026
  • 7 replies
  • 113 views

An employee already received the direct deposit into his account. He'd like to just pay back the difference now rather than fix it over the next payrolls because his hours are going way down due to returning to school. I have QuickBooks desktop with enhanced payroll. I accidentally gave him 27:10 extra hours! Ay yi yi
How can I make it right in QuickBooks? Do I somehow reverse the whole check? Is that possible? I’m thinking not, since it would have to remove the money from his account. Or do I leave the pay as it is, and somehow issue an adjustment into his payroll account? After many many years of using this payroll, I’ve never had this happen. Help!

7 replies

QuickBooks Team
September 10, 2026

Once your employee pays back the overpaid amount, you can record it as a bank deposit and deposit the amount into the bank used for direct-deposit payroll.

 

Here's how:

 

  1. Navigate to Record Deposits or Make Deposits from the homepage.
  2. Select the specific payments you want to group in the Payments to Deposit window, then click OK.
  3. Pick the destination bank account from the Deposit to dropdown list within the Make Deposits window.
  4. Verify the total against your physical bank deposit slip to ensure accuracy.
  5. Input the exact date the funds were deposited at the bank.
  6. Include an optional memo for your records.
  7. Click Save & Close.

 

If you'd like to adjust your taxes and liabilities using the correct employee's hours, you can create an adjustment.

 

Please respond to this post if you have additional concerns.

skygal2Author
New Member
September 17, 2026

My difficulties aren’t with recording a deposit - I’m familiar with that procedure. It’s in making the corrections to the liabilities. I have looked at the instructions in the link you sent, and It’s over my head. I printed out the details of the paycheck that ran, and also printed out the proper details (without actually processing a check) It’s just not working in my brain and makes me nervous. 

I can’t seem to find a way to contact Intuit to see if someone in the enhanced payroll department can do it for me - even for a charge. It’s going over my head. Do you or anyone else know?

Thanks,

Linda

skygal2Author
New Member
September 17, 2026

I’ll show you what confuses me. The images says to type in the item name. Social Security Company is my first one. The amount - the difference is 19.63 and since I overpaid him, I assume I put in a negative 19.63. Then it asks for Wage Base and Income Subject to. Is Wage base the hourly wage? And I have no idea what Income Subject To is for. Can you help? Maybe that’s not even needed.
(By the way - I know I have to put the employee name in there. Just took it out for the capture)

And then when I get the the employee part - they are negative numbers, so I’m guessing I should put in a positive number to bring it down to what the number should be?

Also - the number of hours changes for the employee but I don’t know how to change that. And, just to make things more fun - I was told by the supervisor there should have been a $2.00 per hour raise for the guy, too. (Nice of them to let me know)

Any assistance would be so appreciated.

 

Moderator
September 17, 2026

Hello Skygal, 

Thanks for that update on the thread. The good news is that you do not have to figure this out alone, and you can get an Intuit payroll expert on the phone to guide you.. They can even do a screenshare in a secured environment and work on it together. Here is the fastest way to get them on the phone: 

 

  1. Open your QuickBooks Desktop company file.
  2. Go to the top menu and select Help, then click on QuickBooks Desktop Help/Contact Us.
  3. Click the Contact Us button.
  4. Type a brief description of your issue in the box (for example: "Need help with how to do an Enhanced Payroll liability adjustment").
  5. Click Continue and log into your Intuit Account if prompted.
  6. Choose Get a callback.

 

Let me know how the conversation goes and if you were successful! Looking forward to the update. 

New Member
September 18, 2026

I think the best approach is to document the overpayment, talk with the employee first, and agree on a clear way to recover the extra amount. Keeping the payroll records and direct-deposit details organized should also make the adjustment easier. For businesses that need to verify company information, the North Carolina Secretary of State website can also be a useful reference.