Question

Quickbooks Payroll + QBO creating double entries.

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
August 4, 2025
1 reply
32 views

When QB runs our salaried payroll, it is creating a Payroll Expense - Wages entry that is the gross of each paycheck. This is not a Journal Entry.

QB Payroll is also creating a Payroll Expense - Taxes entry. This is also not showing as a Journal Entry.

Neither of these entries are able to match with the actual bank transactions, which leaves me with these two entries PLUS the actual paychecks and tax payments in our transactions to reconcile.

In summary, I have:

Actual bank transaction for payroll

Actual bank transaction for tax payment

+

Quickbooks Payroll created wage transaction

Quickbooks Payroll created tax transaction

--------

In my payroll settings, everything is correctly set to the right bank account (the same account the payroll transactions are coming from).

Below is a screenshot from the PNL after clicking the Payroll Expenses section.

Entries in red are the same paycheck

Entries in yellow are the same paycheck

They are showing up twice in the PNL.

Workforce Payroll

G

GianSeth_A1

I appreciate the effort you've put into solving this, MHC.

When QuickBooks Payroll runs your salaried payroll, it automatically records the Payroll Expense - Wages, showing gross salaries and wages before taxes and deductions. It also records Payroll Expense - Taxes, which includes payroll tax expenses such as withholdings, FICA, and unemployment taxes, both employee-paid and employer-paid portions.

In your Profit & Loss report, separate the expenses to allow you to view the total wage expenses and total tax expenses.

Alternatively, the actual bank transactions you download or see represent only the net payroll payments (gross wages minus taxes and deductions) and tax payments made to tax authorities. As a result, the Profit and Loss statement shows the total gross wages and tax expenses, while your bank transactions reflect the actual funds disbursed.

To avoid duplicate expenses and ensure accurate record-keeping, match your bank transactions for payroll payments with the individual paychecks already recorded in QuickBooks Payroll. Also, match the tax payment transactions from your bank feed to the payroll tax payments recorded in QuickBooks Payroll.

Follow these steps to match payroll and tax payments:

From the left menu, select Transactions, then tap Bank Transactions.
Select the bank account where payroll payments and tax payments are deposited/paid from.
Look for downloaded payroll or tax payment transactions under the For Review tab.
Click the transaction that represents a payroll payment or tax payment.
On the right panel, click Match.
In the list that appears, select the paycheck or payroll tax payment that corresponds to this bank transaction. You can use the search or filter options to locate them more easily by date or amount.
Once you have selected the correct payroll transaction, confirm that the total matches the bank transaction amount.
Complete the match.
Finally, repeat for each payroll and tax payment transaction.

If no matching payroll transaction exists, verify that QuickBooks Payroll created the liability/payment transaction. If it did not, you need to add the transaction manually.

If you have questions, let us know.

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