Employees and payroll

Good day, faithm178.

Thanks for joining the Community. Let me help you set up payroll without a subscription.

We've recently changed the title of the article in the Help menu of QuickBooks Desktop. Please follow these steps to set up manual payroll:

1. Go to Help and choose QuickBooks Desktop Help.
2. In the search field, type in Manual Payroll and press Enter.
3. Click on the Calculate payroll taxes manually (without a subscription to QuickBooks Desktop Payroll) link. 
4. In the Set your company file to use the manual payroll calculations setting section, click on the manual payroll calculations link.
5. Click on the Set my company file to use manual calculations link.

To help you with the process, I've attached some screenshots below.

For further guidance, you can also check out this article: Set up payroll without a subscription.

You should be able to set up manual payroll after following these steps. Keep me updated on how this goes. I'm always here to help you further. Have a nice day.