Hey Svetlana,
With the 2019 tax year behind us, I'm glad to see you're spending extra time making sure everything is perfect. It's important for everything recorded in payroll to be just right, and staying on top of it will save you a lot of time when tax season comes around. Standard Payroll really simplifies the task of paying your employees by handling calculations for you, as well as keeping track of your tax liabilities. This works best when things are done through payroll, but it's also possible to record things that happened outside of QuickBooks. Thanks to the incredible customization options available in standard payroll, I'm confident we'll have no problem getting the net amount with the correct taxes. You're already done half the battle, and I'll be happy to help you sort this out.
Using a bonus cheque for a net amount is the ideal way to record this. You mentioned believing different taxes apply, and that's a great observation! It appears different, but the same taxes apply. There's just some extra considerations happening behind the scenes. When you set up an employee, QuickBooks calculates their pay and tax withholdings based on the whole year. Bonuses are no different, taxes on a bonus are calculated with this in mind as being on top of their yearly salary (including any taxes that'll be withheld throughout the year). This is by design for your benefit, as calculating taxes differently may cause you and your employee to owe additional taxes at the end of the year. If you'd like to modify the tax amount, you can do so by clicking the pencil icon when creating a gross pay bonus. I know you've already provided our engineers with a lot of valuable feedback, so if you have any regarding this feature please let us know. Every bit of feedback you give us helps us keep growing with you.
One thing to note is that bonuses do not include custom deductions. If you need to run this as a regular cheque, please reach out to one of our payroll agents for help customizing the pay run. You may need to edit the employee's salary, and I want to make sure everything calculates properly. Here's how you can get in touch:
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