QB advanced payroll online has a problem with furlough pay

Thank you for bringing this to our attention, @Midas.

Yes, you have to add 2 wages on the employee's payroll, one for furlough pay, and the other one is the salary. If the pension payments aren't calculating correctly, review the pensionable item, and make sure that all payroll items are included.

Here's how:

1. Go to the Gear icon, then select Account and settings under Your Company.
2. Click on Payroll at the left pane, then click on the pencil icon beside Pension pay types.
3. Make the necessary changes if there is, then click Save and Done.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I'm a few clicks away to help. Have a good day!

Hello Angelyn_T

Thank you for the reply and suggestion but there is a slight problem I don't have a Payroll menu button on the Account and Settings menu screen as you will see below.

Yes I do have QB Advanced online Payroll.

What is your next suggestion?

Hi Midas,

Thanks for getting back to us on this thread. 

To add the furlough pay category as a pensionable pay type in the Advanced payroll, please go to Employees > Payroll > Payroll Settings > Pension Settings and then scroll down and select the pension contribution plan to edit. 

You can then click into 'Applicable pay categories' to add and then select save once done.

Get back to us below if you have any Q's!

Hi GeorgiaC,

Lots of questions for example why is Angelyn_T screen shot have a Payroll menu button that my version of QB doesn't?

I had already created two default furlough pay categories as pensionable pay types that is how I know that the calculation is not correct when I ran the payroll

But just so you can see what I had set up I have provided a screen shot below.

Below is a screenshot of an example pay slip.

Salary is £2,307.69 and the employee is making a 5% salary sacrifice so under Pre Tax Deductions we have Pension Salary Sacrifice of £115.38 which is correct. Next under Wages and Earnings we have Furlough + 10% Company Pension Contribution showing as £769.23 and this in turn should under Pre Tax Deduction Pension Employer Contribution (of £76.923) but it is in fact showing as £153.85 which is (£76.923 x 2= £153.846 or when rounded £153.85). 

What is going on here?

And please explain to me how under Employer Contributions Pension is showing as £115.39 when the same and correct calculation done above under Pre Tax Deductions Pension Salary Sacrifice is £115.38 

Why is QB adding 1p to the calculation?

Hello there, Midas. I appreciate you getting back and providing detailed information about your concern.

I'd love to assist checking why the Payroll tab is unavailable on your QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll, as well as the calculations of the payslip after creating two default furlough pay categories as pensionable pay types.

However, since this is a public, I'm unable to pull up your account on my end and take care of this for you. The resources necessary to accomplish this are under our Customer Care Team, so I highly recommend reaching out to them. They can check your account in a secure environment and further investigate the root cause of the issue. 

Check out this link for ways on how to connect with us: Contact the QuickBooks Online Customer Support team.

Moreover, I don’t want to leave you empty-handed, you'll want to visit our Community Help Articles hub in case you need some related articles in managing your account.

I’m here to help if you need anything else. Have a fantastic day!

Hello there, MirriamM,

Thank you for your offer of help it is much appreciated please let me know how and when we can connect and I would be only to happy to have you sort out the issue.

Just so you know I have contacted payroll support serveral times in the past two weeks and they have confirmed that the set up is correct but they have not managed to fix the problem. But as you suggested I contact support again I have done as you requested with the following results.

I have contacted the payroll team three times today the first time with AlexandraJane Case: [removed] I explained the problem I was experiencing and then put on hold, the call then dropped out. One hour and a half later i received a email saying that AlexandraJane had tried to contact me but couldn't get through (I have no record of anyone trying to call me). The 2nd call I made with Danai who after I explained the problem put me on hold so I ended the call after listening to music on hold for 30 minutes. The 3rd call with was with Kyle case number [removed] who I spoke to for over 2 hours and while he tried everything he knew he could not fix the problem even after asking for assistance from his colleagues.

I have to say at the moment I feel extremely empty-handed and not at all impressed with the support I have received.

You have all of the information you need to replicate the fault along with the details given in the case study numbers I have provided above so you know what your payroll support colleagues have tried to fix the problem.

I believe this is beyound the ability of anyone in normal payroll support but happy for you to prove me wrong by putting me in touch with someone that can sort this issue out asap.

I look forward to hearing from you.

PS. My day as been anything but fantastic so far!

Hello there, MirriamM,

Still waiting for you to get back to me.

Hi Midas :waving_hand:, We would like to look into this further so I am going to raise this up, as we're unable to do much on the Community as we're restricted in what we can ask due to data protection. As this is on a community page I can't request for your email from you as it will be posted publicly, I need to ask for one of the engineers to look into the background to get it for me, once I have this I will create a case and will send you an email and we can take it from there. Thanks 

SOLUTION ...It turns out that in QB online advanced payroll you can create many salary categories and many pension categories but when you come to paying someone you can have several salary categories BUT you can only have ONE pension category that you have to select  by selecting an employee and the under Employee Settings select Pension Settings and then in that menu you need to select the Pension you are going to use. This means if you have two salary categories and the pension contribution is different for each you will need to do a manual calculation to calculate the correct percentage that you need to put into Employee Pension Settings. I did not expect to have to do external percentage calculations to work out how to get the correct pension amount for employees I thought that was what a good payroll package would do for me. Silly me!