Import or export a pay run in QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll

Looking for a way to import or export your pay run in QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll? You've come to the right place. This can come in handy if you need to make changes to your payroll data or if you want to move your payroll data to another system. In this article, we'll show you how to do both. Let's get started!

Import a pay run in QuickBooks Online

Did you know that you can import/export a pay run from an unfinalised pay run in QuickBooks? You can import a pay run by following these steps:

1. Go to Payroll, and select the Pay Runs tab.
2. Select the unfinalised pay run you wish to import.
3. Select Pay Run Actions.
4. Select Import Pay Run.

From here you can make the necessary changes:

• Clear existing data. You can choose to clear the existing data in the pay run before importing the data. You can choose to clear some or all pay items by ticking the checkbox next to each item. Note: Clearing existing data will clear those pay items for all employees, not just the ones in the import, so be mindful when using this setting.
  
• Replace or add data to import. You can choose to replace the pay run data with the data in the spreadsheet OR add the data to the existing pay run
  
• Configure ID types. Each transaction line in the pay run import uses ID's to determine which values should be used as the identifier for various data types. You can use the system generated Advanced Payroll ID or use an external ID. You can specify external IDs for the following data types in the pay run import:
  • Employee ID
  • Location ID
  • Pay Category ID
  • Deduction Category ID
  • Employee Expense Category ID
  • Employer Liability Category ID

Once you select your pay run import option, you'll need to select the import file. The import file uses a predefined format. You can see a sample of the file format by exporting a pay run–which we'll show you how to do next.

Export a pay run

Did you know that you can import/export a pay run from an unfinalised pay run in QuickBooks? You can import a pay run by following these steps:

1. Go to Payroll, and select the Pay Runs tab.
2. Select the pay run you wish to export.
3. Select Pay Run Actions.
4. Select Export Pay Run. This will download an Excel file with all the available data for the pay run.

The pay run exports exclude leave records and system generated earnings lines.