Setting employee opening balances (year to dates) in QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll

If you’re migrating your payroll from another software mid- tax year, you'll most likely want to set the opening balances for leave entitlements and the year to date payment figures for your employees.

If someone is paid cumulatively then it will use the opening balances/year to dates to add to the figures in the payrun and work out the PAYE and National Insurance on the whole amount.

Opening balances are for the initial tax year only.

To set up the opening balances for your employees, open the employee record that you wish to set the opening balances for and then select Opening Balances on the left.

Within the Opening Balances screen, there are seven tabs:

• Leave Balances
• Earnings
• Deductions
• Pension and PAYE
• National Insurance
• Previous employer

Leave Balances

When entering leave balances, enter balance as at the point of transition to this payroll system. Partial hours are entered as a decimal (eg: 6.5 hours) rather than as HH:MM (eg: 6:30).

Earnings

Earnings are the year-to-date gross values for the financial year specified. The default pay categories are above, however if you wish to use a different pay category then you will need to have added this pay category prior to entering the opening balances . If you want to put the total hours in you can however this is optional.

Deductions

Enter the year-to-date deduction amounts for the financial year specified.

Pension and PAYE

Enter the year-to-date PAYE amounts, Student loans and Pension amounts for the financial year specified.

NIC

You need to enter the National Insurance year to date details in this section. You will find this information from the payroll system you were previously using.

1. You need to enter the employee's National Insurance category here.
2. The employee's Gross wage for National Insurance calculations (Ni-able).
3. The amount of National Insurance the employee has contributed from year to date.
4. The amount of National Insurance the employer has contributed from year to date.
5. The amount of Gross at LEL.
6. The amount of Gross LEL to PT.
7. The amount of Gross PT to UEL.

You can use HMRC's calculators to double check that everything is calculating correctly:

• NI contributions
• PAYE tax
• Student finance