California COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave

Thanks for sharing this concern on the QuickBooks Community page, @CChilds.

For now, having the option to show the available balances for COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave on pay stubs is unavailable in QuickBooks Desktop. 

The only categories that would display accrual balances are the regular vacation and sick pay in the program.

I can see how this option would be helpful for you and your business. Therefore, let me take note of this as a suggestion to improve your QuickBooks experience.

In the meantime, I recommend visiting our Firm of the Future site. This is where we share recent happenings and future developments, such as updates to newly added features.

If you have any other concerns, feedback, or questions, don't hesitate and come back to the Community. I'm always here to help you. Have a great day.

Yes please send this to the development team. It affects the majority of employers in CA and keeping track of the hours manually will be cumbersome. 

It could also be useful for employers in the rest of the US who are providing Paid Sick Leave and using the federal tax credit.

Yes, it is now a MADATE that we have this on paystubs - not an option.  I hope QB can come up with this quickly.

I just chatted with someone on the contact page about this and was told that this was being addressed in the next update. They didn't have a timeline for release of that update. 

Honestly, I didn't leave the chat confident that this is a priority for them. 

Does anyone have a good suggestion on how to keep track of the hours available other than an Excel spreadsheet? Without an update to the program that expands the number of benefit accrual items able to be tracked in QB payroll it allows a chance of manual calculation & typing error to occur when each week it is necessary to manually enter the information on a paystub. We too are already using the Sick Leave and Vacation Leaving tracking options and now need to create and add a new step to our weekly payroll.

And how about showing the pay as a separate item from normal hourly hours? Are we to create a new Payroll Item mirroring settings for normal hourly hours but naming it as COVID-19 Cal SPSL (or something to that effect)?

Thanks for joining the thread and providing detailed information about your concern, SunshineConstruction.

As mentioned by my colleague @ReymondO above, the feature to have the balances for COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave on pay stubs is unavailable in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT). As a workaround, you may wish to consider looking for a third-party app. I can route you to the website to look for an application specific to your business needs. From there, you can integrate the app to QBDT. Check out our web apps from this link: https://desktop.apps.com/home.

You can also check our separate forum called Intuit Developers, where you can find engineers who can help recommend third-party applications. 

As for your other question, you can create a separate payroll item. But before doing so, I highly suggest consulting your accountant or accounting professional for guidance since every business structure is unique. They can help determine the correct posting of the accounts for tax treatments.

If you have other concerns, please post in the Community again. Wishing you and your business continued success!

Finding third-party app is not a solution as we only need to add a benefit for tracking accrual & use. We do not need a new way to track employee hours worked and/or prepare our weekly payroll.

I called two days ago in regards to this and the representative told me there was not way to separate the 80 hours from CA sick time.  I let them know that new law states they must be separated. They just said they cant and that was that.

Not helpful at all.

Record-keeping and Paystubs

20. Should 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave be listed separately from regular Paid Sick Leave on the itemized paystub or separate writing at the time wages are paid?

Yes. The 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave law is clear that the obligation to provide COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave is in addition to regular paid sick leave. The itemized wage statement or separate writing requirement ensures covered employees understand how many separate hours they have available for 2021 COVID-specific sick leave. For example, consider a full-time covered employee who has used all of the covered employee’s regular paid sick leave but is entitled to 80 hours of 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave. If an itemized wage statement specifies that there are 0 hours of paid sick leave and 80 hours of 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave available, the covered employee would be on notice that they lack available paid sick leave for non‑COVID‑related absences. On the other hand, if the itemized wage statement simply said 80 hours of paid sick leave available without differentiating between paid sick leave and 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave, a covered employee might take paid sick leave for non-COVID related reasons without realizing that there were no sick leave hours available.

I have been on 2 chat sessions with QB's Help, with no help on this matter at all.  Both times I was told it will be on the next update.....  and it hasn't been.  We are required by LAW in the state of CA to have this accrual item on our employee's paystub. 

Why is QB's dropping the ball?  All the answers that they have given us is unacceptable.

3rd party app, as in a different financial services and payroll service provider?  Sounds great.  Alright everyone, QuickBooks told us to leave QuickBooks, I'll hold the door for everyone.

Thanks for...nothing.  Wait, don't we pay you to manage our payroll (I know we do, monthly and transactionally...) ?

Perhaps we just let the lawsuits hit QuickBooks, who is, at least in my case, our payroll service provider.

I'll just forward the lawsuit to them, maybe they'll pay attention then.  Cheers!

Here's our work around for now:

We just add a company memo on the pay-stub.  Haven't had anyone use it yet, just required to say they have it, so we say:

"California/National COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave is available up to 80 hrs*"

Meets the legal requirement.

Once someone uses it...I'll just use a PDF editor to create a line item and show used vs/ remaining hours just for those individuals.  A pain, but...more than Quickbooks could offer as a solution...

With a PDF editor, you can move lines down, and insert a new one.  Since this seems to be a "short-term" offering, I didn't want to have to create whole new GLs/accounts in our Quicbkooks system for it.  We're allowed to track it off-ledger so long as you track it.  You just also need to communicate it if/when used for an employee.

The plan is to just pay out using normal sick, and manually adjust sick accruals/balances to not reduce their normal sick time when paying out for COVID etc.

You can show multiple line items for sick time, and just manually update the name to "COVID" on the pay stub with the PDF editor.