Contractor's edition, desktop, prevailing wage rates by job

Allow me to help you ensure that the employees are paid the correct prevailing wages, nthornell.

I'd also like to ask what exactly happens when setting up prevailing wages? QuickBooks Desktop Payroll offers a feature that would let you set up and pay prevailing wages. Here's how:

First, you need to set up time tracking. Also, when recording the hours worked of the employee using the built-in time sheet, select the correct job so it's allocated to it. Check out these articles as your guide:

• Set Up Time Tracking 
• Create and Print Timesheets
• Set Up Job Costing and Item Tracking

Second, use the timesheet information when creating the paycheck. It's important that you use the correct pay period so the hours would flow to the correct paychecks. You may also want to set up different hourly rates for each job. This information would automatically flow when creating the paychecks.

If you're paying the employees based on a skill level and not based on job, you can create an hourly item with its own rate (payroll item). Then, use it in the timesheet so you don't have to manually enter the rate when creating paychecks. It also makes sure that the correct amount is paid according to the skill that they worked.

Let me share these articles as references: 

• Set Up an Hourly Wage Payroll Item
• Create Paychecks Based on Timesheet Hours

Once done, you can now run the Certified Payroll to get the data that you need for each job. Here's an article for more details: Certified Payroll.

I'd also like to share these extra references in case you might need them:

• Create a Payroll Summary Report 
• Excel Based Payroll Reports 

Don't hesitate to reach out or reply below if you have follow-up questions. We're here to guide you all the time.

Thank you for your help.

---You may also want to set up different hourly rates for each job. This information would automatically flow when creating the paychecks.

How do I set up different hourly rates for each job? As a payroll item? Then I would have to add the payroll item to every employee every time I get a new job? - not realistically possible to do that. 

I think I'm missing something somewhere.  I have time tracking on, I have "job costing, class and item tracking for paycheck expenses" checked and "assign one class per -earnings item" checked.  

Thank you for your help!

Thanks for getting back to us and for sharing an update, @nthornell.

Yes, you got it correct. You'll want to create a payroll item for the different hourly rates for each job. This way, you'll be able to track your employees' jobs.

Then manually enter the rate when creating a timesheet based on their skill. Furthermore, I'd recommend working with your accountant for additional advice in recording this. This way, we can ensure your accounts are well accounted for after recording this and running your payroll.

Once everything is in place, you might want to read through this article on how to efficiently account for your job costs in QBDT: Track job costs in QuickBooks Desktop.

You're always welcome to post your response on this thread if you have any follow-up questions about paying your employees in QBDT. I'm always here ready to back you up any time! 

Thank you for the reply.  I can't believe that QB can't automatically pull pay rates from the job onto the timesheet.  That is extremely risky and time consuming to manually enter the pay rate for each person for each job for each skill.  This would allow for a very high rate of human error.  It's very disappointing that this robust of a program cannot handle this task, especially when the program I just gave up did it perfectly.  Surely the contactor's edition that can generate certified payroll reports has a way to automate this payroll task.