How do I enter more than one workers' comp classification code for an employee?

Hello, @TBUZZ.

At this time, QuickBooks Online doesn't allow you to add more than one Workers Compensation tax code. You can also check it with a tax accountant on how to work around this for professional advice.

In the meantime, you can pull up and view the Workers' Compensation report to get the details of how much you need to pay.

Here's how:

1. On the left menu, click Reports.
2. On the search field, enter Workers' Compensation.
3. Customize the report to show the information you need.

You can check this resource for insightful details on how to set up and calculate Worker's Comp: Set up Washington workers' compensation in QuickBooks Online.

If you have follow-up payroll questions, please let me know by placing a comment below. Anytime I can help. Stay safe and well!

Unfortunately, our tax accountant doesn't have a work around, other than manually putting all employee's hours in a spreadsheet and dividing up the hours by class. This is extremely time consuming and costly, and I would hope Quickbooks is working on a solution for this, as I see it is a common issue among users for the past few years. Is there something in the works at QBO to remedy this problem?

Thanks for keeping an eye on this post, TBUZZ.

At this point, QuickBooks Online lets you select one workers' comp class. 

You can send a request about this feature by following these steps outlined below:

1. Select the Gear icon at the top, then Feedback.
2. Enter your comments or product suggestions then select Next.
3. You'll be provided a list of suggested Help articles related to your comment. You can read through them or select Skip and send message.
4. From the drop-down, choose the appropriate category, then select Send message.
   
   

Your valuable feedback goes to our Product Development team to help improve your experience in QuickBooks. You can track feature requests through the QuickBooks Online Feature Requests website.

You can also follow our QuickBooks blog to keep you in the loop with what's new and coming in the system.

Stay in touch with me if you need anything else concerning payroll. I'll be right here to help you.

Has anything changed on this in the last year? Seems very odd this is not a feature.   All my employees work under two different classes.  The time is take for me to sort through their hours is very costly.   I’m currently looking for other accounting software that provide this feature just so I don’t have to spend the hours to manually add everything for every employee.   

We are doing the same. QuickBooks Online has not remedied this issue and I have read requests on the QuickBooks Community dating back several years. I have also submitted the feedback/request through QBO itself. We will be going with another payroll service that allows worker's tracking to multiple codes and multiple jobs. It's too bad that QBO will be losing business for such an easy fix.

This is a problem but I have developed this workaround:  In Quickbooks I created a customer called "General Time" and another called "9552 Installation" which is a more expensive and seldom-used rate.  Our WC carrier will allow us to apportion the employees' time providing there is real-time time-card record keeping. In Tsheets (Quickbooks Time) they select the "customer" when they log in.  It's a bit cumbersome to generate a report, but in Tsheets go to Reports/Itemized Total Time:  then customize the report to include the "customers" you want to include.  This generates an Excel file but when printed it looks fine.  

Is there an update on this from Intuit?

Had I known that such a basic feature in Quickbooks desktop wasn't available in Quickbooks online I would've explored other options before making the move. As a farm where different activities are classed differently having to do a cumbersome and time consuming workaround via tsheets is, frankly, dumb.

I've submitted feedback via QBO - but this needs to be addressed, or the hunt for an accounting/payroll software that is actually useful will continue.

Have you found another payroll provider that will allow multiple WCB codes? Does Gusto allow this. I have to move my clients accounts because QB will not fix this. 

Still doing a manual workaround. QBO remains a thoroughly frustrating product.

I would like to add multiple workers comp codes to the same employee when the same employee works in a variety of different roles and it needs to be tracked by state fund workers compensation. QBO is really limiting us by not allowing us to track the same employee to multiple different workers comp codes, as it only allows you to assign one code to the employee, and once you change the workers comp code, it changes all of the entries for everything retroactively, instead of just going forward. This is a feature that many people have asked to be improved, and if QBO is not going to improve this feature, they need to provide us with some type of logical work around.

Hi there, davidhmb.

Thank you for adding more information to your query. Upon reviewing your question, I noticed a similar query was posted in our Community forum, and my colleagues have already provided a solution. Therefore, visit the Community forum and click on this link to route you to the posts answered by my co-expert. https://quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-us/employees-and-payroll/i-would-like-to-add-multiple...

Once you find the post, you can go through the solution provided by my colleagues to see if it resolves your query. If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to let me know, and I'll be happy to assist you further. Have a great day!

I posted this a year ago in this conversation:

This is a problem but I have developed this workaround:  In Quickbooks I created a customer called "General Time" and another called "9552 Installation" which is a more expensive and seldom-used rate.  Our WC carrier will allow us to apportion the employees' time providing there is real-time time-card record keeping. In Tsheets (Quickbooks Time) they select the "customer" when they log in.  It's a bit cumbersome to generate a report, but in Tsheets go to Reports/Itemized Total Time:  then customize the report to include the "customers" you want to include.  This generates an Excel file but when printed it looks fine.  

What payroll service allows tracking of multiple WC class codes?  I was told that QBO would track this before I switched from QB Desktop to QBO.  This shouldn’t be a difficult thing to implement software wise, it seems QB doesn’t care.

Thanks for joining the thread, @JST5.

I hear you, and I understand the importance of accurately tracking multiple WC class codes for reporting and insurance purposes. 

As of now, all QuickBooks Online (QBO) payroll services don't allow entering more than one worker's compensation (WC) classification code for an employee. If you change the code for an employee, the historical information will also change when you run the Worker's Compensation report.

Although it may not be ideal, if applicable to your situation, you can try the workaround suggested by the community members in the thread. Additionally, you can try using QuickBooks Time to track your employees' time and create different service items to break out the time spent on various types of tasks.

I also encourage sending feedback to our product engineers, especially about adding multiple WC class codes, as it's important that the software accommodates the needs of businesses. 

1. In your QBO account, go to the Gear icon.
2. Select Feedback.
3. Enter your comments or product suggestions.

Let me add this article as a guide for preparing your tax forms and finalizing your payroll for the year: Year-end checklist for QuickBooks Online Payroll.

You're always welcome in the Community should you have further questions about adding multiple WC codes in QBO Payroll. We'll do our best to assist. 

Intuit has known about this problem for many years and have not addressed it which suggests that feel it’s not important. My suggestion is to switch to Gusto payroll as they allow for multiple WCB L&I codes. If you have more than one wcb code, QB payroll will not work. This especially applies to contractors.

Jan 31, 2024

I haven’t even finished the migration process and I find this out!
I pay way too much money each year on worker comp insurance to settle for using only one WC class code/employee and Intuit charges a premium for this product so I shouldn’t have to resort to a work-around. This will be a deal killer for me. Thankfully I’m only into this (QBI Advanced, Elite Payroll and QB time) for one months billing. Do better!

It is crazy to me that this is a deal killer for why so many people year after year leave intuit Online for other options, simply because Intuit will not offer the option to track multiple different workers comp codes for different employees, especially considering that not tracking this properly can cost our businesses money, and even worse time/money/stress from going through workers comp audits every year and not having a clean way to show people earning wages in multiple different comp code tiers. Business and accountants get so frustrated by this missing featured that they have expressed frustration for many years, as you can find requests over many different websites, youtube video comments, etc. I have made dozen of requests, but all Intuit will do is respond saying they recommend we submit to their website which many of us have done. They just need to realize how important this feature is for nearly all businesses trying to track workers comp the right way our insurance carriers want us to track it.

Based on the first post of this thread it has now been 4 years and still Intuit has not provided the opportunity to add more than one comp code to an employee. I pay 30 to 40 thousand dollars a year on workers comp insurance and the ability to split payroll between class codes saves me thousands of dollars each year - as apposed to placing all of an employees payroll into one class code - the highest class code representing any work that is performed. So not having this ability is simply a deal killer for me. I have always tracked multiple class codes with QB desktop easily. Come on Intuit, don't make people settle for less or resort to some work-around when Desktop has had this ability it all along.

Oh the "suggestion box" in the gear icon drop-down, nobody from intuit reads nor replies to anything you post there.

At the very least they need to make it to where you change someone to a new comp code, you do not loose all the historical data. For example one of our plumbers became a full time project manager. When I change his coder to project manager, from a high wage rate earning plumber which he was the only person in that category, I have lost all that data as that code does not show up in report, only his new wages in the new code. This is incredibly frustrating, and makes everything to be not accurate. They really need to allows us something to be able to track this accurately.