How to enter employee tips on outsourced payroll

You're on the right track in recording your employee tips from an outsourced payroll in QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT), @AGMAIN.

When you outsourced payroll, you'll have to manually enter your employees' pay information. You've already removed the $50 tip paid to the employee out of the liability account by the time you've created a journal entry. Then, recorded the said amount to QuickBooks since it's already in your payroll reports. 

You can pull up and customize a payroll report again to make sure the employee tip is recorded accordingly. Here's how:

1. Go to the Reports menu.
2. Choose Employees & Payroll.
3. Choose your desired payroll report.
4. Click the Customize Report button to modify your report.
5. Select OK.

After that, you can select and double-click your desired transaction or amounts on the report to view its contents or complete details. Then, you can save the report's customization settings for later use. You can refer to this article for the steps: Create, access, and modify memorized reports.

Additionally, here's an article that'll further guide you in completing certain tasks in QuickBooks to close out the previous year and prepare for the upcoming one: QuickBooks year-end guide. It contains detailed information and steps on how to complete a certain task in the system.

Please know that you're always welcome to comment below if you have other concerns or follow-up inquiries about managing payroll and employee transactions in QBDT. I'm just around to help. Take care.

Our payroll is outsourced. The only think I do is report the employee hours to payroll and any items they need to know about. I do not enter employee information. When I get the payroll report from the payroll company I just do journal entries for the entire amount. I do not specifically enter each employee. So I have not "removed the $50 tip paid to the employee out of the liability account by the time you've created a journal entry." I need to understand how to make sure that not only is the money cleared from the liability account, but that it is also included as employee wages. 

Hi there, @AGMAIN.

Since you're doing an outsourced payroll, this setup can be done with them so that the $50 tip will not show in your Payroll Reports.

However, if you've entered this manually in QuickBooks Desktop, you can clear this tip using a Journal Entry. I’d recommend consulting an accountant to ask advise regarding the payroll categorization. 

If you don't have an accountant, you can find one here in our Resource Center. 

Please don't hesitate if you have other questions. We're here to back you up. Take care!

I cleared the tip from the liability account. However my payroll report is showing wages we paid for the year with the $50 tip included. I need to be able to reflect the $50 as income to the employee. My accountant expects my numbers to match what payroll is reporting. Are you saying I don't need to show the $50 as employee wages even though that is what my payroll report shows?