We are in Washington State, which adds some complexity to payroll. This is especially true for drywall contractors. Indulge me in some state details so most of you can better understand the question.
First of all, workers compensation in Washington is run by the state. For most employees the rate is based on hours worked, but for drywall installation and taping it's based on square feet. Minimum wages, though, are still based on hours worked.
We have a drywall client set up and the system works, but I'm wondering if there's a more efficient way to do things so that my bookkeeper doesn't have to manually review every payroll to do the L&I returns each quarter. The client is set up as follows:
1. Other types of work are entered normally as payroll items.
2. Taping and installation are entered as payroll additions and we manually adjust the rate to match the total pay.
3. Three different L&I classifications are involved, and we manually enter/verify the correct base numbers for each one.
The way this was set up long before I got involved means that only the hourly-pay hours are entered. I've started using a second payroll item to enter the non-hourly hours at a rate of zero. This means I can run reports to get the correct total hours for an employee and it works fine.
What I'm wondering, though, is whether there's a way to get the total pieces installed. The various payroll reports are happy to report the total dollars, but not the quantities. If there's a way to set this up so we can run simple reports to get all the information we need for quarterly report submissions I'd be glad to hear about it!
