Welcome to the Community, mad8.
You've come to the right place for assistance. I'm happy to provide some info about manually recording payroll in QuickBooks Online.
Paychecks created outside of QuickBooks of course still have to be recorded in your accounting software. To do so you can create journal entries.
You first need to make manual tracking accounts:
Create these expense accounts. Select Expense as the account type:
- Payroll Expenses: Wages
- Payroll Expenses: Taxes
Create these liability accounts. Select Liabilities as the account type:
- Payroll Liabilities: Federal Taxes (941/944)
- Payroll Liabilities: Federal Unemployment (940)
- Payroll Liabilities: [State] SUI/ETT
- Payroll Liabilities: [State] PIT/SDI
Once you have these accounts set up, you're ready to start entering the checks as journal entries. The following article provides additional info about manually entering payroll paychecks in QuickBooks Online.
When entering certain items in QuickBooks, such as journal entries, it's important to discuss the action with your accountant. If you don't currently have an accountant, you may be interested in a new service called QuickBooks Live Expert Assisted. Here you'll be connected with one of our agents who can help with actual accounting and not just the technical side of QuickBooks.
If you have any other questions please don't hesitate to reach back out. I'll be here to lend a hand.