MN Sick and Safe Accrual of Hours

Hello there, kzpack.

Before we start, it's best to ensure you've correctly set up your payroll preferences. Please know that if you've set up in the Company Preferences, you still have to enter the maximum number of hours to accrue in the employee's profile.

Step 1: Check if the Company Preferences have the correct setup

1. Go to the Edit menu, choose Preferences, then select Company Preferences.
2. Click Sick and Vacation.
3. Within the Sick section, check what accrual period you've chosen.
4. If it's Every hour on paycheck, kindly review the Hours accrued per hour paid field.
5. From the Maximum number of hours to accrue field, ensure you've entered the correct number.
6. If you want to set specific maximum hours for each year, you can choose Maximum hours for the year. By selecting this, your employee won't accrue more sick time until the new year starts.
7. If you select the Maximum hours at a time, your employee will still accrue additional sick time on their next paycheck even though the new year hasn’t started.
8. You can also tick the Reset hours each new year to stop sick leave from accumulating once your employee reaches the maximum accruals in a year.

Step 2: Review the Payroll info of your employee

1. Go to the Employees tab, then choose Employee Center.
2. Double-click the name of your employee, then click Payroll Info.
3. Under the Taxes button, press the Sick/Vacation button.
4. Within the Sick section, please review if you've set up your employee's sick time off correctly after making changes in the Company preferences.
5. Once done making changes, click OK.

If everything is set up correctly yet the issue persists, I recommend contacting our support again so they can investigate why this is happening on your end.

To learn more about the steps I've provided, you can use this article: Understand sick pay accrual limits in QuickBooks Desktop Payroll.

If you want to add sick pay or vacation pay hours for salaried employees in QBDT Payroll, here's an article you can use for guidance: Enter sick pay or vacation pay hours for salaried employees.

Please let me know if you have further questions regarding your employee's sick time off, kzpack. We'll be around to help you in any way we can.

Sorry IrizA, everything is set up correctly and it still accrues more than the 48 hours.  If they don't use any time then it stops at the 48 hours.  Would be a great benefits package if you get 48 hours, use them and get another 48 hours in the same year.  I'll take that job.  If vacation accrual works why can QB not get sick to work, makes no sense to me.

@kzpack 

RE: everything is set up correctly and it still accrues more than the 48 hours. If they don't use any time then it stops at the 48 hours. 

I did some playing around with this to try to help. It's a bit convoluted, to say the least, but it's working correctly for me.

QuickBooks limits accrued sick time in one of two ways:

- By the max balance. It accrues until that balance is reached. When the balance goes down, then it accrues again. This is what you're seeing.

- By the max to accrue per year. It accrues only the max amount entered on the employee and then stops, even if sick time is used. This is what you want.

Set QuickBooks to the max to accrue per year in preferences: Pick Edit | Preferences | Payroll & Employees. Then click the Company Preferences tab & then the Sick & Vacation button. Then on the Sick & Vacation Defaults window, pick Maximum hours for the year:

Then, on the employee records, set the desired values, similar to this:

Notes:

Maximum: This value now limits the max hours that will accrue.

Reset: This has an interesting behavior:

- If you do not enable Reset, the Maximum hours entered will accrue and then QuickBooks will stop accruing forever. Which I doubt anyone wants.

- If if you do enable Reset, then as the new year starts, the balance is reduced to the amount in the carryover field (if it is larger) and then QuickBooks will start accruing again.

Thank you for the info, however that is exactly how I have it set up and it is still going over the 48 hours.  I have one employee who is at the 48 hours and I run a paycheck for him and it is still adding hours to his accrual.  This is beyond frustrating.  

Well after playing around some more, I found another issue.  It is not taking OT hours into the accrual.  Per MN law it is 1 hour for every 30 hours worked.  If they work OT then those hours should be part of the accrual.  

If I put over 80 hours (regular pay) for Bi-Weekly payroll it accrues over the 48 hours.  

Now I have to figure this all out by hand.  So much for software.

RE: I have one employee who is at the 48 hours and I run a paycheck for him and it is still adding hours to his accrual. 

If you print or preview the employee's last pay stub, what is the YTD Accrued sick time value?

Note that the rule is the total hours accrued for the year, which QuickBooks keeps track of, not the current accrued balance. The balance can go beyond the total hours limit if some hours were not accrued in the current year.

RE: It is not taking OT hours into the accrual. Per MN law it is 1 hour for every 30 hours worked. If they work OT then those hours should be part of the accrual. 

That's a preference in payroll preferences. I suspect it is turned off. Change it to enable it as below and then OT hours will be included:

Thank you, I missed that checkbox.  However it is still not stopping at 48 hours.  UGH

Well, has the employee accrued 48 hours this year, according to QuickBooks?

As previously noted, if not the balance my go beyond 48 hours.

I looked at another employee they have 36.59 available and has used 8 (total of 44.5).  If I do a check for him it only takes the 36.59 into consideration so he goes over the 48 because it's not taking the used hours. 

I did a test with putting in a bunch of hours an it went over the 48 anyway (without taking the used hours into consideration).

None of that matters.  How many hours have accrued this year? That is the only thing that matters.

You can see the YTD accrued amount if you print or preview the employee's pay stub, as previously mentioned.

Correct, the numbers I stated are their accrued hours.  QB is still adding to those accrued hours and not stopping at 48.  Am I not understanding what you are asking.  See attached screenshot.  (which to me makes it even more confusing) 

Your screenshot shows that the employee has accrued just 7.95 hours YTD, 2.67 of that total on the current paycheck, which is about 1/3 of the total, suggesting that only three of their paychecks have accrued sick time.  Why might that be?

As that is the case, hours will continue to accrue until the accrual limit has been reached, to 48 hours. So, an additional 40.05 hours will accrue:

Then why does it say he has 36 available.  He works tons of hours so there is no way he has only accrued 7 hours.  If you pull up a current check it says Sick Available:  36.59 and Sick Accrued 2.67 (For this check).

RE: Then why does it say he has 36 available?

It's not possible to tell how that balance came to be.

The available balance is partially a result of what has been accrued, but it is not at all the same thing and cannot be used to determine what has been accrued.

Available includes past accrued and used hours, including from prior years if you don't reset each year. You can also just change available by editing the employee record:

Manually overriding the available balance does not change what was accrued.

You can review the employee's paychecks for the year to verify that the total YTD accrued hours is correct. Each paycheck shows its accrued hours:

When you review the employee's paychecks for the year, what do you find the combined total accrued amount to be?

This comes from the Paid Time Off List from QB.  We just started accruing as this is new for MN, so there are no carryovers.

@kzpack  "He works tons of hours so there is no way he has only accrued 7 hours."

Just chiming in on this specific part.

As you can see in several of BigRed's images, there is a field within the employee's Sick & Vacation settings wherein you tell the program what day of the year to begin accruing.

If you are surprised at him accruing so few hours, it may be that the day of the year is set incorrectly. Specifically, if he's getting 2.67 on this check and has 7.95 total, that would math out to about 3 weeks, which would approximately line up with the start of August for the beginning of accrual.

Assuming the employee's year is as expected (it probably should start on Jan 1) then...

Another cause of surprisingly low hours is if the sick time was either not set up for the employee, or the limit was incorrectly set to be very low. Really, any old configuration that limited or stopped the accrual could have caused this.

Note that changing the sick configuration on the employee will not change history. Changes only impact things going forward.

So, if you do find that the employee's paychecks YTD did not accrue the correct sick time (seems like it in this case), then you can edit each paycheck and in the Paycheck Detail window toggle the "do not accrue sick/vac" checkbox and then QuickBooks will recalculate the accrued time. Do this in date order for best results.

@BigRedConsulting  @kzpack  Nice to see this website is still working on Intuit Quality.

I would bet serious money that the last reply from @kzpack  was not there when I made my earlier reply.

I have QuickBooks Online Payroll Core - so I do not have the options under preferences to select. Is there any help for me on not allowing the accrued amount to exceed the 48 hours? 

Thanks for jumping into the conversation, Nancy! Managing employee accruals can feel like a juggling act, especially when ensuring compliance with your time-off policies. I've got your back.

To set a cap of 48 hours on your employees' paid time off accruals in QuickBooks Online (QBO) Payroll, you can modify their time-off policies.

Here's how:

1. Navigate to the Payroll menu and select the Employees tab.
2. Choose an employee.
3. In the Pay types section, click Edit.
4. Scroll down to Time off pay policies.
5. Pick a paid time off, sick pay, or vacation policy from the Time off pay policies section.
6. Fill in the necessary details.
7. Enter 48 hours in the Maximum allowed field.
8. Hit Save.

You can repeat these steps for any other employees as needed.

For more detailed information, visit this article: Set up and track time off in payroll.

In case you want to access useful data about your business and employees, check out this article for more guidance: Run payroll reports.

If there's anything else I can assist you with, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m here to make your payroll process as smooth as possible. Take care, Nancy.

@jeanbiverly_  This thread is for Desktop.  Your copy/pasted answer is for Online.  Please find one for Desktop to copy/paste.