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February 19, 2019
Question

Payroll deduction not calculated correctly

  • February 19, 2019
  • 21 replies
  • 50 views

My employees are set up to have a % of their gross pay deducted from their paycheck with a matching % contribution from the company.  For the first 3 paychecks of the year, this worked perfectly (i.e. the 2 amounts matched).  For the current payroll run, it is incorrect.  The two amounts do not match.  QuickBooks is calculating the employer contribution correctly (based on gross pay), but is deducting health premiums from gross pay before calculating employee contributions. I did not make any payroll settings changes since the last payroll run.

 

When searching for an answer, I have read in a post:

Check the order of the payroll items on the paycheck to determine if payroll item order is affecting the calculation.

  • If you want the payroll item to calculate based only on the Earnings of the employee, it should be the first item in the Other Payroll Items section of the paycheck.
  • If you want to include certain additions and deductions in the computation, add the payroll item after those items.

But, how do you change the order of the payroll items?  I have deleted them and then tried to re-add them.  No matter what order I add them back, the health premium continues to be listed first and thus the error continues. 

 

Any ideas?

21 replies

February 19, 2019

Thanks for visiting the Community today, @WDH,

 

I want to make sure you're able to correct your employee deduction and employer contribution calculations in QuickBooks Online.

 

I checked if there's an ongoing issue about the deductions not calculating correctly but there isn't currently one. I also tried running multiple payroll for different pay periods on my end, and I was able to get the correct deductions and contributions on them.

 

In your case, since you already deleted and recreated the paychecks but to no avail, I'd recommend getting in touch with our QuickBooks Online Payroll Care Team. There they can help you make necessary corrections or adjustments to your payroll taxes. Here's how to contact us.

  1. Log in to our Quickbooks Online account.
  2. Click the (?) Help menu at the top-right.
  3. Select Contact us.

 

That should get you connected to our live support agents, @WDH.

 

Please update me on how this goes. I want to ensure your concern gets resolved so you can get back to business. Have a good day!

August 14, 2019

We've also had this issue and were told it is a known problem and the engineers are working on it. (INV-31599)  However, it still has not been resolved.  This had always been calculating correctly in the past several years that we have been using QuickBooks Payroll, something must have recently changed on their end and now it is not calculating correctly.  We have been told we will receive an email when this issue has been fixed, but that was over 2 months ago:(

Level 9
August 14, 2019

Hello @AttComm,

 

I know how challenging this is for you. Currently, we have an on-going issue where users like you have an incorrect calculation of your payroll deductions.

 

Rest assured that this issue has been escalated to our engineering team and they're in all hands working to fix this as soon as possible.

 

In the meantime, you have the option to use the amount method for your employee's deduction. Let me show you how:

  1. Go to Workers.
  2. Select Employees.
  3. Find and click to open your employee profile.
  4. Hit Edit employee.
  5. Scroll down the page to section 5 of your employee's pay.
  6. Select the Pencil icon of your employee deduction.
  7. Choose $ amount and enter the amount of your employee deductions.
  8. Hit OK.
  9. Click Done.

If you haven't yet, I'd still recommend contacting our Payroll Care Team so you'll be added to the new list of affected users.

 

In case you need some tips and related articles for future use, you can always visit our QuickBooks Online Payroll Help Articles page for reference.

 

We appreciate you patiently waiting as we fixed this for you so you can get back to business in no time. Please let me know if you have any other concerns.

Moderator
January 27, 2023

Has this been fixed yet? Same problem with Simple IRA for our entire company. They are taking 2% of adjusted gross income instead of 2% gross income. This is so frustrating. I'm having to manually calculate everyone's deductions/contributions. The little button even says % of gross. When I talk to anyone at quickbooks, they just want to change a check amount and not fix the actual problem. No one understands what I'm telling them and I feel like I'm going crazy... well now I feel more sane that others seem to have to same problem. Seems like programming can just go in a fix this! Why are we paying for software when we have to hand calculate everything and can't trust the actual software.

 


Hi there, @billing76.

 

I recognize your frustration regarding the calculation of Simple IRA. Don't worry. I want to make sure this deduction gets checked so you can get back to working order.

 

Before we proceed, have you added Simple IRA to salaried employees? If yes, the calculation of the Simple IRA is working as designed.

 

However, if this deduction was added to hourly employees, I recommend reaching out to our QuickBooks Payroll Team again. This way, they can further check on this matter and open a new investigation regarding the issue.

 

You may also want to know how QuickBooks calculates payroll taxes. This article will help you understand it: Understand how your payroll taxes are calculated.

 

Come back to this post if you have other concerns or follow-up questions about the calculation. We're always here to help.