Payroll Earnings in Quickbooks Desktop

Thank you for turning to the Community about your payroll concern, April44. Let me shed some light on deleting pay rates.

Removing the mentioned payroll items in each employee's Earnings section has no effect on your previous reports or history. After you do that from the desktop program, you won't have a record of them anymore.

When you delete your pay rates from the Payroll Item List, you'll receive a message that you're unable to complete the action (used on the paychecks). You can go over this article to learn more about modifying payroll items: Edit payroll items used on paychecks.

In addition, the following link offers a list of topics that will help you deal with tax notice concerns, process payroll, and so on: QuickBooks Desktop Payroll. 

Stay in touch if you have other payroll concerns or questions about the product. I'd be glad to respond to them. Have a great rest of the day. 

So is there any downside to deleting from each employees earning section? The benefit will be that I only see the few rates that apply right now & not the 20 rates that applied to him in the past. I am trying to clean up our records now that I took over for someone else. My only hesitation is from your comment "After you do that from the desktop program, you won't have a record of them anymore."

Thanks for following up with the Community, April44.
 

Deleting old pay rates for employees shouldn't affect any reports or historical data in your books. At the same time, I'd highly recommend performing a backup of your company file before making any changes. This way, if anything happens that you didn't want or expect, you can easily restore the backup.
 

Here's how to perform a back up:
 

1. In the top menu bar, go to File, then Switch to Single-user Mode.
2. Access your File drop-down list again, and hover the cursor over Back up Company.
3. Click Create Local Backup.
4. Hit Local Backup, then Next.
5. From your Local Backup Only section, press Browse and choose where you'd like to save the backup file.
6. If necessary, set a number of backups you want to keep.
7. A test will run to confirm your backup is in good shape before saving.
8. Select OK, Save it now, then Next.

I'd also recommend working with an accounting professional to properly identify what will happen when you delete certain data from your books. If you're in need of one, there's an awesome tool on our website called Find a ProAdvisor. All ProAdvisors listed there are QuickBooks-certified and able to provide helpful insights for driving your business's success.
 

I've included a detailed resource about backing up company files which may come in handy moving forward: Back up your company file
 

I'll be here to help if there's any additional questions. Have a lovely day!