Salary Employee Hours in Paycheck Area

Thank you for reaching out to the QuickBooks Community, Ak2016. Once you have set up an employee as salaried, there is no need to add hours for them. You can enter hours for salaried employees, but that won't change their salary. If it is a case that you are adding the hours and a rate and there are changes, that means your employee is set up as hourly. Here's how to set that employee profile as a salary:

1. Go to Lists, then select the Payroll Item List.
2. From the Payroll Item drop-down, choose New.
3. Click Custom Setup and select Next.
4. Pick Wage and click Next.
5. Select the Annual Salary and hit Next.
6. Add the type of pay and select Next.
7. Enter a name for the salary item and select Next.
8. Choose the expense account used for tracking wages and click Finish.

The next step would be to add the new payroll item to the employee's setup.

1. Go to the Employees menu and click the Employee Center.
2. Double-click on the employee's name and click Payroll Info.
3. Under the Earnings box in the item name columns, select on a blank area.
4. Use the drop-down arrow, locate and select the Salary Item you created above or a previous one.
5.  Enter the employees' annual salary and click, OK once finished.

Once you go to the payroll screen, it should automatically have the Salary Item with the Rate already calculated with no hours. For more information on setting up a yearly salary payroll item, I invite you to check this article out.

 Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. The Community and I are here to assist in whatever way we can. Until then, I hope you enjoy your day.

Thank you SashaMC.

Some of the salary employees do have 40 populate in the paycheck area, some do not. We do like to track hours so i would like them all to populate at 40 hours. I will adjust if needed. Any idea why some populate and some do not?

I want to add that some weeks it pulls the previous week paycheck details over to the pay period i am processing.

Thank you for reaching back out, AmberK. After testing this out numerous times, I discovered that this is a sticky setting. Once you create that initially first check and the hours were not added to it, it will not continue to carry over those hours, as you mentioned. However, there is a workaround. 

I added the hours to the check and completed the paycheck process. Once this was completed, I ran an unscheduled payroll and created another paycheck. In the Open Paycheck Detail, it did populate those hours over.

In essence, simply add the hours to the paycheck and when you run and process the paycheck, the next payroll, the hours should automatically populate.

Let me know how this goes. I will be around to help. Take care and be safe.

SashaMC,

Thank you for looking into this. Regarding the statement below, i do manually enter them from week to week and they do not populate the next week.

"In essence, simply add the hours to the paycheck and when you run and process the paycheck, the next payroll, the hours should automatically populate."

Hi AmberK. 

If you're still having trouble getting your salaried employees hours to add in after following my colleagues instructions above, I would recommend reaching out to our support team, they will be able to look into your specific account with you in a private 1-on-1 setting through a screen share. This will let them determine the exact cause for the hours not showing. To reach them, follow these steps:

1. Open QuickBooks.
2. Go to Help, then select QuickBooks Desktop Help.
3. Select Contact Us.
4. Enter your concern, then select Continue.
5. Choose a way to connect with us:
   • Start messaging with a support expert.
   • Get a callback from an expert (availability may be limited).

Chat with us online

Select your product and fill out the form to chat with an expert.

• Do It Yourself
• Assisted

Thanks for your time and if you have any other questions, feel free to post in the Community whenever you need. Thanks again and have a nice evening. 

For QuickBooks Desktop, you have to go to Edit>Preferences. Under the Payroll & Employees Company Preferences, you want to have checked "Recall hour field on paychecks". Then it will populate the hours from the previous payroll run.

For QuickBooks desktop, you need to go into Edit>Preferences and under the Payroll & Employees Company Preferences, you check the box to "Recall hour field on paychecks" and it will populate the hours from the prior pay run.

@WisemanCPA  I am assuming this action is only available in desktop not online?

@frustrateduser2 

Yes, the answers to this post are for desktop, the product selected by the OP.