Vacation/Sick Tracking Time not Tracking Correctly

Hello, Heringer02. 

I'm happy to help you fix the Vacation/Sick time accrual for some of your employees. Based off of your description, it sounds like everyone isn't on the same time off policy. If they're accruing hours at different rates, the rates must be different. I know you didn't want steps for how to set up vacation and sick pay, so I'm including steps on how to edit the time off policy your employees have. Start by finding the employees that aren't adding up correctly and then follow these steps below. 

1. Select Edit, then Preferences.
2. Select Payroll & Employees then go to the Company Preferences tab.
3. Select Sick and Vacation.
4. Fill in the defaults you want to set up. Note: Make sure to check the Do not accrue boxes at the bottom if you don't want time accrued when paying sick/vacation/overtime.

Now that you've fixed the accrual policy for your employees, everyone should gain Vacation/Sick time at the correct rate. 

If there's anything else you need help with, please, post below. 

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Hi @Heringer02 

You wrote, "Some are accruing more vacation and sick time and some are accruing less even though they are all set up the same way. "

How are they set up?  Per hour worked or per paycheck?  If per hour worked, then if they don't all work the same hours, they'll of course have different balances as time goes on.

Attached is an example of what I am talking about.  Each employee accrues a maximum of 108 hours per year at 0:04.00 per every hour worked.  And yes, I know each employee will earn vacation time based on the number of hours they work and it will vary. 

This particular employee had 0 vacation hours available at the end of 2019.  In 2020, she has already accrued the maximum of 108 hours and taken 45 hours of vacation time.  She should only have 63 hours left for the remainder of the year.  But... QB is still accruing vacation time and she is back up to 108 hours.  This information is posting to their paystubs and it's not correct.  It needs to show 63 hours available, 45 hours taken.  It's very inconsistent, as some will not accrue any additional hours after the 108 max and some will.  And I can't stress enough that each employee is set up exactly the same way. 

Any ideas?

That was a detailed information, Heringer02. 

I looked into your screenshot and I have two options on how to stop QuickBooks from accruing vacation time. You can either manually edit the employees Sick/Vacation setup or check the Do not accrue sick/vac box every time you create a paycheck. 

Here's how to edit the employee's setup:

1. From the Employees menu, select Employee Center.
2. Double-click the employee's name.
3. Go to the Payroll Info tab and click Sick/Vacation button.
4. Zero out the hours entered in the Hours accrued per paycheck field.
5. Click OK twice.

Let me show you how to mark the Do not accrue sick/vac checkbox:

1. In the Enter Payroll Information window, select the name of the employee.
2. Click the Open Paycheck Detail button.
3. Put a check mark in the Do not accrue sick/vac box.

Then, we can update QuickBooks and the payroll tax table to the latest release to have up-to-date fixes. 

If you nee anything else, you can always leave a reply or post again here. My colleagues and I are here to help. You take care always and have a great day!

I appreciate the suggestion but having to manually check a box for each employee means that I have to manually track each employees vacation accrual and with over 50 employees at any given time this doesn't seem like a good use of time. 

QB should be able to do this and I'm really searching for a resolution to this.  Right now, I am going to have to audit every single persons vacation and sick time and make adjustments where needed.  I just don't understand why there is not a solution to this but do appreciate all the feedback.   If anyone has any fixes to this I'd love to hear it.

The problem is Intuit does not have anyone on staff that is smart enough to fix this problem which has been in the system for over a year!  Further, Intuit does not seem to care!

"Each employee accrues a maximum of 108 hours per year "

What you're describing as wrong for you is how QuickBooks works.

QuickBooks does not have a max per year for sick or vacation. It has a ceiling, sometimes set up to be 2 or 3 times the expected annual accrual, at which point an employee stops accruing until they take sick or vacation.

THE PROBLEM IS IT DOES NOT STOP AT MY MAXIMUM OF 48 HOURS FOR SICK TIME BUT KEEPS ON ACCUMULATING!  THAT IS NOT THE WAY IT SHOULD BE!  UNLESS I MANUALLY TELL IT TO NOT ACCUMULATE MORE  HOURS, IT WILL KEEP GOING!

Yeah, it is very frustrating. Anyone on Intuit can comment on this issue? 

This does not quite answer my question. I set each of those parameters in each employes SICK/VACATION TAB. I did not click reset hours each year. (I only want them to have the max of 40 per year)

I don't mind as they carryover there hours as its state law to do this.

This particular employee has 85.92 hours available, it says she only used 2.67hrs

Year begins on Jan 1

Under that she began accruing sick time on 6/10/2019 when she was hired.

Shouldn't the max hours say 40-2.67?

We have had problems with other employees as well and try to figure them out mathematically and then correct them only to find them off soon again?  Please advise

Hi there, @Joseph12345.

There are several factors why hours for sick/vacation aren't calculating correctly. A couple of them are the following:

• Incorrect setup of the hours under the Sick and Vacation window.
• Added the maximum hours late

For the time being, you can fix the hours by manually changing it beside the Hours available as of (date) section. Moving forward, ensure to fill  in the field correctly and select the desired accrual period to avoid any error/s.

For additional tips about tracking sick and vacation time in QuickBooks Desktop Payroll, you can open these links:

• Set up and track time off in payroll
• Sick and vacation time incorrect or not accruing on paychecks

I also recommend checking out the topics from our help articles for additional resources about QuickBooks and payroll.

If you have any follow up questions, please click the Reply button below. I'll be right here to provide additional assistance. Have a great day!

Hi Heringer02. Did you ever get a satisfactory response from QB on your Vacation accrual question? I see that they keep circling around to the same canned responses with you, and I can sympathize because they are doing the same thing with me over the phone. My Vacation time should be accruing at 4.2 minutes per hour, I believe the correct way to key it in is 0:04:20, but when I do that 80 hours shows 5.24 hours accrued. I have tried instead keying .042 but it doesn't work either, and I have adjusted and adjusted over and over again without the correct accrual showing up for 80 hours. QB doesn't seem to have an answer to the issue. Has anyone else had this problem, and am I keying the accrual of 4 minutes 20 seconds into the system correctly? Odd number, I know, but that is what calculated on my adding machine.

I agree, QuickBooks does not give straight answers.  I show each employee starts accruing sick / vacation time, beginning of every year.  January 1, 2021, some of our employees started the year out, in the hole!!  How is that possible, when the hours are supposed to re-set (January 1st)?  I did go into each employee before the first payroll of the year, and changed the hours available for sick and vacation, to zero. By the time the second payroll was due, I noticed that the hours accrued were correct.  Now this is only the second payroll of the year, so I will remain hopeful that it will continue to accrue correctly.   This was a quick fix; however, if you set each employee to re-set hours every year, why doesn't it automatically do it?   I shouldn't have remember to do this manually. I pay for enhanced payroll and when I call QuickBooks they tell me to do a 'rebuild'. That does absolutely nothing.

Sort of glad to hear I am not the only one, I have called in multiple times in the past year without getting more answers than I see here.  Today it decided to not accrue sick hours for many employees that have been accruing just fine even up through last week!  Baffling that I need to check QB's work every single week for things that should never change.and should function the same every week.

I am having a similar issue in QB Time pka TSheets.  There doesn't seem to be a setting on the TSheets side to NOT ACCRUE TIME ON PAID TIME OFF; I have updated the preferences on the QB Desktop side 'do not accrue on sick or vacation'.  Question: will this solve my problem on the TSheets side and stop accruing PTO on PTO hours?  

Hey there, @JeanneR. 

Thanks for following the thread. I hope you're enjoying the day so far. 

I recommend contacting our customer service team. Our customer service team has the tools available to review your account in a secure environment and will investigate the connection with updating the TSheets side of things. I've included the steps to contact support below. 

1. Open QuickBooks.
2. Go to Help, then choose QuickBooks Desktop Help.
3. Hit Contact Us.
4. Give a brief description of your issue, then click Let's talk.
5. Pick a way to connect with support (Chat, Callback, Etc.). 

Please let me know if you have additional questions or concerns. You can reach out to the Community at any time. Take care and have a great day! 

Just thought I'd check in, I'm another user with the same issue! Did anyone happen to find a resolution? I've never seen QBs payroll sick/vacation tracking work correctly. What's the trick? I have the added challenge of tracking employees per their hire date anniversary, not just calendar year which I think is making it worse. Thankfully there are only five employees to keep track of but still; what are we paying so much money for if something like this can't work correctly?

Hello sbanning!

Thanks for joining this post. I'm here to help you with the vacation and sick pay.

First, please note that vacation only accrues on regular pay items and not on bonus items or any addition items. You'll want to review the payroll item you used:

1. Go to the Lists menu and select Payroll Item List.
2. Double-click the item used to pay sick/vacation.
3. Update it if needed.

Another possible reason why it's accruing incorrectly is that the available hours you entered upon setting up the sick and vacation pay are incorrect, too. Here's how to check it:

1. Go to the Employees, then Employee Center.
2. Double-click the employee and go to the Payroll Info tab.
3. Click the Sick/Vacation button and correct the Hours available as of [date] fields.
4. Tap OK to save it.

I added this link on how to fix incorrect sick and vacation time: Sick and vacation time incorrect or not accruing on paychecks.

In addition, make sure that both QuickBooks Desktop and payroll tax table are updated to ensure you have installed the latest patches and fixes.

Also, you can check these articles if you need to run payroll reports:

• Run payroll liability balances report

• Create a payroll summary report

• Customize payroll and employee reports

Comment again here if you have other concerns. Take care!

One of the main issues is that the accrual usages are based of the paycheck date and not the actual dates taken. Until that is corrected in QBs, and an option can be added to run reports based off INSTANCE dates, not just the paycheck date, it's never going to work right. I've done ALL the things. It's a QB software issue, bottom line.

I have had that issue for about 2 years. It is a nightmare. I created my own excel sheet and i track it manually which is a complete waste of time. The issue with quickbooks is when an employee uses sick hours before max hours are reached or when employee reaches the max hours and then uses some of his/her hours. Quickbooks doesn't realize that the max hours have been reached and will continue accruing until the max is reached again so technically an employee can use a multiple of max hours if the payroll admin is not very careful.

PLEASE fix your software to address this problem!

I feel your frustration. i know many many bookkeepers who have given up on relying on QB sick and vacation accrual. It is BEST in my opinion to set up your own accrual worksheet in excel that you update each pay period. Here are a few things that I want to mention to check also: 

1) please confirm everyone has the MAX accrual setting the same under each employee. 

2) Do you carry over unused vacation time hours from the prior year? because that would definitely affect your ending numbers.
3) if you have ever cut an extra paycheck to someone due to an error on the pay rate for the employyees normal paycheck, you do have to check that box that says "do not accrue sick or vacation". 

someday, I greatly hope Intuit works with us bookkeepers, and payroll people to create a sick and vacation module that truly works. best of luck!! 

The other thing I meant to mention is this...if they cash in their vacation or sick time on a paycheck, i highly recommend you cut those checks separatedly in QB (especially with how your company accrues per hours worked). This will help tremendously. For example, lets say Bob takes a week off, and uses his 40 hours of vacation, if you go into QB and create a paycheck for 40 hrs of vacation pay, it WILL auto-accrue vacation and sick time. However, most companies will expect you to override that auto-accrual system within each employees check, by checking the box on Bob's paycheck that says "do not accrue sick or vacation time"...hence the separate check being a big help. You have more control. 

Lets say you do NOT check that box, what happens (especially if your vacation and sick time accrues on number of worked hours VS. a set flat accrual amount per paycheck). you will be giving Bob MORE sick and vacation time to use later on hours he didn't actually work. 

and keep a separate spreadsheet in excel. It takes time to set up, but once its' done.... you never have to really do it again. just start a new one each year.

There is setting under preferences for tracking payroll in minutes or decimals..i think this might be throwing off your math.... it will convert the number for you based on which you choose. 

Go to <Edit<Preferences<General<Time format   ...... if you choose minutes, you can type in 4.5 and it will convert it to 4:30  and vice versa if you choose decimals. 

4.2  converts 4 hours and 1 minute

4.5 hours converts to 4 hours and 30 minutes

pull  minute conversion chart from online, it will help you check yourself as you figure this out.

do you have sick and vacation set to carry over each year? sounds like you might. if its sets to carry over at the beginning of each year, and prior year they were negative, it will carry over the negative balance.