When is the Alabama Overtime Exemption update going to be sent out to users???????

Hi there, PR Mgr. 

We understand the hurdle you are facing as you’re trying to process your Alabama payroll using your QuickBooks Desktop account.

To add your overtime withholding exemption payroll item, you can follow the steps below: 

1. At the upper section of your QBDT account, select Employees and then choose Employee Center.
2. Double-click your employee, then click on Payroll Info.
3.  Choose Taxes, then the Other section. Add the new AL - OT Withholding Exemption item.
4. Select OK. 
5. Repeat steps 3-6 for each full-time hourly employee. 

Right then, you can run your payroll. QuickBooks will automatically calculate and exempt the amount of AL withholding on your employees’ paychecks. 

You can read about the Alabama overtime exemption by checking this article: Set up and track Alabama overtime exemption. 

If you have other concerns running your payroll in QBDT, kindly leave a comment below. The Community is always here to assist you at any time. 

You absolutely do NOT understand the hurdle we Alabama users are facing, because we are UNABLE to properly process our payroll and NO ONE will tell us when we are going to be able to do so!  How would you like it if QuickBooks said they couldn't pay you properly this month because their software wasn't working and they don't really have any idea how long it will be before it does work properly???  How about if it was you having to explain to the State of Alabama why you can't process your tax payments on time because the software we pay a lot of money for isn't working and we have no idea when it will start working???  You absolutely do NOT understand our hurdle.

Hi there, PR Mgr. 

We've rolled out updates and added the option to exempt Alabama state income tax for overtime pay. Please see my previous reply and the resource I shared.

We appreciate your patience while we were working on the updates. 

The update has NOT been rolled out.  I've run updates every single morning for the last 2 weeks and spoken with a dozen QuickBooks agents.  The code was rolled out, but the process that makes it calculate has NOT been rolled out.  Please check your information before posting again!!!!

It's January 15th - another 2 hours on the phone Friday with a QuickBooks support person that ran updates, ran re-builds, and on and on - still not working.  The support person had nothing more to offer other than "back-end" programmers are working on the problem.  This would make me believe that the 2 hours I wasted re-updating and re-building was nothing more than a "canned" response to try and appease me, knowing full well the entire time that none of this was going to work because the programmers have NOT corrected the problem.  Her solution to me was to run 2 payroll checks for my hourly employees - one for straight time and one for the overtime, where I would zero out the Alabama state withholding.  And unfortunately, because the problem has not been corrected, and with absolutely no timeline on when that will happen, I have no choice but to do exactly that when I run payroll tomorrow.  

Again, QuickBooks, this is 100% unacceptable!!!!!

It's now Wednesday, January 17th.  The QuickBooks lady I spent 2 hours on the phone with on Friday that was not able to get things working PROMISED a call back to me on Monday or Tuesday at 11am.  Needless to say, neither of those calls happened.  And needless to say the updates I've run every day this week have done nothing to make these calculations work.  The advice given to me by QuickBooks to run 2 separate checks also did not work, because QuickBooks does not recognize that the 2nd check is in addition to the first check, so federal withholding did not calculate correctly.  You have left Alabama users with no choice but to run manual calculations either way they go.  And I'm assuming most users, like myself, are not payroll experts, which is why we PAY QuickBooks to handle these things.

QuickBooks, this remains a 100% unacceptable situation!!!

As a CPA myself now working in industry and handling payroll this misunderstanding by QuickBooks employees and programmers to fix this issue is completely unacceptable.  I have now called twice in February to see if there is any solution. After running multiple manual calculations for my bi-weekly payroll I am over it. The customer service does not understand the payroll item isn't working and what it is supposed to do.  Even if it were to pull amounts to the AL OT exemption payroll item (which is currently stays at 0)  the format is set to be negative number, which would erroneously pull more taxes out of the employee's paycheck. I pointed this out to them and the fact that a new issue has appeared.  Now when overtime is entered it is decreases the original AL withholding taxes rather than excluding the overtime wages from calculating AL withholding taxes.  I cannot believe such a massive company that is relied on can have such a basic issue be ignored.  They have given no one notice of this error and the lack of solutions to customers.  I had to demand to speak with someone past customer service.  I was last told I would get a level 2 to call me back after we spent 1 hour running more diagnotiscs.  It has been a week, and I have heard nothing.  I am fortunate to be knowledgably to fix it manually, but not everyone is.  For any of you out there looking for a solution you can override the withholding box by copying Al before you enter OT wages, or you can leave it alone.  Your employees will end up paying more withholding taxes than needed and you A-1 will be completely wrong, so you may need to seek an accountant to help you file if you do not understand it.  My A-1 was showing 100% of my AL withholdings were exempt after calculating nothing is the OT exempt payroll item....wow that is verywrong.