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Preview your W-2s

by Intuit•284• Updated a day ago

Getting your employees’ W-2s right is important. You can preview your W-2s before they’re filed with the government and sent to your employees. Here's what you can do in the preview W-2:

  • Review employee and business info
  • Review wages and other items reported
  • Report health insurance (QuickBooks Online Payroll only)
  • Report retirement plan contributions you track outside of QuickBooks (QuickBooks Online Payroll only)

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Step 1: Access your W-2s

Select your product below to preview your W-2s. 

Note: Not sure which payroll service you have? Here's how to find your payroll service.

You can preview your employees’ W-2s anytime of the year.

  1. Select Taxes, then Payroll tax (Take me there). 
  2. Select Filings. 
  3. Select Resources. 
  4. Select W-2s. 
  5. From Employee W-2s, select Manage W-2s on W-2 Copies B, C, & 2 (employee) for the current year.
  6. Select View then print the W-2s.

You can preview your employees’ W-2s each year, November 7 through December 15. 

  1. Select Employees and then Payroll Center.
  2. Select the File Forms tab.
  3. Select View/Print Forms & W-2s.
  4. Enter your payroll PIN.
  5. Select the Preview W-2 Information tab.
  6. Select Preview All Employee W-2s.

Step 2: Check your W-2 info

Check the following details on your employees’ W-2s for accuracy:

Business info

  • Your EIN (Box b)
  • Business name and address (Box c)
  • State account numbers (Box 15)

Employee info

  • Social Security number (Box a)
  • Name (Box e)
  • Address (Box f)
  • Box 12 for employer-sponsored health insurance has amounts, if needed
  • Box 13 for retirement plan is checked, if needed
  • Box 14 for fringe benefits has the correct descriptions and amounts

Wage and tax info

Make sure the year-to-date wages and tax amounts look correct.  You can compare these with a Payroll Summary or Payroll Details report for the year. These may not be the final amounts, since you might have more payrolls to run this year. 

Step 3: Fix info if needed

Check out the following articles to help you make any changes: 

Step 4: Report health insurance or retirement plans on your W-2s (QuickBooks Online Payroll only)

If you need to report employer-sponsored health insurance amounts in Box 12DD or 12FF, or you contributed to a retirement plan that you tracked outside of QuickBooks (Box 13), you can add this info to your W-2s. 

  1. Select Taxes, then Payroll tax (Take me there). 
  2. Select Filings. 
  3. Select Resources. 
  4. Select W-2s. 
  5. From Employee W-2s, select Edit Box 12/13 on W-2 Copies B, C, & 2 (employee). 
  6. Enter the amounts, or select the checkbox in Box 13 column for each employee needed. 
  7. Select Submit.
QuickBooks Desktop Payroll AssistedQuickBooks Online Payroll CoreQuickBooks Online Payroll EliteQuickBooks Online Payroll Premium

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