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Track and pay New Mexico Paid Sick Leave

by Intuit•3• Updated 4 days ago

Learn how to set up and pay your employees New Mexico Sick Leave that started July 1, 2022. 

The Healthy Workplace Act (HWA) of 2021 requires all New Mexico businesses to give their employees paid sick leave.  You must give your employees a minimum of 1 hour for every 30 hours worked, with a maximum of 64 hours per year. If you already provide 64 hours of sick leave, you don’t need to do anything more. 

Here’s more info about New Mexico Paid Sick Leave.

Step 1: Set up New Mexico Paid Sick Leave

Select your product to start. 

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

You have two options to track and pay New Mexico Sick Leave for your employees.

  1. Set up a time off policy. If you have an available time off policy on your employee profiles, you can use this option. 
  2. Set up an Other Earnings item. You’ll set up a pay item on your employee profiles. You’ll need to manually track available and used hours for your employees.

Setup a Time Off Policy

You can’t rename the time off policy.  It’ll show on employees’ pay stubs as Sick, Vacation, or PTO.  Let your employees know which one you use for NM Paid Sick Leave time. 

  1. Go to All apps A bunch of numbers and letters on a tile wall., then Payroll, then Employees (Take me there)., then select your employee.
  2. From Pay types, select Start or Edit.
  3. Under Paid time off select the â–Ľ dropdown and choose Add new paid time off policy.
  4. Complete the on-screen fields to create your policy.
    • Add the annual maximum of 64 hours, or
    • Set the accrual at 0.0333 for every hour worked.
  5. Select Save twice.

Set up an Other Earnings Item

If you use this option, add a memo to the paycheck when paying sick hours. Make sure to give your employees reports with their available and used balances.

  1. Go to All apps A bunch of numbers and letters on a tile wall., then Payroll, then Employees (Take me there)., then select your employee.
  2. From Pay types, select Start or Edit.
  3. Select Additional pay types to expand the menu, and select Other Earnings.
  4. Select Edit ✎ and rename the item New Mexico Sick Pay
  5. Select Save.
  1. Select Lists, then Payroll Item List.
  2. Select Payroll Item â–Ľ dropdown, then New.
  3. Select Custom Setup, then Next.
  4. Select Wage, then Next.
  5. Select Annual Salary or Hourly Wages, then Next.
  6. Select Sick Pay, then Next.
  7. Enter a name for the item, then Next. Note: If you use time off, you can rename this item to NM Sick Pay.
  8. Choose the expense account you want for the item, then Finish.

Step 2: Pay your eligible employee

Create your paycheck as normal.  

  • If you set up a time off policy, add the New Mexico Sick Leave hours used on the sick, vacation, or PTO item 
  • If you set up an Other Earnings (NM Paid Sick Leave) item, enter the amount of pay for the NM Paid Sick Leave on the item

Create your paycheck as normal:

  1. Add the additional payroll item you created in Step 1 to the paycheck.
  2. In the Rate column, enter the employee's pay rate.
  3. In the Quantity column, enter the number of hours.
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