Thank you. These are the steps I followed.  

I will be contacting support.

FYI QB Payroll Elite support was able to change the bank account for me.

When I do my payroll, the gross pay and the employer share of taxes are posting to the same account.

I only have 2 employees to be concerned with. One employee is the Owner. My chart of accounts has an account for Officer salaries. My other account for the other employee is Employee salaries. Everything is being put into another expense account called Payroll tax expense. I have to do a journal entry to correct how this is posting. I want to know if there is a way for me going forward so when I do the pay checks it will post the gross pay to the correct account. Should be pretty simple but i don't know how to fix it. Thanks

I'm here to help ensure your payroll transactions are posted to the correct accounts, gemar.  

Let’s first review your payroll accounting preferences and compare the payroll items and the accounts associated with them. This will ensure that the data reflected on the correct accounts. 

1. From the Payroll settings, scroll down to the Accounting section.
2. Tap the Edit pencil icon.
3. From the Paycheck and payroll tax payments, click the pencil icon.
4. Pick the appropriate bank account for your payroll.
5. Hit Continue, then Done.

In case you need to update the bank account for your payroll, here's a guide for you: Learn how to change your company's bank account information. Choose QuickBooks Online for instructions and detailed steps. 

On the other hand, I've included a detailed resource about payroll expenses that may come in handy moving forward: What are payroll expenses for employers? 

Please let me know if you have any questions. My team and I will be happy to help you. Take care. 

Hello @MaryG, my name is Cody and I'm one of Intuit's Community moderators. Based on this post's kudos, our members found it to be most helpful. After reviewing the thread, we also believe this to be the best answer. Thanks for helping our customers find the answers they need!

I had this same issue and struggled for months with frustration. I changed bank accounts and my payroll accounting was coming from my old account but the money was coming out of the new account causing an imbalance in my QB accounting.  I recently learned how to fix it! Go to gear icon, payroll settings, Account - way at the bottom, change your bank account from there to your new one.  Going forward your payroll should always pull from your new account.  I had to do one big journal entry for the dollar amount that was wrong to fix the internal QB accounting.  I hope this helps some of you as I struggled with you too!

I ran into this same issue today - realized that the last several months of payroll were processed through a new bank account correctly but were being linked to the old account in QBO. Could not find a way to re-link or move the transactions to the correct QBO account.

After fixing the settings for the future, I ended up creating 1 transfer from the old account to the new account in the exact amount and on the exact date of each incorrect transaction. That took care of the issue.

I am wondering why QBO designed that you have to change bank account for DD payroll in two spots. Should not be it automatically done? If I change bank accounts in payroll settings and it is processed from new account, it should automatically post the checks to new account vs. going to Accounting preferences and change account there as well.

I'll provide some details as to why you'll have to change your bank account for direct deposit in two spots, ML55.

With the process of changing your payroll bank accounts, it is important that you set up your bank account in your chart of accounts. This is to make sure your payroll transactions post to the correct register. 

Then, you'll have to change your bank account with the payroll service as well so you'll be able to connect your bank account instantly. After that, change your default bank preferences to ensure your payroll transactions and tax payments post to the correct account in your books. 

That's why you'll have to make sure to change the account for your Accounting preferences first before running the payroll to ensure everything runs smoothly without issues since this isn't automatic.

Moreover, after you're done with the process, you can now start assigning a pay schedule and creating paychecks so you can run payroll. To give you more complete information on how to do the process, check out this article for your guide: Create And Run Your Payroll.

Keep me posted if you need anything else about running payroll or changing bank accounts. I'll be right here if you need help.

In my opinion and I think some other users will join me, the change of payroll DD bank account should be done in one place vs. setting separately in accounting preferences and payroll bank settings. Otherwise it creates additional work and mishandling due to unnecessary complexity. My suggestion is to move a mapping from Accounting Preferences to  Bank accounts in Payroll Settings or at least provide a link to the mapping to change mapping.

Hello, ML55.

I do agree that changing the bank account in a single place is far more efficient. Plus, it eliminates any errors in managing the account mapping. So, I'd like to address this for you. 

We'll want to send feedback to our developers on managing the direct deposit bank account in one place. We can do this by clicking on the Gear icon, then selecting Feedback. 

After sending your ideas, they might consider it for future improvements for QuickBooks Online and its payroll services. 

In case you need a bit of information about managing your payroll bank account, I'll share this article with you: Change your payroll bank account. 

The year-end is here and I'm sure you're busy at this month. If you need a guide in making the tax season workflow easy, check out this article: Year-end guide for QuickBooks Online.

Is there anything else you'd like me to address about your payroll data? Or do you need help with reports, entries, and filing taxes? Let me know and I'll help you out again. 

I'm confused. If I make 1 transfer to the new account for the total amount then the new account will be imbalanced. On my end the new account shows its already balanced correctly because the paychecks were reconciled correctly.

I'm confused. If I make 1 transfer to the new account for the total amount then the new account will be imbalanced. On my end the new account shows its already balanced correctly because the paychecks were reconciled correctly.

Hi DrPilot,

If you processed payroll through checks, you can delete them, update the bank details in your payroll settings, and recreate the paychecks. However, if it was processed via direct deposit, you will want to contact our QBO Payroll support for assistance.

Delete a paycheck:

1. Go to Payroll, then Employees.
2. Select Paycheck list. Download or copy the paycheck details of each employee for your reference.
3. Select the paycheck(s) you'd like to delete, then select Delete.
4. Select Yes.

Update the bank account in the payroll settings:

1. Go to Settings ⚙, then Payroll settings.
2. Select Edit ✎ next to Accounting.
3. Select Edit ✎ to update the bank account.
4. Then select Continue until you're done.

You can always go back to this thread if you have more questions in mind.

Yes it was processed via direct deposit. I already updated the account settings for the future. I already tried deleting the checks it won't allow me to and gave this message:

Contact us to delete this paycheck

I contacted customer service and the rep said he did not know how to do that. He escalated this and that team also said they could not do it. They recommended I add a journal entry but now back to the beginning where I started and it look like I cannot correct this error. If this is the case, then my QB balance will be permanently incorrect making QB completely useless and I cannot justify paying for this subscription.

Hello everyone! This is a really annoying issue, and QuickBooks needs to warn users that they are selecting the wrong payroll account for accounting purposes (example - they know that I am using a bank for payroll, so why not warn that I was using the Cash account?)

Here is the solution that worked for me:

1. In the Chart of Accounts, go to the account that the paychecks were wrongly posted to. In my scenario I posted to the Cash account instead of my checking account.

2. Create a new journal entry Debiting the wrong account and Crediting the correct account for each amount wrongly posted (tedious, but has to be done to clear your negative balance on the wrong account). Make sure that the journal dates match the original transaction. 

3. Navigate to Bookkeeping -> Transactions

4. The existing Transactions should be listed here. If you don't see them, click Categorize and search for the existing transactions (in my case this was IRS or Payroll). Click Undo on each of these transactions that were affected

5. This is the last step, which is on the same screen under 'For Review'. We need to match up the journal entries with the actual transactions. When categorizing the transactions that you clicked 'Undo' on, click the transaction, and then click 'Find match' and select the manual journal entry that you did.

Now your P&L will appear correct and bank accounts will look good! Yay!

I think, calling QBO Payroll tech support is waste of time. I did differently on my end. Taking in consideration that DD actually was processed thru new bank account and was posted in QBO old account, it is much easier to just do A.J.E. to remap payroll checks from old bank account to new one for proper bank reconciliation. It takes substantially less time than calling QBO tech support.

Yes I agree, a complete waste of time. I was able to do a workaround with journal entries which seemed to work although I can't explain how it worked but in the process of reviewing my transactions, I discovered several math errors. I was shocked to see blatant errors in subtraction when I compared my bank statement to QB balance which only added to my problems. For example, I had a transaction for $21.86 that left me with a $25,599.72 balance. But QB noted the balance as $25, 599.74. I went line by line and could not account for the $0.02 discrepancy. When I looked back earlier I noted several transactions also off by by several cents to as much as $50. These problems cost me time to fix and delayed my bank loan application as I could not give my bank accurate financial statements. I do not have faith in QB anymore and pretty much going to wrap it up and test out other alternatives. Thank you for your advice though. I appreciate it.

I can't find send payroll data under employees?

I appreciate you for following the thread, Info. Let me provide information on where to locate the Send Payroll Data.

Since you're unable to locate that option in QuickBooks Online (QBO), it's possible that the steps you've followed are for QuickBooks Desktop (QBDT). If the QBDT is set up for a direct deposit, we'll be able to find the option Send Payroll Data in the Employees menu.

If you're interested in taking out the hassle of paying your employees with paper checks, we can set up your company for direct deposit in QBO. Before doing so, we'll have to set up your company's payroll bank account, which can cater to ACH transactions.

Keep in touch if you have further questions about managing your employees' payroll. I'd be more than glad to assist you. Have a great rest of the day!

Just another post to say this feature is messed up.  2 years of people saying "WTF" and it's still wrong without a proper way to fix it, just a workaround.

My accounting was set to the wrong bank account (of the 3 setup).  I agree with the others that say, there's no reason the tool couldn't easily figure out the right bank account for transactions when you setup the payment account.  No good reason for it to be in two places.

Furthermore, there never seems to be a way to fix transactions with payroll.  The workaround is always "make a journal entry".  I guess the Payroll team is okay with not allowing people to fix mistakes.

Multiple occasions now I've thought "wish I had picked an external payroll provider", that way I could fix things in QB when it goes wrong.

Fully agree! MY payroll went to an account that had zero activity -- and I think QB Online created by itself. There is no other activity in it, aside form the transactions of payroll last month. As stated above, direct deposit was correctly pulled from the right bank account, but the transactions were posted to this new account, I think the system created. I was told no way to re-map the transactions back to the correct account. This is complete nonsense that such a path does not exist.

is there no way to correct a payroll check that was posted to the wrong QB account?  Desktop made it so easy.  Do I really have to void the paycheck and recreate it?  I know it was my mistake for not paying closer attention -- this was my first run of payroll in the online system, but QBO is far more complicated and less user-friendly than desktop, but costs a lot more. 

Thank you for posting here in the Community, @Amy7402 
 

I've checked that you've posted the same question twice and my colleague, Rea_M has already added an answer. If you haven't been notified of the new response, check this link. 
 

If you need further assistance, don't hesitate to leave a comment below. I'm always here to help.