Payroll expense posted on the bank account in Jan 2021

Showing the appropriate data on your Profit and Loss report is my goal, @useryoung-brady-lee. With this, I'm here to share details for handling payroll tax payments in your QuickBooks Online (QBO) account.

When you run your payroll accordingly, the system will automatically show your liability amount so you can post your payment. With this, making an adjustment entry to offset your payroll withholding tax payments for 2021 is unnecessary. You just need to make sure your payroll tax payments were posted and recorded correctly especially their dates. To do this, here's how:

1. Go to the Taxes menu.
2. Select the Payroll Tax tab.
3. Under the Taxes section, choose View tax payments you have made.
4. Set the Date Range to Custom and manually key in the appropriate date (i.e., 10/01/2020 - 12/31/2020).
5. Click Run report.
6. Under the Tax Payment column, select the payment to pull up its details. Then, make all the necessary updates especially the payment date.

I've attached screenshots below for your reference.

Once done, you'll also need to review and categorize your downloaded payroll expenses appropriately. To do this, I'd recommend checking out this article for the detailed steps: Categorize online bank transactions in QuickBooks Online.

After that, go to the Reports menu and pull up the Profit and Loss report. It should now show your appropriate profit amount.

Also, to further guide you in organizing your bank transactions, payroll tax payments, and financial reports, you can refer to this article: QuickBooks Help Articles. You can click the + More topics button to view other selections.

You can keep me posted on how it goes in the comments below. If you have other payroll tax concerns or inquiries about managing your transactions in QBO, I'll gladly help. Take care always.

Thank you for your reply.  I was able to follow your steps but I can't make any change to the payment dates.  Did I match these incorrectly in 2020?   Thank you.  

Thanks for posting here again, @useryoung-brady-lee,

Looking at the screenshots you've shared, it looks like you've processed the tax payment electronically (E-payment). Since you're on cash basis, the system will report this on the date when the payment was made.

At the moment, electronic payments can't be edited. But you have an option to delete it, however, this process has rules. I'm listing some requirements for deleting a tax payment below:

• You can delete a payment if the electronic payment has not been processed yet.
• You can't delete a payment if the tax payment is in process or already processed electronically. Most especially, if the form along with the payment was already transmitted or accepted by the agency.

Your option at the moment is to create adjusting entries for 2021 to get the accurate data. We recommend consulting with an accounting professional for this. This way they can advice on how to handle your accounting and help you record cash basis adjustments.

Please update me if you have more questions about recording transactions in QBO. I'll be more than happy to help any time. Have a nice day!