As explained in the Help topic What Doesn't ACCOUNTS Do, the program does not include payroll calculations. Rather, we recommend simple affordable online payroll systems, or of course, you can do your own calculations.
After calculating your payroll, you can enter it into ACCOUNTS as a simple register or Write Cheques transaction. From some online payroll systems, you may alternatively be able to export the transaction, and import it into ACCOUNTS.
This Help page shows simple sample transaction entries for payroll, for Canada and the USA, on the assumption that you are calculating and paying it yourself.
The following are only samples! Please do not depend just on them to figure out how to do payroll.
For Canada
The following sample was calculated with the Canada Revenue Agency's (CRA's) online payroll deductions calculator. It uses the account names from the Canadian sample charts of accounts provided with the program, which can be chosen when you set up the program for the first time, or in a new database. The sample is based on a bi-weekly payroll with a base salary of $1,000, and standard deductions.
The following would be the transaction for the pay cheque, as entered on the Write Cheques window:
You will note that the deductions that need to be paid to the CRA are all Liability accounts (things you owe), not expenses.
The transaction for your remittance of the withheld amount to the CRA would be composed of whatever balances are in the relevant liability accounts (in this case, Income Tax Liability, CPP Liability and EI Liability) for the period in question. You can see those balances in the account balances shown the program's main window, or on a Balance Sheet report, or in the Liability accounts' Register windows.
If there had been further pay cheques issued after the date range that your remittance needs to cover, however, you could not use the balances on the main window, since they would be as of today's date and thus include the extra liabilities from those pay cheques. You'd have to use a Balance Sheet report as at the end of the remittance period, or consult the balances in the Register windows for those liability accounts, as at that date.
If the cheque above this was the only payroll cheque for the period, that remittance transaction would be:
After this transaction has been entered, those Liability account balances should go back to $0.
Of course your situation could be different. Users in Quebec, for instance, might have QPP instead of CPP. You could also have other deductions, for instance if your organization offers benefits that are part paid by the employees.
For the U.S.A.
Specific examples for the transactions for payroll in the U.S.A. should be quite similar to the ones shown above for Canada, except that different deductions will be relevant, such as FICA, Medicare, and state taxes. Deductions will also vary depending on what state you are in. Here's one generic example of a payroll check based on a base salary of $1,000, with some deductions:
Please see the text above for Canada for more details about the accounts used, where to find their balances for your submissions of withholdings to the IRS (or wherever else you need to submit them to) and what the transaction might look like for that submission.
This topic was last edited on Mar 23, 2023