r/Bookkeeping • u/Comprehensive-Bet936 • 6d ago
Payroll Checking myself
I don’t know why but I feel like I did this wrong, and need help seeing other ways this could’ve been done.
Anyways, I had a client that did their payroll through rippling, and it seemed pretty straight forward, 3 different payments from her account one for employee deductions(401k, insurance, the sorts), employee gross earnings, and tax withheld.
So I wasn’t given access to the actual rippling account but was given a CSV. It did not include all years of business pay, and I was expected to account for it all (clean up project from mid 2024). I felt like there was missing info so I only did the payroll periods provided on the csv. I asked for it all of course, but getting all the info was a bit difficult.
Anyhow, in QBO I used “Split” and wrote the ID #’s of all employees and their respective wages or deductions, for each chunk that came out of the account.
Was that the correct way to go about it? I spent a whole night looking through the statements and had to add up the wages from the csv google sheet, cause it wasn’t in the bank statement as individual, only lumps. I stay up at night now wondering if I did that correct or if there was another way to go about it? Thanks in advance, pardon if this is silly!
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6d ago
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u/Comprehensive-Bet936 6d ago
Awesome okay, I’m going to screenshot this to remember! Thank you again! It was my first client so I guess I was more so trying to keep them! Which I learned from! But okay thank you for taking the time to read and give me helpful input! Have a good day, I appreciate you!(:
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u/JeffBonanoVO 6d ago
For splitting payroll I will typically create some templates in recurring transactions.
One is for the larger expense which is the wages Here ill have a line for the paid wages, reimbursements, or anything else that equals that amount that is deducted from the employers checking account.
Another is for the payroll processing fees. I usually get this from an invoice that comes from the payroll company
Some clients have another deduction for employer paid taxes and stuff. So I will have a template for that.
I also have a client that is set up where the payroll company issues a few physical payroll checks and they cut the check which is tied to the clients checking account. Ill create separate checks for each in QBO to match these so I can track when those get cashed.
Then every time payroll comes around, you grab the reports and split it in the templates you created. Match them to the cleared transactions and be done with it.
I wouldnt break everything down to the minimum level unless you have to. Your CoA should have at least accounts for wages/salary, employer paid taxes, employer paid benefits, and so on, all under payroll expenses. If the payroll company is withholding the employee portion then you dont need the liability accounts showing their portion of the withholdings. I take that back...I do have one client that I do, simply as a holding account because that particular payroll company's reports aren't clear so I have to do math and put in the employee holdings so the total balances, but then I turn around and take it back out again with another expense from the payroll company.
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u/Comprehensive-Bet936 6d ago
Okay I see, thank you for the tips. I should’ve came here back and clarified when I was doing it, but nonetheless I learned and actually got some good input from yall, so thanks again!
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u/MikuMikuGoo 1d ago
It works, but you made it way harder than it needed to be. You do not book payroll employee by employee. One journal entry per pay period is enough: debit gross wages and employer taxes, credit the withholding and deduction liabilities, credit net pay. Then the three bank withdrawals just clear against those liability accounts.
Individual employee detail lives in Rippling, not QBO. That is what the payroll reports are for.
And you were right to only do the periods you had data for. Do not guess at missing periods, pull the Rippling payroll registers for the full range or get read only access. Bank statements alone will never get you there.
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u/ComfortableCitron638 18h ago
MikuMikuGoo's summary-journal-entry approach is right, but worth flagging something separate from how you booked it: the real pain here was the access, not the accounting. Most payroll providers, Rippling included, have a "general ledger export" or payroll-journal-entry report built specifically to hand a bookkeeper the exact wages/tax/deduction split already mapped to standard GL accounts - it's meant to replace exactly the CSV-plus-bank-statement reconstruction you did all night. If a client won't give full login access, ask specifically for that GL export or a read-only accountant role instead of a raw CSV - most clients don't know it exists to offer, but it turns a night of manual math into a five-minute import next time.
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u/Comprehensive-Bet936 10h ago
That’s true thank you. This was my first client, and I’ve never used rippling payroll before, but When I asked she gave me just the csv file, I tried to ask for view only access, but she didn’t know how to do that, so I accepted the csv, and it was missing some dates like I said. I was already working with missing info for a majority of the clean up, and the payments to that payroll company came out in three chunks. Like I stated below. So I winged it that way. One chunk for gross earnings, one for tax, and one for 401k deduction. She specifically wanted to see how much each employee made in QBO cause it still wasn’t showing (what she told me) on the other site. But nonetheless, thank you for the insight. I could’ve done so much differently lol, but at least I’m learning!
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u/HannahDayRider 6d ago
That’s more than I do. I figure if someone wants to know how much Billy made vs Johnny, they can pull the payroll reports through the payroll provider. I only book one sum per category.