Tax Payments in Goldenseal Payroll Software

Withholding Tax Payment Accounts

Goldenseal put payroll withholding taxes into the wrong Other Cost account!

Goldenseal payroll software automatically tracks the payroll taxes that you owe to each tax agency. Whenever you use the Write Payroll command, it "posts" the taxes due to each tax agency or insurance company.

If you enter the wrong account in a Tax Item, Goldenseal wil post the correct taxes, but to the wrong account. This page explains how to correct the entries, and how to prevent the problem in the future.

Correcting Incorrect Taxes

To "clean up" the payroll tax records, start by using the Pay Bills command to pay the taxes, even though they are to the wrong account. To do so, follow these steps:

Choose Pay Bills from the Bank menu.
Enter Payroll Taxes into the popup field at upper right.
You'll see a list of all tax agencies. Double-click on an agency.
You'll see a list of all taxes that Goldenseal thinks you owe. Make sure all incorrect taxes are marked with a checkmark. HINT-- if you hold down the Shift key when you click on a checkmark, Goldenseal will fill in all of the rows.
Click OK.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each agency.
When you are done, click Create Checks.
When you are asked how you'll pay for the items, just leave the Account field blank.
Goldenseal will create Other Cost transactions to pay for all the marked tax items, and remove them from the list of unpaid payroll taxes.

WARNING-- In Goldenseal 3.3 and earlier, you must still have the incorrect tax account in each Tax Item when you pay the taxes (otherwise Goldenseal won't mark the taxes as being paid). In later versions the order of payment doesn't matter.

Now you can create an offsetting transaction to cancel the taxes that are due to the wrong account. To do so, follow these steps:

Choose Other Costs from the Costs menu.
Scroll to the record you just created in the previous steps.
Check the total amount due.
Click the New button.
Enter the same tax agency into the Supplier field.
Make sure you have None in the Breakdown popup field on the left side of the window.
In the Apply To field, enter Credit.
In the Amount field, enter the negative of the amount from step 3.
Enter job cost info for the item.
When you are finished, choose Save Record from the Edit menu to save the credit transaction (you can also hit the Enter key on your keyboard).
If you need to adjust more than one tax agency, scroll to the other tax payments and repeat steps 3 to 9.

To enter a payment to the correct tax agency, follow these steps:

Choose Other Costs from the Costs menu.
Click the New button.
Enter the correct tax agency into the Supplier field.
Make sure you have None in the Breakdown popup field on the left side of the window.
Enter the amount of taxes due to this agency (the same amount that was charged incorrectly to the other account).
Enter job cost info for the item.
When you are finished, choose Save Record from the Edit menu to save the tax payment (you can also hit the Enter key on your keyboard).
If you need to adjust more than one tax agency, scroll to the other tax payments and repeat steps 2 to 6.

Changing Tax Accounts

After you have corrected the incorrect entries, you can change the Tax Items so they post to the correct tax agency accounts. To do so, follow these steps:

Choose Payroll Setup from the Costs menu, and choose Tax Items from the submenu.
Click on the tax that is showing up in the wrong account, then click the Edit button.
Change the values in the Pay To and Pay To Account fields.
Click OK.
Repeat steps 2 to 4 for each account that is wrong.
Click the Close button to leave the Tax Items window.

HINT-- The tax accounts are most likely to be wrong if you started with Goldenseal 2.7 or earlier, since we didn't include "starter" tax agencies in the earliest versions of Goldenseal.

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