Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: Today's episode of In the Know is focused on an exciting update to QuickBooks Online Payroll: self-service payroll corrections. 

Here's what to expect. You'll see the update in action, and then hear from ProAdvisor correspondents Roman Villard and Nayo Carter-Gray, who share their advice—and how you can work smarter, not harder.

Hey ProAdvisors. I'm Jaclyn, and you're watching In the Know. It's the show designed to keep you in the know on the most exciting updates to QuickBooks. So here's the scoop: We heard you wanted to make payroll corrections yourselves without having to call into Care, so now you can run after-the-fact payroll. That's right. Backdating will be allowed during the open tax quarter.

And now for the fast facts:

• This update is available to all users of QuickBooks Online Payroll across all tiers.
• To access this new enhancement, go through the run payroll flow as usual, and enter the applicable pay period and pay dates. Then head to the Tax Center to make or record any applicable tax payments.
• Self-service payroll corrections went live May 2024 to users in the United States and Canada.

If you find this update interesting or helpful, go ahead and like, comment, and subscribe to our In the Know YouTube channel.

So with that, it's my pleasure to welcome Mark to the show to give us a quick spin of how payroll corrections works. Mark, over to you.

Mark Herrero: Awesome. Thanks for having me here Jaclyn; I’m really excited. We just recently launched this.

Our example is Mia Ham. Let’s say Mia contacts you and says, “Hey, I know you paid me on the 24th, but I don't see my pay stub.” You realized you did pay Mia, but forgot to actually record that payroll. You recognize that you have to get the payroll in, because obviously every payroll matters for tax filings and to the W-2s for Mia. You want to get that entered in so that your books are accurate, so the check is for $524.

Like I talked about, you're on your overview page, so go to run payroll. Mia is on this pay schedule, and as you see, it's set up for the next payroll. But you have to record this in the past. Go into her pay period the week that she worked, and select the date that you had paid her. All of the rest is the same, but what you’re really doing is backdating payroll because there are tax implications. You want to make your tax payments to ensure there is no liability.

Once you submit payroll, we give you a pop up that directs you to go to the tax center. You obviously created a check, and there are going to be some tax liabilities from that check. If you go to the tax center directly, you can make your payments or you can record them depending on how you pay—whether it's outside the system or within the system. So here's your federal taxes and Alabama taxes.

That's it. It's that easy.

Jaclyn Anku: Awesome. Thank you so much, Mark, and thanks for being on the show. We'll turn now to ProAdvisors Nayo and Roman for them to weigh in. Nayo, Roman, thanks so much for joining us on this episode of In the Know. We are talking about QuickBooks Online Payroll, and there is a lot of buzz around ProAdvisors now being able to do self-service corrections. Help me understand when a ProAdvisor would need to make a payroll correction.

Nayo Carter-Gray: Generally, it's when our clients do things in payroll that may not necessarily be correct, which happens quite often. It could be anything, like an S-Corp whose owner is on payroll … and oops, forgot to add that good old health insurance the business is paying for. I just had a case last week where a client decided to give one of their employees a check and called it a bonus check, but forgot to run it through payroll.

So now we have to manually go back and add these items. And as you can imagine, I'm excited now that we don't have to get support involved because these are things we can now fix ourselves within the platform. Let's give QuickBooks a round of applause for listening to us ProAdvisors where we said we needed self-serve fixing.

Jaclyn Anku: All right. And Roman, I think you had another example with W-2 employees who are hourly.

Roman Villard: We've seen it a lot more—and I've seen in the accounting firm advisor space as well—that more and more employees are on W-2s, but paid hourly. The ability to make changes after the fact is good, because you're so reliant on individuals getting their time in and making sure time is recorded properly, that there are often breakdowns. As advisors for our clients and internally, we want an easier way to create those changes if we need to backdate them to previous periods.

Jaclyn Anku: Makes sense. Okay, so Nayo, you said this is a request that ProAdvisors have been asking for for a long time. Why are self-service payroll corrections such a big deal? Why is this such a timesaver?

Nayo Carter-Gray: Being able to do this ourselves ensures that we're doing exactly what needs to be done and we don't have to explain what the issue is, and in addition, we can see it in the platform being done as it's being done. So it's not like now I have to wait for somebody to do something on the back end or email me back and say the correction has been made. I then have to go check and verify that it was actually made correctly. I imagine it’s a big timesaver for the payroll support team as well, because it's less information that they have to gather from us. We can physically make those changes ourselves, and then they can do what they need to do on the back end and just make sure they're all approved. And those payroll reports are filed correctly the first time.

Jaclyn Anku: I love that everybody's getting time back. Okay. So Roman, you've talked a lot about how advisory is a mindset. I would love to hear how your team applies this advisory mindset to payroll.

Roman Villard: It's interesting, Jaclyn, in that we may or may not be the primary on payroll administration for our clients. Our clients may be owning that, and to Nayo's earlier point, there are a lot of things that can happen and a lot of moving parts. When something inevitably breaks down, who do they call to ask for support? Well, we're often getting that call, so it's important for us as advisors to know how things run within the environment our clients are working in and know how to resolve those problems. At the end of the day as an advisor, if we're going to be training individuals to become advisors from the transactional level through strategic CFO work, we need to be able to solve those problems.

And so things like this place a little bit more efficiency on our side to be able to self-serve some of those problems to be solved versus having to call in and wait for support. To have visibility into that and understanding how to navigate those problems effectively is, from an advisory and product standpoint, pure gold.

Nayo Carter-Gray: I think Roman summed it up really beautifully on how the relationship between the advisor and the client really works when it comes to payroll. Typically, the client is the one who's pressing all the buttons to run payroll, and we're just making sure those numbers make sense when we're reviewing financial statements or helping them strategically make decisions they're hiring properly or using their talent effectively. So I think, you know, Roman just hit the nail on the head with his summary because it was beautifully worded and it just spoke to my soul on all the things that's happening with our client base and where we're trying to go with them.

Jaclyn Anku: Thanks for going deep on payroll. It makes me so happy to hear that you feel heard and that these updates will enable more ProAdvisors to offer payroll services. So that's awesome. Nayo, Roman, you rock. Thanks so much for being here, and for sharing your time and insights. Appreciate you both. See you.

Jaclyn Anku: And thank you for watching this episode of In the Know. I'm Jaclyn, the host of In the Know and leader of ProAdvisor training and certification. Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe so that you don't miss a single episode. We'll catch you next time. 

Meet the ProAdvisors

ProAdvisor Nayo Carter-Gray: CEO, 1st Step Accounting

ProAdvisor Roman Villard: Founder, Full Send Finance