Employee Center

How Do I Resort Lists?

Chief Mechanic · September 11, 2010 ·

Lists are one of the foundations of QuickBooks, and from time to time they can become out of order. That’s when they need to be resorted. Some common indicators that it’s time to resort your lists include:

the list itself is out of order
an element is missing
new entries in a list appear at the top of the list instead of in their sorted order
you can’t turn on the account number preference
selecting a Customer:Job, Vendor, or Employee in a Center fails to display existing transactions for that name
Names don’t properly auto-fill when entering a Name filter on the Advanced tab of the Edit->Find… function

Resorting any list will undo any special order you’ve applied to the list, and this activity can’t be done in multi-user mode. It’s always a good idea to backup your company file before undertaking an action that can’t be undone.

There are 8 lists that can be resorted. They are:

Customers:Jobs
Vendors
Employees
Other Names
Accounts
Items
Memorized Reports
Memorized Transactions

Since this technique is often used to address possible data corruption, we’ll outline the most efficient technique to resort multiple lists, but you can also choose to resort an individual list by opening up a Center and right clicking on a list element.

The first 4 lists are collectively referred to as Names or Entities, and there’s an easy way to resort these 4 lists:

Open the Write Checks window by clicking on Banking->Write Checks or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + W
In the Pay to the Order of field, click Ctrl + L
Opt to include inactive list entries by clicking the Include Inactive checkbox
Click the Name button and choose Re-sort List from the menu
Click Ok to resort the lists
Uncheck the Include Inactive checkbox

The screenshot below shows the combined Name list in Step 4:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 10 Resort Name List

Our related article explains how to provide easy access to this combined list of all Names.

Resorting the Chart of Accounts and Items lists follow similar procedures, except each of these lists will have to be resorted individually. To access the Chart of Accounts, click the Lists->Chart of Accounts menu selection or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + A. To access the Items list, click Lists->Items. Opt to include inactive list entries, resort the list from the button in the lower left of the window, and uncheck the Include Inactive checkbox before proceeding to the next list.

Resorting Memorized Reports and Memorized Transactions are similar to the above steps, except there’s no need to include inactive list entries since they’re not allowed on these lists. To access Memorized Reports, click the Reports->Memorized Reports->Memorized Report List menu selection; to access Memorized Transactions, click Lists->Memorized Transactions or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + T.

After resorting lists, close and reopen your company file (.qbw) to insure that all changes are successfully written to disk.

Resorting lists is discussed in this Intuit knowledge base article.

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How Do I Resolve a Paycheck That Incorrectly Calculates Payroll Taxes?

Chief Mechanic · August 24, 2010 ·

If this is the first time you’ve run payroll or issued a paycheck to this employee, it’s likely that incorrect payroll tax calculations are due to an incorrect setup. This article addresses the situation where previously issued paychecks to a given employee contained correct tax calculations, but a new attempt to produce a paycheck shows incorrect payroll taxes, even though no changes were made to payroll configuration.

In this situation, incorrect calculations of payroll taxes are usually caused by one of several factors:

you’re using an out-of-date tax table
data corruption in your QuickBooks company file (.qbw)

There’s also the possibility that the calculation only appears incorrect if federal or state withholding amounts on a paycheck are 0.00. QuickBooks annualizes the wages on a paycheck, and if the annualized wages are small, federal or state withholdings can be correctly calculated as 0.00, even when prior paychecks for the same employee included these withholding taxes. Intuit describes this as a Special Calculation Situation in the window below:

QuickBooks 2010 Special Calculation Situation

However, even in these situations, other taxes may be due, such as employer FICA taxes. If all taxes are calculated at 0.00, that may indicate an incorrect calculation.

The first step to resolve an incorrect payroll tax calculation is to make sure you have the latest payroll update. See our article on how to update your QuickBooks payroll software.

Once you’ve installed the latest update, attempt to create a new paycheck for the same employee whose paycheck previously showed incorrectly calculated payroll taxes. Even if the payroll tax calculations are incorrect, complete the steps to save the paycheck. If the payroll tax calculations are correct, the payroll update solved the calculation problem.

If the payroll tax calculations remain incorrect, your QuickBooks company file likely has data corruption. Before addressing the data corruption, open the Employee Center, locate the employee with the incorrectly calculated paycheck that you just created, and delete the paycheck with the incorrect payroll tax calculation. That will prevent an incorrect check from being issued.

Many, but not all, data corruption problems can be solved with QuickBook’s Rebuild utility. See our article on how to use the Rebuild utility to fix a damaged company file.

Once you’ve successfully run the Rebuild utility, attempt to issue a paycheck to the same employee whose paycheck previously contained an incorrect tax calculation. If the payroll tax calculation continues to be incorrect, it’s possible that your company file has data damage that the Rebuild utility couldn’t fix or there are other issues involved. An undamaged QuickBooks company file running with the latest payroll updates and correct payroll configuration will produce correct payroll tax calculations.

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Why Does Pay Scheduled Liabilities Show No Liabilities When Liabilities Do Exist?

Chief Mechanic · August 23, 2010 ·

We’ve seen cases where payroll liabilities are missing from the Pay Scheduled Liabilities block on the Payroll tab of Employee Center but the company has actual payroll tax liabilities. The screenshot below shows where all payroll tax liabilities should appear, but sometimes liabilities are missing.

QuickBooks Premier 2009 Employee Center Pay Scheduled Liabilities

Typically, payroll tax liabilities can be confirmed by the Payroll Liability Balances report (on the Reports->Employees & Payroll menu selection) or by an examination of general ledger account balances. The Payroll Liability Balances report can be configured to report totals by quarter, which matches the reporting format for the Pay Scheduled Liabilities information.

According to Intuit, this situation is caused by:

another Liability Check exists that covers the amount of the missing liability
the liability isn’t being recorded in an account whose type is Other Current Liability
the liability account is marked inactive
the starting or ending Period dates on the Liability Check used to pay a payroll tax liability are wrong
no payment schedule has been set up for the payroll tax liability
the company file was upgraded from a prior version of QuickBooks to a newer one

Intuit describes a series of troubleshooting techniques in this knowledge base article. However, in our experience, these steps work to resolve some, but not all, situations where payroll tax liabilities are missing from the Pay Scheduled Liabilities block.

We recommend regularly reviewing the Payroll Liability Balances report as well as the general ledger accounts accumulating payroll tax liabilities to be sure all liabilities are currently recognized and paid.

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