When Things Go Wrong With Payroll Liabilities

Stressed cat when the payroll entries are wrong in Microsoft Dynamics GP.

For any of you finance and payroll specialists out there, this is one of your favorite time of the year. It’s time to get year-end payroll done! YAY!

So, what happens in the madness of everything going on, you update your FUTA or SUTA rates, run the period-end reports in GP, post the transactions to the General Ledger and then realize you’ve used the wrong rates? This was a question I answered on the Microsoft Dynamics GP community forum today.

You could start to panic, but no worries! It’s a really simple fix. Promise.

1. Change the FUTA/SUTA rates back to whatever you had before.

2. Go to Financial > Setup > General Ledger. In the Allow section of the screen, check the box “Voiding/Correcting of Subsidiary Transactions”:

Microsoft Dynamics GP General Ledger setup screen

What does this checkbox mean? This will allow you to use the Correct button in GL Transaction Entry for transactions that originated in any of the modules (like Payroll). Otherwise, you will receive an error telling you the journal entry originated in payroll and to correct it there. Well, you can’t.

After you finish, go back and uncheck this box. You really don’t want to keep this checked because there will be the possibility a user will go crazy with the Correct button (you never know) and then the General Ledger and the subledgers are out of whack. For this situation the box needs to be checked.

5. Use General Ledger inquiry to find the journal entry numbers of the incorrect FUTA or SUTA or Workers Compensation entries.

6. Go to GL Transaction Entry, hit the Correct button, keep “Back Out a Transaction” selected, enter the journal entry number, and hit OK. Make lots of notes in the Notepad!

7. Post.

8. Make sure you changed your FUTA or SUTA back to the old rates and run your period end reports again. Everything will be correct!

Luckily for all of us, the FUTA/SUTA rates are stored separately and not affected by the payroll updates since these are company specific. Another lucky thing is the FUTA, SUTA and Workers Compensation posting are just GL transactions. There’s actually nothing posted to Payroll except for the last date it was posted.

PIECE OF CAKE! I love year end!

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