Payroll and the books

1. Open the books in gnucash and open Liabilities:A/P:Gross pay
2. Have the Paychex payroll report in front of you.
3. Get the gross pay numbers, the total and subtotals for each staff category from the Paychex reports. The total is easy to get, but you have to add up the individual people in each category to get the subtotals. Currently there are three categories, each with a different pay scale:
   • Collective (salaried)
   • Committed (12.55/hr)
   • Everything else (11.55/hr)
4. Create an entry called "Regular payroll" dated for the last day of the pay period. This should autopopulate so the debit side should be the expense lines for the individual staff categories. The credit side should be the total of those lines and be the Gross pay liability.
5. Then go through the register for the individual checks and make an individual entry for each staff member who got paid, dated for the paycheck date. The splits will vary depending on the individual. The debit side will be the gross pay. The credit side will include some of the following:
   • Liabilities:Paychex Direct Deposits
   • Assets:Bank:4817 Main Checking
   • Liabilities:Employee Withholding Lump the tax withholdings together
   • Liabilities:A/P:Valic employee retirement contribution
   • Assets:A/R:Health care owed:<whoever> added choice health care
   • Assets:A/R:Advances:<whoever> repayments on advances
6. Now go to Liabilities:Paychex Direct Deposits and make an entry titled "direct deposits". The value will be the amount taken out by Paychex for the direct deposits and the date is the date they made the withdrawal, which will be in the Paychex report, and it is taken from Assets:Bank:4817 Main Checking. The direct deposit liability should be at zero after this is done. If it is not, double check your previous entries.
7. Next you need to enter the employer side tax liability and the tax payment. This is best done from Liabilities:Payroll Taxes. The liability is gotten from the Paychex report. Make an entry for "Payroll Taxes", dated for the end of the pay period, and populate the debit side with the employer side numbers. The accounts should be in there automatically, but if they are not, use the following:
   • Expenses:Staffing Expenses:Payroll Taxes:Social Security
   • Expenses:Staffing Expenses:Payroll Taxes:Medicare
   • Expenses:Staffing Expenses:Payroll Taxes:OR SUI
   • Expenses:Staffing Expenses:Payroll Taxes:OR ER Work Ben
8. Then make an entry dated for the date the report says the money was withdrawn titled "Tax Payment". The left (debit) side has two entries, one for the amount you just entered above Liabilities:Payroll Taxes, the other for the amount of the employee side tax liability Liabilities:Employee Withholdings. The other side (credit) is the total withdrawal for the taxes that Paychex takes from the checking account Assets:Bank:4817 Main Checking.
9. If the pay period is split between months, the gross pay expenses need to be split between the months. We could make it more complicated, but at this point, we are dividing each gross pay expense by the number of days in the pay period and multiplying by the number of days in each month to come up with the amounts. This also needs to be done for the payroll tax liability (employer side only).