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Print Payroll Exception Report to Correct Differences between Calculated Withholdings and Actual Withholdings

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Note: You must subscribe to a Sage Business Care plan in order to print this report.

The Payroll Exception report is intended to help you identify and correct employee records that reflect incorrect withholdings. Incorrect withholdings are often the result of manually calculated paychecks that were figured incorrectly. Also, Sage 50 may make a rounding error in some cases (usually by a penny). This report shows the actual amount withheld (as entered in Sage 50) as opposed to the calculated amount withheld.

This report filters differently from other reports. First, you need to select Tax to Check from the drop-down list. This lists all Employee and Employer payroll fields that use taxable (adjusted) gross in its formula. Additional filters you can select are Employee ID, Employee Type, and whether the employees are active or inactive.

To print or display the Payroll Exception report

  1. From the Reports & Forms menu, select Payroll. Sage 50 displays the Select a Report or Form window.
  2. In the reports list, select the Exception report. Then, select the Print button to print the report or the Preview button to display the report.

    Sage 50 displays the Filter window.

  3. In the Tax to check box, enter or select the ID of the payroll tax you want to check.
  4. Accept the default or choose which quarter to print. Then, select OK to begin displaying or printing the report.

    For the tax selected and quarter filtered, the default Exception report displays the following information:

    • Employee ID, Employee Name, Social Security Number, State: employee information found in the General Tab of Maintain Employees window
    • Quarter: the quarter in which the payroll exception took place
    • Taxable Gross: total taxable gross amount for the quarter
    • Amount Withheld: total amount actually withheld of filtered payroll field
    • Calculated Amount: total amount of payroll field recalculated
    • Difference: the net change from Amount Withheld and Calculated Amount

    To adjust payroll taxes using the Exception report

    You can elect to have Sage 50 make correcting entries for you. We recommend you first not make corrections and simply display the report to examine the differences.

  5. Once you are comfortable with the differences, select the Prepare Correcting Entries check box in the Filter window.

    If the report is displayed on the screen, select the Options button to display the Filter window.

    Note: If you use the batch method of posting, and you decide to check the Prepare Correcting Entries box, make sure you post Payroll before you continue.

  6. Next, choose the tax to adjust to from the drop-down list.

    This lists all Employee payroll fields available (even if they do not use a calculation). Notice that you cannot adjust to an Employer payroll field.

  7. Select the quarter for which the adjustment will need to be calculated and entered.
  8. Optionally select additional filters such as Employee ID, Employee Type, and whether the employees are active or inactive.
  9. Select OK to accept the filter and make the correcting entries.

    The report will appear just as it did without selecting Prepare Correcting Entries. However, Sage 50 made general ledger entries in the background adjusting the taxes you selected. You can examine these entries by selecting Payroll Entry from the Tasks menu. Then, select the List toolbar button. Sage 50 displays an entry for the employee who is being adjusted. The Reference Number will be something like "ExceptAdj." If there is an error, you can simply delete the transactions.

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