Select Employees to Pay

Your payroll subscription limits the number of employees that you can pay per month. For example, you may be subscribed to a Sage Business Care plan that allows you to pay 50 employees per month. This means that during each calendar month you can pay up to 50 employees as many times as you want to.

You have received this error because the employees you have selected to pay exceed the limit. You can either select fewer employees or select employees that have already been paid this month. Otherwise, you will need to upgrade your Sage Business Care plan (Gold or Platinum) or a monthly subscription.

To see which employees have been paid this month, you can view the Payroll Check Register. To do this, go to the Employees & Payroll Navigation Center and click the Reports navigation aid. Double-click Payroll Check Register in the list of Payroll reports. You can filter this report by different dates by selecting Options.

To see if you are subscribed to a Sage Business Care plan, go to Help>About Sage 50 Accounting.

If you want to pay a number of employees, you've come to the right place. The Select Employees to Pay window, together with the Select Employees--Filter Selection window, lets you select a group of employees for payment and then create paychecks for the group.

You pay a single employee using the Payroll Entry option on the Tasks menu. In Payroll Entry, you can also enter manual paychecks for a historical record of previously written payroll checks.

Pay employees

Enter manual paychecks

If you just installed Sage 50, federal, state, and most local payroll taxes will not calculate automatically for you during payroll entry. (In some cases, payroll tax amounts will be inaccurate or zero.) You must subscribe to a Sage Business Care plan and install the latest tax update to have payroll taxes and other deductions calculated within Sage 50. Otherwise, you will have to manually calculate and enter payroll taxes and other deductions on each paycheck.

Install the Sage 50 tax update

Troubleshoot payroll tax calculation errors during payroll entry

If an employee is set up with the Hourly-Time Ticket Hours pay method (possible only in Sage 50 Premium Accounting and Sage 50 Premium Accounting), then an asterisk (*) appears next to the employee's name in the Select Employees to Pay list (for example, *Steve W. Austen). The total hours worked displays the total number of time ticket durations for each employee recorded during the selected payroll period that have not been used to create paychecks.

If you need to apply an employee's salary to a specific job or jobs, select the Jobs button, and then fill in the information to apply hours worked and payroll amounts to those jobs.

Apply payroll expenses to jobs

Sage 50 gives you the opportunity to review the information that will appear on forms before you print them. The Print button in the toolbar of Payroll Entry gives you two options: Select Preview to look over a paycheck before printing; when you're ready, select Print for a hard copy of the check.

Preview Forms Before Printing

Print a Form from a Task Window

Set Up Check Printing Defaults

If you see the word Uncalculated in the Balance field of the window, then the Recalculate cash balance automatically in Receipts and Payments in Maintain Global Options is currently not selected.

However, you can manually update cash balance; click the link to find out how.

Recalculate Cash Balance Automatically

Check Date: Enter the date you want on the employee checks. This defaults to the current system date.

Pay End Date: Enter the pay period ending date. This also defaults to the current system date. If you need to change this date, click the Select button, and then edit the Pay End Date field of the Filter Selection window.

Cash Acct.: The last cash account that you used to post payroll entries is typically selected.

Hours: If you set up the employee as hourly, then the number of hours worked for the pay period will appear here. Sage 50 multiplies the hours times the current rate for the employee and distributes it to the appropriate G/L accounts.

Salary: If you set up the employee as salaried, the employee's salary amount for the pay period appears here and is distributed to the appropriate G/L accounts. You also have the option to enter the number of hours worked for salary employees. Hours entered for salary employees will not affect the amount of the check.

# Weeks: This shows the pay period for the employees:

1: Employees who are paid weekly.

2: Employees who are paid bi-weekly or semi-monthly.

4: Employees who are paid monthly.

52: Employees who are paid annually.

Pay: Check this box to include the employee when you print checks.

DD: If an employee is set up for direct deposit, select the DD check box to print a non-negotiable advice form notifying that a deposit has been made to the employee's direct deposit account(s).