To set up defaults for how Sage 50 handles employee gross pay including any applicable calculations, select the Employee Fields tab in the Employee Defaults window. This can include various employee deductions and additions.
Important! You must subscribe to a Sage Business Care plan to calculate payroll fields within Sage 50. Otherwise, you will have to manually calculate your payroll taxes, withholdings, and deductions.
Field Name: Enter the name of the payroll field, or use the defaults.
Warning! Once you start entering payroll transactions, do not change the name of payroll field names or change the order in which payroll field names are listed. If you change the payroll field "name" setup, earnings reports and W-2 form information will become inaccurate. Also, it is not recommended to change Fed_Income and other standard payroll fields names Sage 50 sets up for you. These payroll field names are used in tax calculations if you have signed up for a Sage Business Care plan.
G/L Account: Account number in general ledger where information entered into this field for this employee is posted. Not applicable if the Memo check box is selected.
Calculate (Calc): Selecting this check box allows you to select a formula name to use when calculating tax amounts. Formula names use formulas and (sometimes) tables to calculate tax amounts. If you subscribe to a Sage Business Care plan, formula names and their formulas are provided, and you will be able to calculate taxes and other deductions in Sage 50.
If you clear the check box, you will have to manually calculate taxes and enter them on each paycheck. For instructions, see publications such as the current Circular E document, available on www.irs.gov.
Formula: If you chose to Calculate this field, enter the name of the formula to use (not the Formula ID) without the payroll year. Type ? to display a list of the currently set-up formulas. (If you choose to set up your own payroll formulas, make sure each formula entered here corresponds to a formula in User-Maintained Payroll Formulas.)
Amount: If you aren't using a calculation, enter a flat rate here. Positive numbers are earnings and negative numbers are deductions.
Memo: Select this check box if the information in this field does not affect your company general ledger or financial statements. An example of this would be tips.
Run:Select this check box to indicate that you don't want the balance to be set to zero when you close the year.
Adjust: If this field can be calculated, select this button to display the Calculate Adjusted Gross window where you can choose which payroll fields are accumulated to determine the adjusted gross for this calculation. Remember, payroll fields cannot be calculated unless you subscribe to a Sage Business Care plan.