Sage 50 Setup Guide - Employees

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Setting up your company's employees involves three tasks: setting employee defaults, setting up data records for your employees, and entering beginning balances from any outstanding payroll amounts for employees. So before you begin the process, you should assemble

  • data for all paychecks and withholding amounts for all employees since the beginning of the year; you can enter this data for up to 52 weeks if need be
  • the names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers, and hire/termination dates for all your company's employees

You should also be ready with the following additional employee information:

  • the state and locality to which the employee pays taxes
  • the General Ledger accounts from which you will pay hourly and salaried employees for the different pay levels your company uses:
  • for hourly employees, levels include regular, overtime, and any special pay you offer
  • for salaried employees, levels include bonuses and commissions paid in addition to salary

You can set up as many as twenty different pay levels for each of the two types of employees. Since this is the case, you will want to review and consider the different categories of pay your company designates.

Payroll Fields: Also, setting up payroll defaults includes assigning payroll fields for Form W-2 and for taxes paid by both the employee and the employer. Further, you need to decide how tax calculations for each payroll field should be made. You may want to consult your accountant for additional help in setting up payroll fields.

Direct Deposit: If your company has signed up for the Direct Deposit service, Sage 50 lets you set up employees for direct deposit payroll transactions. To set up your direct deposit employees, consult the Employee Authorization Agreement for each employee so you can enter information about the bank account or accounts the employee wants to use for direct deposit distributions. Tell me more about setting up Direct Deposit.

We recommend you review the topics listed below. They will familiarize you with some of the choices you need to make before setting up accounts payable.

Employee Defaults

  • Be aware of the state and locality in which the majority of your employees work; they will pay taxes to these entities.
  • How do I want to sort employee names on reports: alphabetically by first or last name?
  • What kinds of extra employee information can I store, and how is it useful?
  • What choices do I have in setting up employee pay levels?
  • What is the importance of payroll fields, and why do I need them?
  • How do I set up fields for employee-paid taxes?
  • How do I set up fields for employer-paid taxes?

Employee Records

Employee Beginning Balances