QuickBooks Payroll ServiceWhether the payroll accounts foot to the bank.

One amount left the bank. The summary has several.

On payday the bank shows a draft. The provider shows a summary with wages, amounts held back, employer taxes, and sometimes a benefit or a garnishment. Those pieces should add to the draft, or the difference should be something you can name, like a fee the provider took or a tax payment that left on a different day. We do this tie because the books will believe whatever is posted. A posted guess becomes the return.

The pleasant case is a difference of timing. The draft landed on Monday for a Friday payroll, and both amounts agree once you stop demanding they share a date. Timing is a note in the month, not a new expense. Owners who force the dates to match by moving the wage into the wrong week create a pretty reconciliation and a wrong quarter. Pretty is how smart people get into trouble.

What a match refuses to prove

If the whole draft was dumped into one expense, the bank still matches. The match is proud of itself. The chart page explains why that pride is hollow. Liabilities that never go down mean withheld tax is still in your account, whether or not the cash "reconciled." We look for liabilities with a pulse. A liability account that has not moved in a quarter is either unused or unpaid. Unused should be closed. Unpaid should be a phone call, not a shrug.

Owner draws inside the wage account will also foot, because the cash left. The label is the lie. We ask, every time, whether any line on the summary is really you taking money rather than a wage. If you do not know, that is the finding. The finding is more valuable than a green checkmark.

A month we would call finished

The summary is saved outside the provider, in the month's folder, because logins change and histories get trimmed. The draft on the bank statement is ticked to that summary. Wage expense, employer tax expense, and the withholding liabilities agree with it. Contractor payments, if any, are in their own account and were not in the draft. Your own wage, if you have one, is on the summary as wages. Anything else you took is in equity. You could explain this to a lender without a rehearsal. That last test sounds soft. It is the one that catches a chart only the bookkeeper understands.

We do not need twelve months to start. One recent payday is enough to see whether the shape is there. When the shape holds, the habit is to repeat it. When the labels disagree with the cash, renaming them is the job we price before you sign. A pile of unmarked drafts is not a monthly habit, and we will not describe it as one.

The relief owners report, once a month has footed this way, is physical. The letter they were afraid of becomes a letter about a specific account they can open. Fear likes fog. A summary is the opposite of fog.

When the summary and the bank refuse to meet

If the pieces do not add to the draft, stop renaming accounts and find the missing line. A provider fee taken inside the draft, a tax payment that left on Tuesday, or a reimbursement that should never have been in wages will each explain a gap. The gap gets a name and a date. A gap that cannot be named is not reconciled, and we will not sign a month that papers over it with a plug figure. Plug figures are how a return inherits a lie that looked small in March.