We’ve seen cases where payroll liabilities are missing from the Pay Scheduled Liabilities block on the Payroll tab of Employee Center but the company has actual payroll tax liabilities. The screenshot below shows where all payroll tax liabilities should appear, but sometimes liabilities are missing.
Typically, payroll tax liabilities can be confirmed by the Payroll Liability Balances report (on the Reports->Employees & Payroll menu selection) or by an examination of general ledger account balances. The Payroll Liability Balances report can be configured to report totals by quarter, which matches the reporting format for the Pay Scheduled Liabilities information.
According to Intuit, this situation is caused by:
- another Liability Check exists that covers the amount of the missing liability
- the liability isn’t being recorded in an account whose type is Other Current Liability
- the liability account is marked inactive
- the starting or ending Period dates on the Liability Check used to pay a payroll tax liability are wrong
- no payment schedule has been set up for the payroll tax liability
- the company file was upgraded from a prior version of QuickBooks to a newer one
Intuit describes a series of troubleshooting techniques in this knowledge base article. However, in our experience, these steps work to resolve some, but not all, situations where payroll tax liabilities are missing from the Pay Scheduled Liabilities block.
We recommend regularly reviewing the Payroll Liability Balances report as well as the general ledger accounts accumulating payroll tax liabilities to be sure all liabilities are currently recognized and paid.
How do I print a Payroll Paid Liabilities by Month Report in QuickBooks?
There’s no canned report with liabilities that you paid, so you have to create a custom summary report. Set your Display columns by to Month, and set the Display rows by to Payroll item detail. On the Filters tab of the report, be sure to set a filter for Transaction Type to only include Payroll Liability Checks. That will show the amounts you paid each month. Keep in mind that if you made a payment late, it is showing up on the report when you made it, not when it was due.