How do I account for expense reimbursement on paycheck?

harry askenazi
harry askenazi Member ✭✭✭

My employer reimbursed out of pocket expenses in the same check as my bi-weekly paycheck.

On the paystub, it's listed as a negative dollar amount under "after tax deductions"

Since I can't enter a negative in the paycheck register, I tried adding it as a positive to after tax deductions, but that doesn't give me an accurate gross/net amount

I can reflect the net pay appropriately, by adding the reimbursement as a positive dollar amount under "Earnings" and attributing it to the correct Quicken Category I've set up to track reimbursements. The problem is that this overstates "Gross" by the amount of the reimbursement.

How do I include the reimbursement on the paycheck without overstating Gross?

Comments

  • Tom Young
    Tom Young Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    I've never used the Pay Check Wizard and since that particular feature has been a problem lately, corrupting many files, I probably never will. If you can't really enter a negative after-tax deduction - seems like your expense reimbursement issue would be fairly common - then I have a couple of ideas.

    The easiest would be to delete that item from the paycheck entry - affecting the deposit appropriately but not touching anything else - and then separately depositing the reimbursement using whatever Category or Account is appropriate. This introduces two little wrinkles that I could live with, but some people can't. The actual deposit that includes the reimbursement won't be found as a "Match" by a subsequent download, but as long as the total deposit from your two entries matches the download, you could delete that download and simply "clear" the two deposits manually. The accounting and tax information will be correct but the Quicken check register won't match the bank's statement "perfectly."

    The other approach, involving more work, would be to enter the deposit as a "manual" split deposit entry not using the "paycheck" feature, but otherwise perfectly comporting with the paycheck information.

  • Boatnmaniac
    Boatnmaniac Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2023

    Is the Income Reminder created by the Paycheck Wizard already entered into your checking account register?

    If so, adjust the transaction deposit amount in the register to match what the amount of the new net deposit amount (paycheck plus expense reimbursement) is.

    Then click on the categories split. You should see another line entry added to the view below the other categories for the amount of the expense reimbursement but with no category entered. Enter the category you want and, if desired, a memo explaining what it is for.

    Then click OK, OK, Done. That should be all you need to do.

    If your Income Reminder is not yet entered into the checking account register you can enter it and do the process listed above in your checking account register. Conversely, you can instead do Edit this Instance and then perform this process in the Reminder before the Reminder is entered into the register.

    The key to this is to change the net deposit amount first. Quicken will then automatically add another line to the categories split for the difference and all you need to do is enter the category for it.

    Quicken Classic Premier (US) Subscription: R59.10 on Windows 11

  • harry askenazi
    harry askenazi Member ✭✭✭

    Unfortunately I think this is the best way forward. I was hoping there would be a better way, but I can't find one. Thanks for validating this approach

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