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Best way to use Paycheck Wizard with varying paycheck amounts

sneff30

I'm trying to utilize the Paycheck Wizard to create income reminders and wanted to get some confirmation and tips in addition to what I've found searching the website.

It seems that you can just put together a Paycheck Wizard using your gross pay and the pre- and post-tax deductions you usually see. Sometimes the state-specific taxes I pay change by a penny or two and I pay the same union dues every other paycheck, so my net varies from check to check.

If I put together the Paycheck Wizard using gross pay and use all my usual values plus my union dues, can I adjust these values with each check to match what I have and still get accurate tracking? Or it is going to be the same amount of work as entering the check manually each time?

I'd like to track gross pay but if that conflicts with the varying deductions I could create two net income reminders instead. How could I record and track my deductions if I went this route?

Additionally, when my annual raise comes up, can I just edit the existing reminder without altering the previous entries?

Thanks for your help!

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Bill Reminders

Tax Planner

paycheck

Accepted answers

Jim_Harman

To accurately track tax withholding and things like 401(k) contributions, you will definitely want to use the Paycheck Wizard to track your gross pay and all the deductions.

If the amounts vary slightly from paycheck to paycheck, you can use "Edit this instance" to adjust the upcoming paycheck for the correct amounts before accepting it and it will not affect future estimates.

If you get a raise, you can pick "Edit this instance and all future instances" to record the change, including its impact on withholding, etc.

For your situation where every other paycheck is significantly different due to the union dues, you might want to set up two overlapping paychecks, one with and one without the dues.

All comments

Jim_Harman

To accurately track tax withholding and things like 401(k) contributions, you will definitely want to use the Paycheck Wizard to track your gross pay and all the deductions.

If you get a raise, you can pick "Edit this instance and all future instances" to record the change, including its impact on withholding, etc.

For your situation where every other paycheck is significantly different due to the union dues, you might want to set up two overlapping paychecks, one with and one without the dues.

Chris_QPW

Yes, you can change the amounts as you enter it into the register. Just setup the reminder to "remind you to enter" instead of selecting for it to automatically enter it in. Or for that matter you could have it automatically enter and they you go back and change it when it is in the register.

My wife is working hourly at a retailer so none of her paychecks are exactly the same, so each week I update them as they are entered into the register. The "template" paycheck is setup with my best guess (based on past paychecks) of the "average" for each line item.

Note that my wife sometimes gets a bonus and what I do for that is just enter the regular paycheck and then select the next reminder shown in the register and change the date on it to today, which gives me the second one to enter as a bonus.

In your case if you actually have two different paychecks that are repeating you could certainly setup two reminders if that will give you it with less data entry.

Chris_QPW

P.S. Once that paycheck is entered into the register is a separate transaction and will not be affected by any future changes to the paycheck reminder.

sneff30

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20407403#Comment_20407403

Thanks for the reply and confirmation. Thankfully the union dues are only $50/mon so I put a $0.00 line item for it into the reminder and will update it every other paycheck to reflect the value.

sneff30

Thanks for the confirmation. I'll be double checking values each paycheck and correcting any differences.