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Showing net pay on a cashflow report

Elaine2

Quicken Premier | R54.16 | Release 27.1.54.16

I use Gross pay feature to track payroll deductions and elective deductions using Split Transactions.

Although the actual entry shows the net pay, I enter gross pay in the Split TRX.

When using the cashflow report— it enters gross not net— How do I get the cashflow report to display/print the net pay amount?

Thanks— Elaine.

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Accepted answers

NotACPA

Besides the gross pay, is the report also showing the various deductions in their respective categories?

Because I don't believe you can show net pay in a report that's subtotaled by category … there is no "Net Pay" category.

You can try running a separate report using ONLY the pay related categories … but I'm not sure that will get you what you want either. How about a register report, without categories, and limited to show only "employer related transactions"?

NotACPA

The "why" is that Net Pay is a calculated figure … and not anything posted to a Category. The only place where Net shows is in you account register.

Bob_L

Yes. I suggest you use the payroll wizard and set up your pay using the gross and deductions. That way you do not need to be editing the net pay

Jim_Harman

@QuickUserPSP

Each of us uses Quicken in a different way, but there are several reasons to record gross pay and deductions as part of your paycheck:

The Tax Planner needs to see your gross pay, withholding, 401(k) contributions, etc. in order to estimate your federal taxes
The Tax reports also need to see all your tax related income and expenses
If 401(k) contributions are entered directly in the 401(k) account rather than as a transfer from a taxable account, I don't think they will appear in the Tax reports, because tax deferred account are excluded from the Tax reports.

Quicken's Paycheck Wizard makes this quite easy to set up.

[Deleted User]

It's been over 10 years since I've had a W-2 so it's a moot point now. But yes, I used the W-2 because I never fully trusted what was accumulated in Quicken because of the Paycheck Wizard issues. If you search on "paycheck" you will see many issues reported with the Paycheck Wizard since the beginning of the year. So yes, hopefully improvements have been made with R55.12.

All comments

NotACPA

Besides the gross pay, is the report also showing the various deductions in their respective categories?

Because I don't believe you can show net pay in a report that's subtotaled by category … there is no "Net Pay" category.

Bob_L

To get net, include the relative expenses in your report.

Elaine2

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421838#Comment_20421838

Thank you for explanation and reply. Sorry for the delay in responding.

I created a register report— which will work for my purposes.

Still don't quite understand the "why" you can't either the gross or the net—- but that opens up a whole of other questions I can't deal with right now.

Thanks again.— elaine

Elaine2

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20421839#Comment_20421839

. . .The amount posted from the download— is the net.

Then I go into split transaction and replace the net amount with the gross amount and subtract/categorize payroll deductions and elective deductions which results in the net amount.

If I am running a cashflow report (Inflows) the report shows the gross pay and not the net pay. If I understand cashflows correctly, you just want the net pay.

I track all the elective deductions to show premiums paid, HSA contributions, and other benefits we pay for.

Is there a better way to do this???

Thanks again for this response. Much appreciated. — Elaine.

NotACPA

The "why" is that Net Pay is a calculated figure … and not anything posted to a Category. The only place where Net shows is in you account register.

Bob_L

Yes. I suggest you use the payroll wizard and set up your pay using the gross and deductions. That way you do not need to be editing the net pay

[Deleted User]

@Elaine2 why not just use net pay? If you have deductions such as 401(k) or HSA contributions, they can be entered as a contribution directly into the appropriate accounts. They do not need to flow through as a deduction on the payroll transaction.

Jim_Harman

@QuickUserPSP

Each of us uses Quicken in a different way, but there are several reasons to record gross pay and deductions as part of your paycheck:

The Tax Planner needs to see your gross pay, withholding, 401(k) contributions, etc. in order to estimate your federal taxes
The Tax reports also need to see all your tax related income and expenses
If 401(k) contributions are entered directly in the 401(k) account rather than as a transfer from a taxable account, I don't think they will appear in the Tax reports, because tax deferred account are excluded from the Tax reports.

Quicken's Paycheck Wizard makes this quite easy to set up.

[Deleted User]

@Jim_Harman you are right about how Quicken can be and is used differently and it's up to each user's preference. I don't use the tax planner, tried it, but it was too error prone and not accurate. I stopped using the Paycheck Wizard because it caused too many errors and issues, and it became unmanageable.

As for tax reports, if the transactions are coded with the Tax Line Item correctly, they show up on the reports just fine. I have never had a problem with tax reports showing the correct amounts.

Jim_Harman

How do you get the Tax reports to show W2 salary and tax withholding if you are entering net pay?

It seems to me that if you are entering net pay, Quicken would not know about these amounts.

[Deleted User]

@Jim_Harman I used my W-2 to enter these amounts. I found that keeping track of these items in Quicken was unnecessary and tedious. At the end of the year, the numbers from Quicken and my W-2 never reconciled (or reconciled easily). That's why I also gave up using the Tax Planner. Rather than save me work, it added more work.

As for the Paycheck Wizard, yes it's easy to set up, but the connections break easily and cause phantom transactions that could not be deleted. I went to using split transaction for my paychecks and that made things much easier. That was 15 years ago and unfortunately, it doesn't look like things have changed much with the Paycheck Wizard.

Jim_Harman

So you don't track the deductions in Quicken and you just enter the numbers from the W-2 that you receive into your tax software. That is certainly one way to do it. I agree that it is sometimes difficult to get the numbers to agree, but I like to use Quicken's tax reports as a check on the tax forms I receive.

I also agree there are ongoing problems with the Tax Planner. Most recently I have experienced settings that change unexpectedly. Quicken claims to have made some improvements in R55.12; we'll see if it is better now.

There have also been problems with the Paycheck Wizard from time to time, especially one a few years ago where it altered previously entered transactions, causing broken transfers. It often took some time for users to realize what was wrong, and recovery required restoring from a months-old backup and re-entering the missing transactions. I have not seen any complaints about the Paycheck Wizard recently.

[Deleted User]

Elaine2

Thank you all for your insights into this conundrum. It reassures me that what I'm doing is mostly right. — Elaine