Oops! Payroll is Posted to the Wrong Accounting Period….

Pay dates on or shortly after the beginning of a month can present a challenge.  Too often, I get calls from clients that posted an entire payroll dated on the first of a month back to the previous month, usually because they fail to check the rather small accounting period button on the 5-2-6 Post Payroll to GL screen before pushing the Post Payroll button.  Despite regular admonishment to always post payroll to the period in which the checks are dated, mistakes happen.  How do we fix them?

If the payroll was posted in detail (rather than in Summary) and the number of payroll records is not too great, I usually recommend a “copy, void, paste” process:

• First, print out a payroll check register for the misposted payroll.  
• Then, for each misposted 5-2-2 payroll record:
• Click on the copy button to save the header and timecard data to a program copy buffer
• Go to the calculations tab, highlight all the rows of the calculations grid, right click and select copy to save the calculations lines to the Windows clipboard (as the save button does not capture the calculations grid)
• Click on the scissors button to void the misposted payroll record and say yes to void the related job cost and ledger transaction records
• When the empty record is displayed after the voiding, click on the paste button to paste record header and timecard lines to a new record
• Click on the calculations tab and with the cursor in the top left cell of that grid, right click and select Paste to copy the calculations from the Windows clipboard, and enter “Y” in the Override column for each line so that nothing changes from the original record
• Save this new record and locate the next record to correct.
• When each payroll record has been corrected, trial compute the copied and pasted records, compare the records to the original payroll check register, and if everything agrees, final compute the payroll records and carefully post these new records to the general ledger in the correct accounting period.

It’s been suggested that I’m a cruel person to suggest such a tedious task, but there is the sneaking suspicion that such painful work to correct a problem may help that person pay better attention the next time.

If the payroll has too many records to make this a reasonable exercise, we can help you with queries and MS Excel to summarize the general ledger and job cost entries of the misposted payroll to use in a journal entry to reverse the entire payroll from the wrong accounting period and reenter it in the correct accounting period. Just give us a call at 480-471-5305 for assistance.