How to Pay Sick Leave in QuickBooks Desktop & QuickBooks Online Payroll?

QuickBooks Payroll service allows you to pay your employees for the hours they worked. If your salaried employees took a vacation leave or sick leave, you can add the specific hours before processing the scheduled payroll. Doing so, QuickBooks will automatically recalculate the total pay of your employee to keep the record accurate. However, most users have no clue about how to get this job done. Therefore, in this guide, we will explain how to pay sick leave in QuickBooks for different versions such as QuickBooks Online Payroll, QuickBooks Desktop, and Intuit Online Payroll.

How to Set Up Sick Leave in QuickBooks Desktop?

In QuickBooks, users can add the sick and leave hours of the employee from the Preferences menu directly. To see the detailed steps, walk through the following steps:

• Click on the “Edit” menu.
• Then, choose the “Preferences” option.
• Click on the “Payroll and Employees” option.
• After this, choose the “Sick and Vacation” from the “Company Preferences” option.
• Click on the “Every hour on paycheck” from the “Accrual Period” option.
• Then, type 50 seconds for the “Hours accrued per hour paid” field.
• On the second field “Maximum number of hours”, you can enter 48 minutes.
• Then, click the “OK” button

If you are willing to change the preferences for vacation and sick time accruals, QuickBooks makes it possible for you. This should be noted that changing the preferences will be applied automatically to the new employees. Thus, the preferences of existing employees will not be changed. To change set up the sick accrual for each employee, you can pursue the following steps:

• Click on the “Employees” menu.
• Then, choose the “Employee Center” option.
• Now, start selecting each employee for whom you want to apply changes.
• Switch to the “Payroll Info” tab.
• Select the “Sick/Vacation” option.

• Then, go to the “Sick” field and choose “Every hour on paycheck” for the “Accrual Period”.
• Now, go to the “Hours Accrued per hour paid’, type “0.03333”.
• After that, type the maximum amount of sick time that is allowed in the dedicated field.
• Switch to the “Begin occurring sick time on” section and type the date on which you wish to start the accrue.
• Press the “OK” button.

This is how you can change the preferences Remember this setup is only for one hour of sick time accrued for thirty hours worked.  You can repeat the same procedure for the affected employees.

How to Pay Sick Leave in QuickBooks or Intuit Online Payroll?

If you want to pay sick leave or vacation hours, you can perform the following steps based on the version you are using. Here, we will show you how to set up paid sick leave in QuickBooks Online Payroll and Intuit Online Payroll:

Set Up Vacation Pay or Sick Pay Hours

To set up the sick pay or vacation pay hours, you can perform the following steps in QuickBooks Online Payroll (including Full Service and Self Service), Intuit Online Payroll, and Intuit Full Service.

QuickBooks Online Payroll (Full Service and Self Service)

• Click on the “Payroll” option.
• Switch to the “Employees” option.
• Select the “Run Payroll” option.
• Now, you can choose the employee whom you want to pay. To do this, you can search for the salaried employee and add their vacation pay and sick pay hours.
• Once done, click on the “Preview Payroll” option.
• Then, you can check your payroll details.
• When everything is good, click on the “Submit Payroll” button.

Intuit Online Payroll

• Click on the “Payday” option.
• Then, click on the “Check Type” drop-down option and choose “Regular Checks”.
• After this, click on the “Pay Period” drop-down menu to select the pay period.
• Click on the employees you wish to pay. You can search for salaried employees and add their vacation pay and sick pay hours.
• Then, click on the “Create Paychecks” option.
• Choose the “Approve Paychecks” option.
• After reviewing the details, you can click on the “Continue” button.

Intuit Full Service Payroll

• Click on the “Payday” menu.
• Then, click on the “Employees” option.
• Press the “Next” button.
• Choose the employees that need to be paid. You can search for salaried employees and add their vacation pay and sick pay hours.
• Click the “Preview Payroll” option.
• If the details look fine, you can click on the “Submit to Intuit” option.

Write the Separate Check for Vacation Pay and Sick Pay

Users can also write a separate check for the employee’s vacation pay or sick pay. For example, if you want to pay out the terminated vacation and accrued sick hours of the employee then you might need to prepare a separate check for this. Have a look at the following steps:

QuickBooks Online Payroll (Full Service and Self Service)

• Select the “Payroll” option.
• Then, click on the “Employees” option.
• Click on the “Run Payroll” option.
• Here, you can choose the salary amount for the employee whom you want to pay.
• After that, you can click on the “Skip salary this time only” option.
• Then, hit the “Apply” button.
• Now, you can add the vacation pay and sick pay hours.
• Switch to the “Total Pay” section and click on the “Edit” button located next to the total payment amount of the employee.
• Click on the “Employee Deductions” and type “0” for all deduction types.
• Once done, click on the “Preview Payroll” button.
• When everything seems good, click on the “Submit Payroll” option.

Intuit Online Payroll

• Click on the “Payday” option.
• Then, click on the “Check Type” drop-down option.
• After this, choose the “Regular Checks” option.
• Click on the “Pay Period” drop-down arrow and select the pay period.
• Start selecting the employee you wish to pay.
• Then, move to the “Check Details” section and click on the “Paycheck” icon.
• When the new window opens, you need to do the following:
  • Type 0 under the “Pay Hourly” for the regular hours worked.
  • Add the hours for vacation pay or sick pay under the “Additional Pay Types”.
  • Type 0 under the “deductions and Garnishments” for anything that you don’t wish to withhold.
• Click on the “Create” button.
• Now, go to the “Create Paychecks” window and find the reminder in order to approve the paycheck. For this, you can click on the “Approval” link.
• Then, click on the “Approve Paychecks” option.

Intuit Full Service Payroll

• First of all, you will have to edit the employee’s profile and make sure you zero out the deductions. If required, you can edit the amount of deductions after running payroll.
• Then, click on the “Payday” option.
• Click on the “Unscheduled checks” option.
• Hit the “Next” button.
• Now, go to the “Hours not worked” section, mention the total hours minus the sick or vacation hours of the employee.
• Press the “Save” button.
• After this, enter the sick or vacation hours of the employee.
• Click on the “Preview Payroll” option.
• After reviewing the details, click the “Submit to Intuit” option.

If you have zeroed out deductions in the employee’s profile then make sure you enter the correct amount back. Now you have successfully learned how to pay sick leave in QuickBooks Online Payroll, QuickBooks Desktop, and Intuit Online Payroll.

The Final Note

There can be instances when your employee takes vacation leave or sick leave. While you pay the employee or schedule payroll, you should add if there is any sick leave or vacation leave for a particular customer. It will automatically be reviewed by QuickBooks or Intuit and come up with the payment recalculation. This becomes easy to pay your employees via payroll software.

If you want to enter the cash receipts or delete the pay schedule in QuickBooks, you can check out the following guides for help:

• How to Create QuickBooks Cash Receipts?
• How to Delete a Scheduled Payroll in QuickBooks Desktop?