About auditing payroll

You can repair and audit the stored balances of each employee record before filing the quarterly or yearly payroll reports. The repair recalculates the gross wage, Social Security, and Medicare totals from the payroll records. The audit compares them to the totals stored in the employee records. The repair also recalculates the quarterly totals for each payroll calculation and compares them to the quarterly totals stored in the employee records.

If you want to audit and repair a closed payroll year when auditing and repairing payroll, you can select Audit/Repair payroll for the prior year (xxxx), where xxxx is the prior closed year.

If a recalculated total does not match the stored total, a variance exists. Audit variances can result from several factors:

• Incorrectly computed Social Security or Medicare taxes on hand-computed checks.
• Changes to payroll calculations after computing payroll records.
• Hardware failure or power outage.

The audit also looks for check dates that do not fall within the correct payroll quarter. When the check date is wrong, you can enter the correct check date in the existing record. When the quarter is wrong, void the original record and re-enter the record using the correct quarter.

When the audit is complete, print the Payroll Audit report—it identifies the employee records containing variances, the payroll records referencing an incorrect check date or quarter, and uncomputed and unposted payroll records. Some variances can be repaired by Sage 100 Contractor.