Ambrook’s accounting core is built to be flexible, and support tracking enterprise-level payroll analysis, to better understand which enterprises are making and losing money. Read on to learn how we recommend representing payroll data in Ambrook.
Pulling Payroll Data from your Provider
From ADP
When pulling payroll data from ADP, you can either organize by “check date” (the withdrawal from your bank account), or by time period (i.e. by month) and separately match accrued payroll to withdrawals from your bank.
By Check Date
With this approach, we’ll itemize ADP payments as they are withdrawn from your bank account. ADP provides a Payroll Details report that outlines what each of your payments is for.
From your ADP account, navigate to Reports > Payroll Details.
Select the check date you want to itemize, and then view your report.
Using this report, make note of gross pay, taxes, deductions, benefits, and net pay.
By Time Period
If you want to record payroll liability before your payroll happens, or track payroll expense on an accrual basis, use the Payroll Summary report in ADP:
From your ADP account, navigate to Reports > Payroll Summary.
Select a time period, like the last month.
If you use departments, this report will show your payroll information summarized by department.
Using this report, make note of gross pay, taxes, deductions, reimbursements, and net pay.
From Gusto
When pulling payroll data from Gusto, you can either itemize and categorize each payroll payment that is withdrawn from your bank account, or you can record labor expense as monthly bills and match payments to those bills (since each payment may be for hours worked in multiple months).
Breaking Down Each Payroll Payment
With this approach, we’ll itemize Gusto payments as they are withdrawn from your bank account. Gusto provides a General Ledger report that outlines what each of your payments is for.
From your Gusto admin account, navigate to Reports > General Ledger.
Select the check date you want to itemize, and then download your report.
Using this report, make note of gross pay, taxes, deductions, benefits, and net pay.
Accrued Payroll
If you want to record payroll liability before your payroll happens, or track payroll expense on an accrual basis, use the Payroll Journal report in Gusto:
From your Gusto admin account, navigate to Reports > Payroll Journal.
Select your time period, like Monthly, and then your date range.
Choose a grouping, depending on how in-depth you’d like to track your enterprises. For example, you might group by Employee to individually allocate an employee’s wages to enterprises, or Department or Job if you can allocate enterprises by these properties.
Using this report, make note of gross pay, taxes, deductions, reimbursements, and net pay.
Other Payroll Systems
The methods outlined above also work with other payroll systems. For help getting the right report out of your system and into Ambrook, contact Ambrook Support.
Entering Payroll Data into Ambrook
Option 1 – Payroll Bills (Recommended)
By creating payroll bills in Ambrook, you can ensure that you represent labor costs in the month that the labor occurred (on an accrual basis), regardless of when payday is. To create a payroll bill in Ambrook:
(One Time) Create a Vendor to represent your payroll liability, giving it a name like “Payroll.”
Create a bill with the fields outlined below.
Save the bill as Open, and then for each withdrawal from your account for payroll, match payments to the payroll bills you created.
Payroll Fields:
Fields | Data |
Bill Date | The end of the period covered, for example the end of the month if you’ll be recording payroll monthly. |
Due Date | Same as Bill Date |
Vendor | Choose the special “Payroll” vendor you created earlier |
Line Items | Include a line item for every combination of:
|
Bill ID | Use the date range covered by payroll |
Attachments | Attach the report from your payroll provider used to create the bill, or any timesheets for the period. |
Option 2 – Itemizing Expenses (Simplest)
If you don’t need to track payroll on an accrual basis, and are okay with some months (with more paydays) showing higher payroll than others (with fewer paydays), you can just itemize expenses as they post to your bank account. Here’s how:
When an expense posts to your bank account, look up what it was for from your payroll system.
Create line items with negative amounts for gross pay and taxes, which should exceed the total withdrawal amount, and then positive line items for deductions and exclusions that result in the total net pay.
Tag each line item with labor or tax expenses, as appropriate. If you’re tracking benefit liability accrued, [record a liability change].
Option 3 – Payroll Journal Entries (Advanced)
If you want to have more control over how payroll posts to your ledger, you can create a journal entry to represent payroll data. Here’s what we recommend:
Create a current liability account called “Payroll Liabilities.” This account will represent owed but unpaid payroll.
Create journal entries on an accrual & cash basis for each payroll period, being sure to record both payroll expenses (for each type of tax, deduction, and pay, as well as each type of job or employee) as well as credits to the Payroll Liabilities account.
When payments post to your bank account, [record a liability change] to the Payroll Liabilities account.
At any given time, the balance of your Payroll Liabilities account should represent the amount of labor worked but not yet paid through your payroll system.