Payroll 5

Update History

Version 5.4.6

• Direct deposit. Corrected a problem creating and voiding direct deposit checks. Remember, direct deposit checks have a negative check number.

Version 5.4.5

• Added a feature for California DE6 form. Under Close --> Quarterly Reports, there is a new option called "Create DE6 PDF (Ca)". This will create a pdf file for each page required in the California DE6 file.
  
  These files will be created in your data folder and will be named de6Q3_2006Pg1_ABC.fdf where "Q3" is the third quarter, "2006" is the year, "Pg1" is page 1 and "ABC" is the company abbreviation. Note that the file extension is "fdf" instead of "pdf". The "fdf" extension contains only the data to fill in the form, the actual pdf file is called "de6.pdf" and must reside in the same folder as the "fdf" file.
  
  To view the result, locate the "fdf" file in the data folder using Windows Explorer and double click the file. Naturally, you must have the free PDF reader (from Adobe) installed to read the file. You may copy the "fdf" files for storage elsewhere, just be sure to also copy the "de6.pdf" file that goes with the "fdf" files.
  
  
• Employee Worksheets. Corrected a problem that caused miscellaneous deductions not to print if one or more of the miscellaneous deductions had a blank description.

Version 5.4.4

• 2002 Tax Tables. Federal and State (California) tax tables have now been specified for all taxes. Just go to Setup --> Tax Def. Add/Chg/Delete. Pick a tax, click on Change, then Formula, then Restore Default Calculation. Do this for each tax.
• Year End Close. When erasing employees at end of year, the employee notes were
  not being erased.
• On check stub, when it totals the misc. deductions, the word
  "Total" is added to the total line to make the meaning more clear.
• Worker's Comp Report. Top of report now shows "Regular Portion Only" or "All Earnings" so you can tell which type of report you are printing.
• Quarterly Summary (DE6 in California). Added [q] which shows the quarter number, [yr] which shows the two digit year and [year] which shows the 4 digit year. These can now be used in Setup --> Format --> Quarterly Summary if you need to add these data items to your report.
• Program Startup. You now see the year next to the company name. This represents the year of payroll that is contained in that particular data set.

Version 5.4.3

• 2001 Tax Tables.
• Monthly General Ledger Report. If the program encounters an invalid date on a Fed/State Check, the program gets an Error 13 - Type Mismatch instead of showing the message gracefully. This has been corrected on this update.
• Earnings Ledger. If an employee did not have any SDI, Other or Misc withholdings, the Medicare deductions were not shown on the earnings ledger. This has been corrected.
• Quarterly Summary Report. If you tried to modify the report format, it wasn't centered on the screen.
• Copy Tax Formulas. You can now copy the Employee Quarterly Format and the company Quarterly Summary Format.
• Printing W2's. If you have more than 50 (100 electronic) W2's, the system got an error 9 (overflow). This has been corrected.
• Fed/State Checks. When selecting a time period, only Year to Date is allowed. Other selections created too much confusion.

Version 5.4.2

• Losing Your Data. Apparently there has been a bug in the payroll program since it was written that if you do a certain combination of things during data entry, ALL of your payroll checks for the year are erased. This is not very nice, and it has been corrected on this update. Here is what you had to do on the older version to get your data erased: 1) Enter an employee or two into data entry 2) Click on Clear All Employees 3) Switch from Sort by Name to Sort by Employee # (or vice versa) 4) Clear All Employees again. After step 3, the program was confused and called up all employee data instead of just the current payroll. The result was an "X" in front of each employee even though you had not entered any data. This would naturally cause you to want to erase the offending data. Unfortunately, since it was looking at the saved check file by mistake, that is the one that was erased.
• Check for Errors in Data. If you did an error check on the "Checks in Progress" file and told it to rebuild the file, the program inadvertantly erased the data entry file instead of rebuilding it. The result is that your payroll entries will be erased for the new payroll and you will have to re-enter it. This has been corrected on this version.
• New Report. In Reports --> Employee Reports a new report was added called "Re-Print Check Stubs". This report allows you to re-print a check stub that was lost of you need an additional copy.
• 401K Report. An error 13 would result if there was an invalid check date, the error has been suppressed.
• Security. Program was modified to recognize security for ID 1.1.3 and later. Earlier versions may not provide payroll security inside the ID program.

Version 5.4.1

• 2000 Tax Tables. Federal and State (California) tax tables have now been specified for all taxes. Just go to Setup --> Tax Def. Add/Chg/Delete. Pick a tax, click on Change, then Formula, then Restore Default Calculation. Do this for each tax.
• Year End Reminders. Remember you can use "Copy Current Database" to save a copy of your 1999 payroll before doing any changes for 2000! Also, if you have multiple companies, use Misc --> Copy Tax Formulas to copy new tax calculations to other companies automatically.
• Re-Calculate Employer Taxes. If this option encountered an employee check date that was not a valid date, the program would display an Error 13 (type mismatch). The program has been changed to bypass the error and call the check date the first date of the calendar year if the date is incorrect.
• Monthly General Ledger. This report also shows a type mismatch error when encountering a check date that was missing or not a valid date. This report has been modified to display the error so these checks can be voided and re-entered if necessary.
• Pre-Check Report. If you printed the report more than once before printing checks, the amounts were doubling each time you printed. This has been corrected.
• Update General Ledger. Since employer taxes (SUI, FUI, 1/2 of FICA and Medicare) are calculated and stored 4 digits past the decimal, it is possible to have rounding problems when updating General Ledger. The program now checks for the possible 1 cent out of balance and makes an adjustment to bring the G/L update into balance.
• Correct Errors in Data. Changed the "Correct Only Do Not Check" to reduce the chance that it would find no valid data even when there was good data in the file.
• Copy Tax Formulas. This option which copies tax calculations from one company to another was leaving off the SDI and FICA cutoffs found in the Company Name etc. file. These items are now copied into the target company.

Version 5.4.0

• Re-Printing Checks. This one is serious. If you tell the system to re-print checks with new check numbers, it erases all checks on the system! This is incredibly bad. Sorry about that. I'm not sure when this error was introduced, but you should avoid re-printing with new check numbers until you install this update.
• Payroll Entry. If you calculate an employee with some misc. deductions, then you check the "Skip Misc. Ded" checkbox and re-calculate, the program was not picking up the remaining deductions properly on the income side. This has been corrected.
• Earnings Ledger. Changed around some of the fields to make room for a check date. I left out the year to save some room. Since all checks should be for the same calendar year, the year should not matter.
• Miscelleaneous Deductions. If you happen to create a miscelleaneous deduction with a blank identifier it blocked data entry from seeing any misc. deductions for employees. Not likely to happen, but anything's possible (I'm finding).

Version 5.3.9

• Pre-Check Report / Deduction Register. When selected from data entry, these options displayed an Error 55 - File Already Open. Turns out this error is more of a nuisance and didn't cause any serious problem. This problem has been corrected.
• Employee Fed/State Check Report. A feature was added which allows you to include the details on the fed/state checks, ie. precisely which taxes were paid. This allows you to better track the taxes paid verses the taxes owed.
• EFTPS Payment. If you were modifying the report format, the Enter key was not opening up a blank line as it should. This has been corrected.
• On startup, the program now remembers whether it was taking up the whole screen or not.

Version 5.3.8

• Check Run Error. In some cases, you received a "File Already Open" message when trying to finalize a check run. This has been corrected.
• File Restore. Made sure that the list of files available to restore was in proper date order.

Version 5.3.7

• Printer Setup. Added a "Setup Printer" option under the File menu on the startup screen. From here you can define the printer characteristics of each report and form on the system. Also, the "Setup Printer" buttons have been removed from each form that prints. Instead, just click on the printer name with your mouse.
• Company Abbreviations. When starting the program, you are now shown the complete company name, not just the abbreviation. This should make it easier to pick the right company if you are doing payroll for several companies.
• Employer Taxes. If an employee was exempt from Employer Taxes, the program was taking out the taxes anyway when re-calculating employer taxes.
• Payroll Data Entry. If an employee had a deduction that was a percent of the net payroll, the program sometimes added this deduction to non-taxable earnings when it was not instructed to do so. This has been corrected.
• Check Format. Added the data field [vac] which shows just the vacation hours remaining with no extra wording. This allows you to do something like: VACATION HOURS EARNED: [vac] for example.
• Fed/State Check. The default time period was changed to Year to Date. This avoids a lot of errors and confusion if the program simply checks all taxes and payments for the year each time. Otherwise, you could be comparing taxes owed from one time frame to taxes paid from another time frame.
• Earnings Ledger and Employee Custom Report. A checkbox which allows you to omit inactive employees has been added.
• Employee Custom Report. Added the ability to select certain employees and certain G/L Income codes. This adds even more flexibility to this report. Now you can verify which employees are being paid in each department without having to manually to through Employee Add/Change/Delete.
• Entering Voided Checks. If you wish to enter a voided check, do it through payroll data entry. Just fill in the check number and nothing else. You still must go through the check writing process even though no check will print for that employee.
• Employee Worksheet. Added Vacation Hours Taken and Vacation Hours remaining to this report. Lists with the miscellaneous deductions.
• Pre-Check Report. If the company name happened to include an ampersand (&) character, the pre-check report became confused and printed the company name as well as most of the headings wrong. This has been corrected.
• Monthly General Ledger. You now have the option of omitting Fed/State checks from this report.
• Print W2s. When printing EIC [t.eic], it was printing it with a negative sign. This has been corrected.

Version 5.3.6

• Misc. Deduction Delete. When deleting a miscellaneous deduction, the system attempts to re-define any checks which used that deduction to another deduction type. This section had an error and was not working properly, but has been corrected. The same problem affected the Tax and Income Type Files when you tried to delete an item.
• All reports. When choosing an employee range, choosing by employee last name did not work unless your employee file was entered last name first. The program has now been corrected so that you can range reports by employee number or last name, regardless of how the employee names are entered in the employee file.
• Employee Loans. I verified that employee loans are working correctly. After the last deduction, the loan balance is set to -1 which signals no more withholding should take place.

Version 5.3.5

• 401K Report. It has been brought to my attention that in some cases non-taxable deductions should be added back into gross wages for the purpose of the 401K report only. To accomplish this, the 401K report now allows you to select one or more miscelleneous deductions that should be added to the normal gross wages for the purpose of calculating the employer matching contribution.
• W2 Printing. Added a "Grand Total" W2 at the end of the report. This total only prints if you have more than 41 W2's.

Version 5.3.4

• Check Printing. Version 5.3.2 introduced an error where the screen looked rather strange after printing checks. This has been corrected.
• Employee Department List. New Report. This report shows which employees are working in each department (G/L account number). Look under Reports --> Employee Reports for this option.
• W2 Printing. If you have a code like [c.3] on a line by itself and there are one or more spaces after the "]", the program will misbehave and cut of your data early. This has been corrected.
• W2 Printing. Added the ability to print miscellaneous deductions on W2's. Just add a bracketed command like "[d.m4]" to print the value for miscelleneous deduction "m4".
• W2 Format. A help line was added at the bottom of the screen which shows examples of valid bracketed commands.
• W2 - Electronic Filing. An option has been added to save W2 information on floppy disk for electronic filing with the Social Security Administration.
• Copy Tax Formulas. Added W2 format to the list of things you can copy.
• Displaying Reports. After displaying a report, the program now goes directly back to the report you just displayed (unless you pressed the "print" button and printed the report). This is useful in cases where you are displaying several versions of the same report and you don't want to have to go back through the menu system to find the same report.
• Displaying Reports. If you press the Page Down key when you are already at the bottom of the page, you will be send to the top of the next page, if available. Likewise, Page Up will send you to the previous page. This allows you to scroll through a report by just pressing one key.
• Miscellaneous Deductions. You may now specify a maximum deduction per year for each type of miscellaneous deduction. Apparently 401K and others have yearly maximums.

Version 5.3.3

• 1999 Taxes. Changed default calculations to 1999 taxes. To update, go to Setup --> Tax Definition Add/Chg/Delete. Change each tax formula and click on "Restore Default Calculation".
• Copy Tax Formulas. This is a new option which has been added to the Miscellaneous section. It is only to be used by those who are maintaining payroll data for more than one company. This option allows you to copy the tax calculation formulas from one company to other companies. This way you can set up your 1999 tax formulas one time and transfer that information to all other companies.

Version 5.3.2

• Printing W2s. Any value specified as "[w.0]" in the w2 format was not printing the correct total. This has been corrected so that it always prints total wages. Note that the default format has been changed and should normally be used as a starting point when setting up your W2 format. To change to the default, go to Setup --> Format --> W2. Then click "Default Format" to load the newest default format. Then make any necessary changes from there. Keep in mind that the income types have check boxes which control which "box" they print in on W2's. For example, 401K income does not normally print in box 1 (Wages, Tips and Other Compensation).
• Vacation Time. When print checks, the vacation accrual for the current pay period will be added to the vacation total on the current check. When vacation time is being accrued for a pay period, it will be accrued for all active employees, not just those who are getting checks on the current check run.
• Employee Labels. If printing labels without first defining a label format, the program displayed an error message. This has been corrected.

Version 5.3.1

• Employee Loans. The program was not noticing that a loan had been paid off and continued withholding the full amount. This has been corrected. When a loan is paid off, a -1 is put in the loan balance field, indicating that no more is owed. If a zero is found in the loan balance this is interpreted as a "no loan" situation and the full amount will be deducted.
• W2's. Added the option to display W2's and also to print just the final total page.
• Pre-Check Report. Was not showing the hours for all income types. Extra lines were added to show all defined income types.