Payroll reports are showing reimbursed amounts in "wages and salaries"

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Payroll journal entry report shows reimbursed amounts in "wages and salaries" even though the reimbursement was linked to an expense account. I followed all instructions posted in "How to Reimburse an Employee Purchase through Payroll", posted by Keith L. on Feb 03, 2015. Everything worked fine (thank you Keith) and it appears that the amounts are not included in income totals of Employee Ledger. But.. shouldn't the reimbursed amount show as it does in the below example of "Payroll Journal Entry" report ?  

Should I not see an entry for the reimbursed amount in the report for that expense account on the date it was entered as reimbursed?

I am not clear on the entry to post the GST correctly. If Sage was designed with this reimbursement ability (proving it to be linked with an expense account) has nothing been provided in the reimbursement entry itself, such as an expense invoice window to open (with all the same functionality of a normal expense entry)  at the same time as the payroll entry? If a reimbursement using the built in  functions is not streamlined I believe I would rather keep doing it the way I was. I just entered the reimbursable expenses as normal but chose "pay by cheque" and added an A;B;C...etc to the cheque number I used for the Paycheque in question and make a note on the cheque stub and pay stub of the two amounts; one amount for pay and one total of all reimbursed amounts.

  • 0
    I myself find it easier to pay expenses owed to employees through Accounts Payable than through payroll.
  • 0 in reply to Marj@Swab
    I agree completely. That's pretty much how I do it now but I just include the amount on the paycheque at end of month so I don't have to write two cheques. I was hoping that the reimbursement feature would be a simple process...WRONG!
    Thank you for you comment! It's always nice to know that someone else uses the same kind of "shortcut".
  • 0 in reply to LB41
    Our payroll is direct deposit so I only have to print one cheque for the expenses. Sometimes newer technology isn't as good as the older ways. At least that's what I find anyways. lol
  • 0 in reply to Marj@Swab
    I have always maintained that the easiest way to avoid reporting problems is to keep the reimbursements separate by paying them through A/P. The cost and time to get them working in Payroll and then to be sure the T4 forms are correct is worth a lot more than the cost of a separate cheque.
    Payroll is not set up to handle H/GST which causes concerns for most companies.
    If you handle the reimbursement through the A/P module and then go through extra steps to get the amount onto the pay cheque is it really worth the extra to avoid a separate cheque for the reimbursement.
  • 0 in reply to Alwyn
    I concur Clyde.
  • 0 in reply to Alwyn
    I've found that it's only worth doing the reimbursement on a Purchase Invoice with a credit back to a Payroll account, if:

    You need to be able to handle all purchase invoices the same way, such as
    - the purchase and reimbursement of an inventory item that you sell and want to track with the vendor name
    - A desire to keep track of the vendor name, address, phone, GST no, etc. in A/P
    - Keeping track of items for warranty (who bought that laptop????)

    And

    Cheques are inconvenient for the employer, and / or for the employee.

    I find that the extra co-ordination between the purchasing / parts / billing people and the payroll adds some control over the payments in a larger company, but is just silly for a department of one.
  • 0 in reply to Marj@Swab
    Whatever you decide to do with reimbursements in the future - you still need to get them in the right place on your T4's. I know this is obvious, but have you checked the T4 box assignments? This is the first screen that shows up when you go in to print T4's. Can you change the reimbursements code from "Box 14" to "Not reported"?
  • 0 in reply to C White

    If a reimbursement is properly set up in Sage 50, it will not be included in box 14 and has not since about the first or second year they have been available.  See the following images from Sage 50 2017.1.

  • 0 in reply to Richard S. Ridings
    Thanks, Richard. I'd missed that about reimbursements.
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    Apologies if this has already been mentioned, I didn't see anything when scrolling through the thread.

    To have your expense reimbursements debited to an account other than Wages and Salaries you need to go to Setup --> Settings --> Payroll --> Linked Accounts --> Incomes and choose something like an auto or fuel expense account for the reimbursement.