Bonus cheques were given to employees in December 2017. The calculations were done and posted in Sage 50. Manual cheques were then written based off the Sage 50 paystubs.
After rolling forward the Sage 50 calendar year and remitting the source deductions in January 2018 for the December 2017 reporting period, a clerical error was found on one of the bonus cheques. The cheque was made out for $6.00 more than it should have been. The cheque has been cashed by the employee. The difference is not large and the employee will not be asked to repay the amount. T4's have not been generated yet.
To account for this difference, my thought was to adjust the income tax withheld on the paycheque downward by $6.00. This will result in the company having over remitted $6 in source deductions. It will also result in the bonus paystub needing to be updated as well as two December paystubs that came after the bonus stub (so YTD amounts are correct).
Can paystubs from the previous calendar year be adjusted? If so, is the proper sequence of operations to reverse the last two December paycheques completely, revise the bonus pay cheque, then record the last two December paycheques? If this is done, will the T4s reflect the change or is it too late to do all of this because the calendar year has been rolled forward?
I do have a backup of the file before the calendar year was rolled forward. I could restore this backup and make the changes in the previous calendar year. I would then roll forward the file and re-enter the 2018 transactions posted in January if this is the better approach.
