Before you can even start preparing the quarterly reports, you first must make sure your employee ledgers are up-to-date. We’ll assume you have posted to all employee ledgers and now just need to pull the quarterly information together.

Let’s revisit the records of the three employees we introduced in Chapter 13. Just to make it easier to work with these numbers for reporting purposes, we’re going to assume that $1,300 represented taxable wages and tax exempt benefits have already been taken out of the numbers.

We’re going to assume you post to these ledgers monthly, after you close the books. We’ll be taking a closer look at how you close the books in the next section. In 2010, January had four pay weeks—employees are paid on Monday and there were four Mondays in January that year. Some years there will be five Mondays in January. Books were closed and posted on February 1. February had four pay weeks with books closed and posted on March 1. March had five pay weeks with books closed and posted on April 2. Here is what the ledgers should look like for the three employees we introduced in Chapter 13.

After you’ve calculated all your employee ledger sheets for the quarter, you would then compile the quarterly totals on a new worksheet for the quarter. Here is how that worksheet would look.

You don’t need to include a column for the net check. That information is not needed for the quarterly reports.

Total taxes due to the federal government based on employee withholding are $11,366.55, which include $3,143.40 for Social Security, $735.15 for Medicare, and $7,488 for income tax withholding. Withholding at the state level was $1,123.20. We will assume these federal payments were made monthly using the FTD coupons as discussed in the last chapter and state payments were made using the form or coupon required by your state.

Remember that matching payments for the employer’s portion of Social Security and Medicare also need to be made, which would increase the total based on employee payroll to $16,206.45 ($3,143.40 for Social Security and $735.15 for Medicare).

Tax totals are:

You should double-check your figures by multiplying the total taxable income times the required contributions.

Now you have all the information you need to complete the quarterly reports. Quarterly reports for the first quarter will be due on or before April 30. Here is a table that shows when quarterly reports are due each year.