We have job costing set up & a payroll item for per diem. Obviously, the selection for job costing is on. However, there is no way to specify a specific job during payroll and the expense is burdened across all jobs that week instead of a specific one(s). This leads me to believe there is another way to set this up. How do I record expenses for per diem so that employees receive it on weekly paychecks, but it is also properly expensed to specific jobs?
Hi WHDCM,
Allocating time to jobs, using the weekly time sheet, I think should allocate the employee’s wage expense to the jobs. The job needs to be selected on the time sheet.
I am not certain what you mean by per diem. Is this reimbursement of expenses incurred by the employee? If yes, I don’t think the reimbursement would be part of payroll.
Richard
As a reference, see IRS publication 1542.
Our specific Per Diem is for ME&I. This is very common in the construction industry, especially on federal jobs under the GSA. Obviously, as long as we are under the maximum rate, it is not considered as income for tax purposes.
Still, putting it on the paycheck, as employees are reimbursed weekly, seemed easy enough. Unless I'm misunderstanding, you can have these items show as additions to net, but not tied to tax forms such as 'other income' on the W-2.
The issue, though, is that these additions to net income are not allowing me to put in specific jobs to post them to; it simply burdens all jobs they worked on that week with a portion of the per diem amount.
These are the first federal jobs we've had and I want to make sure both our accounting and reporting are in compliance.
If there is anyone that pays per diem, how do you do it? I can't imagine you'd have to issue seperate checks for this as a reimbursement, but if that is the only way, I guess I'll have to.
Thanks!
Hi WHDCM,
I do not have any recent experience with reimbursements, and no experience with federal jobs under GSA.
I would rely on IRS publications for guidance, and maybe someone with more knowledge and experience than I have.
Richard
If this box is checked, track expenses to jobs, the program allocates the expense to all jobs based on earnings per job.
To my knowledge there is no way to allocate job cost expense to specific job in the payroll program.
The easiest way is to issue the employee a separate check for the Per Diem.
If you need to have the Per Diem Direct Deposited., don't check the Box track Expenses by job, have the expense go to an overhead expense and Journal Entry - to the Job. For Job Cost use a Zero Bill entering the item (cost code) by job in on the item tab and negative amount under the expense account no job and account your payroll item is pointed.
saslpr,
I was preparing to edit my previous comment to add in the fact that this reimbursement needs to be direct deposited with the employee's paycheck, but you preempted my needs and answered with all the information I required. This worked perfectly, thanks!
