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Company-Level Contributions In Payroll

In this article

Background

Company contributions represent the employer’s cost of benefits.  This is a helpful way to show your employees the additional costs that your business pays on their behalf.  You can show company contributions on employee paychecks for various reasons, such as showing the company’s share of benefit premiums, 401k company match, company HSA contributions, etc.  You must set up contributions at the Company level before assigning them to individual employees.

Note:  These company contribution amounts do not affect the employee’s earnings. It is simply an informational dollar amount that will appear with other paycheck details and reports.

Patriot Software does not send your collected deductions and contributions to a third party, such as your 401(k) provider or health insurance carrier.  You are responsible for sending these funds directly, unless you have a 401(k) set up with Vestwell.

For information about employee payroll deductions, see Company-Level Deductions in Patriot Software.

How to Add a New Company-Level Contribution

  1. Settings > Payroll Settings > Deductions & Contributions
  2. Click the “Add New” link under the Contributions section.
  3. Fill in the contribution fields. For more information, see Company-Level Contribution Set-Up: Field-Level Help.
  4. Accounting Software Customers: Choose an expense account and a liability account for your accounting integration.
  5. Once you set up the contribution at the company level, you are now ready to assign it to your employees.  See Employee-Level Contributions.

How to Edit a Company-Level Contribution

  1. Settings > Payroll Settings > Deductions & Contributions
  2. Click the “Edit” icon in the row.
    • You can uncheck the “Active” box to make it inactive, if needed.
  3. Make changes in the appropriate fields for that contribution.  If a contribution has been used in a payroll, the “For Deduction” and “Method” fields cannot be changed.  
  4. All other fields may still be edited.
  5. Click “Save.”  If the field you edited is a company default field used on an employee’s record, the employee’s contribution will be automatically updated.

How to Make a Company-Level Contribution Inactive

  1. Settings > Payroll Settings > Deductions & Contributions
  2. Click the “Edit” icon in the row.
    • You can uncheck the “Active” box to make it inactive, if needed.
  3. If the Company contribution is also tied to an employee, you will see this message: “You are choosing to inactivate this contribution. Doing so will cause all employees with this contribution to have it inactivated as well. Are you sure you want to inactivate this contribution?”
    • Click “Yes” to confirm, otherwise click No to cancel the action.
  4. Click “Save.”  If the contribution you inactivated is a company default field used on an employee’s record, the employee’s contribution will be automatically made inactive.

How to Delete a New Company-Level Contribution

You can only delete a contribution if it has not yet been used in a payroll. You will need to make it inactive instead.

  1. Settings > Payroll Settings > Deductions & Contributions
  2. Click on the “Delete” icon in the row.  If the contribution has been used in a payroll, the delete icon will not be visible.
  3. Click “Yes” to confirm.

[RELATED ARTICLE: What Are the Different Types of 401k Plans?]

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