How exactly does Certified Payroll Solution work?  Does it write information back to QuickBooks®?  Is my QuickBooks data safe?

 Perhaps the best way to explain how Certified Payroll Solution works, is to say that it "knows" the certified payroll reporting requirements of all 50 states (we've programmed it to know them), and works much like a person would to prepare the reports.  While the program knows the reporting mandates, it knows nothing about your company, your employees, how your QuickBooks file is setup, etc., so you will have to teach it that part.

Certified Payroll Solution first, looks into your QuickBooks file and begins gathering data, from and about, your Weekly Timesheets, Employees, Jobs, Payroll Items, hours worked each day, the actual paycheck transactions, etc.

Next, it starts verifying that it "knows" about the information it has found by making an internal list of things it knows about, and things it doesn't know about.

The first time you run the Certified Payroll Solution program, it will know nothing at all about your employees, jobs, payroll wage items, payroll addition, or deduction items.  It will automatically prompt you to tell it about each of the things it has found by having you create a "linked record" for each of these items.  The linked record is tied directly to the corresponding record in QuickBooks, and will hold additional information that is required on the certified payroll report, that QuickBooks has no means of keeping.

For example:

Joe Smith, your employee, will have a QuickBooks record that stores his name, address, social security number, payroll, and compensation information, etc.  Joe will, also, have a linked record in Certified Payroll Solution which will hold information such as, if he is a union member, and if so, what Union Local he belongs to, what his Work or Trade Classification is (is he a Plumber, an Electrician, etc.), what his race is, and how many Federal Withholding Allowances he claims.

Once Certified Payroll Solution "knows", or has this linked record for Joe, it will never prompt you to tell it about Joe again.

After the linked records have been completed, Certified Payroll Solution then starts sorting, compiling, and merging data (much as you would from various reports you generated from QuickBooks in order to complete the reports manually) in order to generate the completed reports for you, ready to sign and mail.

Certified Payroll Solution access your QuickBooks® company file on a "read only basis" - in QuickBooks 2005 and newer versions, this information is validated when you initially grant CPS permission to access your company file.  Any changes made to your company file must be done by a human, as Certified Payroll Solution writes no information back to your file, or changes anything in any manner.

Yes, your QuickBooks data is totally safe.  Intuit has built provisions into the QuickBooks Software Development Kit (SDK), which we use to create CPS, that makes all third party applications follow normal QuickBooks business rules, regardless, of what the third party application's function is.

How Does Certified Payroll Solution work?  Watch a 10 minute video on how Certified Payroll Solution interfaces with QuickBooks by clicking the image to the left.  It should address most questions that you might have.

To learn more about how Certified Payroll Solution was designed, and how we have utilized the QuickBooks Software Development Kit (SDK), read this article - Certified Payroll Solution Program Design; available in the Certified Payroll Solution Training, Support, & Resource Center.

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