Payroll Expense on General Ledger Reconciled to Forms W-2

Hey there, @FLBill. Please know that the FUTA, SUTA, and other companies paid taxes aren't included in your W-2 form.

The correct calculation for this should have been:

Payroll expense = Gross wages + Company paid tax/contribution. While the W-2 form is for employee-paid wages and taxes.

Also, there's a separate calculation and COA for FUTA and SUTA.

Each tax varies if you're paying for the company, regular employees, and/or contractors. Check out this article for more information: Payroll taxes: What they are, who pays, and how to calculate.

You can review it by creating a payroll summary report to determine which taxes are off and which employees might have tax miscalculations. 

Here's how:

1. Go to  Reports and select Employees and Payroll.
2. Pick Payroll Summary.
3. Adjust the date range appropriately.
4. In the Show Columns dropdown, choose Employee.
5. Move to the  Customize Report tab, then the Filters tab.
6. From the Choose Filter section, scroll down to Select Name from the filter list.
7. Click an employee in the Name dropdown, 
8. Then OK.

Once identified, see if it's affecting employees or just one.

On top of that, I highly recommend reaching out to an accountant to further help you with the calculations and determine the different accounts affected when reconciling payroll expenses since some companies added fringe benefits that resulted in total difference.

In case you want to know how to process W-2 submission electronically, feel free to visit this article: File your W-2 and W-3 forms.

Never hesitate to return here for additional questions about reconciling payroll transactions, just leave a reply below.