Question

Employee expenses tax codes

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
June 25, 2025
1 reply
3 views

We have set up employee expenses and our staff are using these happily.

However, today we have noticed that employees are either removing or changing the tax code on the expense when logging it.

Is there any way to stop them from being able to make changes to the tax code, and if this cannot be blocked, is there any way to get a report on expenses before finalising the pay run?

I have just had to manually check every single employee on the pay run to see if they have expenses, and if they do, if the tax code is correct or needs to be changed. We have told staff to leave the tax codes alone, but clearly we cannot trust them to do so.

We cannot do anything about the incorrect codes logged in finalised pay runs, and given the number of staff & expenses it is unrealistic to manually check every single line every month.

I cannot see a report that will show me what tax code has been logged against an expense type, and I can't find a setting to stop staff from changing the tax code when recording expenses.

There must be some way to improve this so that I'm not manually looking through hundreds of records each month, but can at least pull out a report to show the ones which actually need correcting.

Workforce Payroll

ShyMae

QuickBooks Team

Yes, Su. There's a way to prevent your employees from selecting a tax code by unchecking the Employees can override tax code when submitting expense claims option in your Employee Portal Settings.

Here are the steps to follow:

Navigate to the Payroll menu and select Payroll Settings.
Click on Employee Portal Settings.
Uncheck the Employees can override tax code when submitting expense claims option.
Hit Save.

After following these steps, your employees will no longer be able to select a tax code when submitting their expense claims.

Once you review the expense claims request, select the appropriate tax code, if necessary, as no tax code will be automatically assigned.

In response to your second concern, currently, we do not have a report that details the expense claims and the tax codes associated with them.

To enhance our platform and better serve you, we encourage you to submit your feedback and request for this reporting feature to our product engineering team.

Here's a sample screenshot of how to send it.

For future reference, you can create a Pay Run Audit Report to get a detailed overview of payroll runs, including employee hours, wages, and deductions.

If you have any other questions about managing your employees, we are here to help.

S

Su WMAuthor

Hi, thank you for replying.

Does this part of your response:

"once you review the expense claims request, you'll have to choose the appropriate tax code if necessary, as no tax code will be automatically added"

mean that no tax codes will be added on any expense and they will all need to be manually added when we do the pay run? i.e. every single expense line still needs to be manually checked and set? That's still not suitable when we have a few hundred expenses logged.

C

Carneil_C

Level 6

Yes, Su WM. No tax codes will be automatically assigned to any expense. I'll share some details below.

You’ll need to manually enter tax codes during the pay run, each expense line will require individual review and adjustment. In addition, you can always seek professional assistance from your accountant regarding the tax codes. If you're not affiliated with one, you can use our accountant tool to look for one in your area.

On top of that, you can pull up and customize a payroll report in QBO to give you the flexibility of checking the details of entered expenses. Here's an article you can visit in the future: Run payroll reports.

Feel free to drop by this thread again if you have future concerns about running your payroll or employees, Su WM. I'm more determined to help.

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