Advance balances in payroll

Forum|Forum|7 months ago
December 8, 2025
1 reply
6 views

We have several employees (two active, the rest inactive) with Advance Pay Balances. These advances were paid back, but still show in their profile. There is no balance in the GL, showing that they were paid. How do I get rid of these balances? I am not very proficient yet with Quickbooks, so please do a Quickbooks for Dummies response!

QuickBooks Desktop

RazzieE

QuickBooks Team

Hi there, @LauriePB2658. Welcome to the Community.

I appreciate you sharing the details about your two active employees and their advance balances.

Before we move forward, when you say there's no balance showing in your General Ledger (GL), which specific account did you check? This helps confirm that the advances were fully repaid on the accounting side.

To clear the balance in an employee's profile, open each employee and locate the paycheque where the advance was recorded. Find the payroll item used for the advance and enter the amount as a negative number and this will offset the balance. A positive amount will increase the balance, so be sure the entry is negative.

If you have any follow-up questions, please don't hesitate to click the Reply button.

LauriePB2658Author

The GL shows no amounts owing for these employees. The problem is that the total is comprised of several small amounts over the course of 15 years. Do I have to adjust one at a time? Also, I don't feel comfortable changing cheques that have already been settled. What are the ramifications of this?

Is there no quicker way than to adjust each amount?

What about the inactive employees with balances showing on their records? Also, most of them are many small amounts.

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