how do I make an employee inactive?

Thank you for reaching out and sharing your concerns regarding the billing for your QuickBooks Payroll service, @lg59. I completely understand how receiving invoices that don’t seem to align with your actual payroll activity can be challenging. It’s always important to ensure that you’re only being charged for the services and employees that reflect your real business needs, so your attention to this detail is well warranted.

To clarify, QuickBooks does not issue refunds for charges related to active employees. It’s important to understand how the billing system works. QuickBooks Payroll charges are based on the number of employees marked as “active” in your payroll account during the billing cycle, regardless of whether you actually ran payroll for all of them that month. If an employee is listed as active, the system assumes you intend to maintain them on payroll and, therefore, bills you accordingly.

Moving forward, be sure to update the status of any employee you do not want to be billed for by marking them as Terminated, Unpaid leave of absence, Not on payroll, or Deceased. Please refer to the attached screenshot for detailed information on the different employee statuses and which ones incur billing charges.

To update the employee's status, you can follow these steps:

1. Choose the name of the employee whose status you want to change in the Employee's list.
2. In the Action dropdown menu, choose Change status.
3. From the Status dropdown, select Terminated, Unpaid leave of absence, Not on payroll, or Deceased.
4. Click Save.

I hope this explanation helps clarify how QuickBooks Payroll billing works and why managing employee statuses is so important to avoid unexpected charges. Thank you again for your attention to this matter and for trusting us with your QuickBooks Payroll service. Please feel free to reach out anytime if you need further clarification or assistance. We'll be right here to help. Take care!