Preparing for Tax Time with QuickBooks – Part 4 – Using Memorized Transactions with Payroll

QuickBooks provides you with great tools to make tax preparation faster and easier. The advantages include fast data entry from receipts or manual records, the ability to quickly identify and correct accounting errors, and the ability to, with the click of a button, import your QuickBooks records into tax preparation software like TurboTax. Paychecks and payroll liabilities check involve a posting to a number of accounts, which can slow down the data entry process substantially. Here’s a way to make it much faster.

We are going to create a “memorized transaction” with a template for paychecks and payroll liability checks, complete with instructions. First we open the “Write Checks” form and enter as shown below. We are not going to record this check; we are simply going to memorize it so we can recall it as needed and enter the appropriate employee name and payroll amounts.


Once, we have created the template we are going to memorize it. Depress CTRL-M to give the memorized transaction a name.


Select the “Clear” icon to clear the check form and enter the accounts required for payroll liability checks.


Once, we have created the payroll liability template we memorize it. Depress CTRL-M to give the memorized transaction a name.


Finally, to make the memorized transactions easily accessible we put a shortcut to the memorized transaction list on the Icon bar. Open the memorized transaction list, select View/ Add “Memorized Transaction List” to Icon bar.



Robert Guild is Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor in Austin, TX who conducts CPE courses for CPAs and individual training and group classes to QuickBooks users. His company at www.QBCoach.biz, maintains a sixteen-station QuickBooks lab, providing hands-on training. You can contact him directly at rguild@QBCoach.biz or follow him on twitter at QBPro