Lesson 4.6: Beginning Balances

If your organization is adopting FastFund Payroll at the very beginning of the calendar year and has not yet issued any paychecks, you can skip this lesson.

However, if you are transitioning to FastFund in the middle of the calendar year after already paying your employees, you must enter Beginning Balances. You must input the Year-to-Date (YTD) totals for all gross wages, withholding taxes, employer taxes, adjustments, and accrued time off for every employee (both active and terminated) paid during the current year up to your FastFund start date.

These YTD amounts are critical because they combine with your new FastFund paychecks to generate accurate quarterly tax filings (like the IRS Form 941) and your year-end W-2s.

Accounting Impact It is important to understand that these beginning balances are posted to FastFund Payroll’s detail transaction table as special “beginning balance” transactions. Because your historical payrolls were likely already recorded in your general ledger through your previous system, entering these beginning balances in the Payroll module does not affect or duplicate your FastFund Accounting general ledger balances.

Prerequisites Before you can enter any employee beginning balances, two things must be true:

1. Your Beginning Balance Date must be set in your global Payroll Settings (which must be at the end of a reporting quarter, such as 03/31, 06/30, or 09/30).
2. You must have already completely set up all global Taxes, Pay Types, and Master Adjustments in the system. You cannot enter a YTD balance for a tax or deduction that does not yet exist in your database.

Entering the Balances To input an employee’s YTD history:

1. Navigate to Lists > Employees and click on the specific employee’s name.
2. Click on the Balances tab.
3. At the very top of the window, enter the employee’s YTD Beginning Sick Hours and Beginning Vacation Hours.

For the financial data, FastFund requires you to enter the YTD balances in a strict, specific order. Click the + icon next to each section to add the corresponding items and their YTD amounts. As you enter data, the system will automatically calculate the Beginning Net Payroll at the top of the screen.

Follow this exact entry sequence:

1. Pay Type: Select the specific pay types (e.g., Regular, Vacation, Overtime) and enter the gross YTD amount paid for each.
2. Payroll Tax: Select all federal, state, and local taxes, including employer-side taxes, and enter the YTD amounts.
3. Other Income: Enter any YTD non-wage income (e.g., Travel Reimbursement).
4. Deduction: Enter YTD amounts for items withheld from the employee’s pay (e.g., Health Insurance).
5. Contribution: Enter YTD amounts for employer-provided benefits (e.g., Employer Retirement Match).

Tip: After entering all data, verify that the calculated “Beginning Net Payroll” exactly matches the employee’s actual YTD net pay from your previous system.

Locking in YTD Amounts Once you have entered and verified the beginning balances for an employee, you must click the LOCK button. Locking the balances secures the data, preventing any inadvertent changes that could compromise your quarterly tax returns or year-end W-2 and W-3 filings. Once locked, the sick and vacation beginning balances are also locked.