Setting up Employees for a Construction Company

Construction companies can have complex payrolls to manage because they may have a mix of union and non-union employees, as well as complicated reporting requirements. In general, you need to know the following information before you can set up your employee records in Sage Simply Accounting:

• Deductions Check with your local tax authority and labor boards, or your accountant, for details on these issues, then use Sage Simply Accounting deductions fields to set up the required deductions. You can also subscribe to a payroll plan which automatically calculates employee earnings, deductions, and taxes.
• Pay rates and charge out rates Do you charge your customer an hourly rate that is higher than the rate you pay your employee? If an employee receives benefits, will their charge-out rate cover these expenses?
• Chargeable service activities Once you have determined your charge-out rates, you can easily set up chargeable service activities, then, as a project progresses, record employee time spent on each activity.

How do I track labor costs in Sage Simply Accounting?

Employees usually have wage expenses tracked by default in the account 5300 Wages. You can also create additional payroll expenses and link them to user-defined expense accounts to track specific labor costs.

Job categories are a convenient way to track revenues and expenses for employees who submit time slips. For example, if you create a sales job category, you can track the revenue on sales invoices generated by your sales staff.

When you set up employees, you can assign an employee to a payroll expense group where each group member performs a similar job function. As a result, you can track associated wage expenses separately by group. (Premium)

What do you want to do?

Set up employees

Set up user-defined payroll expense accounts

Set up chargeable service activities

Set up a job category

Set up payroll expense groups (Premium)

Account for owner's or partner's time

Track payroll expenses by project

Learn more about construction/contractor setup options