Understanding Payroll Cycle Reports

During the payroll cycle, you can generate reports that help you to verify tax, earnings, and timecard information for employees. When you set up reports, you can indicate the step in the payroll cycle during which you want the system to generate each report. For example, you might choose to generate the Payroll Register report during pre-payroll processing. You can also create custom reports and set the system up to generate them during various steps of a payroll cycle.

After you process each step in the payroll cycle, you typically need to review the reports and make any necessary corrections before you continue to the next step. Many reports are particularly useful after you have processed pro forma journal entries. For this reason, the payroll cycle includes a reports step, during which you can generate any of the payroll cycle reports that are not set up to be generated during another step of the cycle.

After you process pro forma journal entries, you can print any additional payroll cycle reports that have not been set up to print during another step of the cycle. If you corrected any errors after processing pre-payroll, you can also reprint reports to verify the corrections.

Some reports contain more detailed information when you print them after you print payments and create journal entries. For example, if you set up the Payroll Register report to print during pre-payroll, the report does not include payment numbers. When you print this report after you print payments, the report includes payment numbers.

This diagram illustrates the location of the reports step in the payroll cycle: