Opening W-2 Quarters and Benefit Years

If you use Vision Payroll, your processing cycle will include opening new W-2 quarters four times each year. You must also open a new benefit year whenever you need to start tracking employee time earned and taken for a new benefit year.

Open New W-2 Quarter

You perform quarterly W-2 initialization at the end of each calendar quarter. You can print a 940 Worksheet (if necessary), 941 Worksheet, State Unemployment Worksheet, and Quarterly State Income Tax Worksheet at any time for any quarter. You must, however, open a new W-2 quarter prior to processing the first payroll in that quarter.

This procedure affects payroll data only. It does not affect any other Vision data.

Use Utilities > Open New W-2 Quarter.

Opening New Benefit Accrual Years

Open a new benefit year whenever you need to start tracking employee time earned and taken for a new benefit year. You can have only one active benefit accrual year. You cannot have different active benefit years for different employees.

Opening a new benefit accrual year zeroes out all employees’ year-to-date accrual totals, including year-to-date hours earned and taken. The current year’s ending balance for a benefit plan becomes the starting balance for the new year.

This initialization procedure affects benefit accrual data only; it does not affect any other Vision data.

Use Utilities > Open New Benefit Year.

Audit Trail Implications

When you open a new W-2 quarter or a new benefit accrual year, Vision records the activity on the Posting Log Review report. The entry displays as an AL transaction type, indicating an audit log posting. This information can be used as an audit trail to track all changes that update your database in a specified accounting period.