About this template
The payroll liability balance nobody can explain
Somewhere the employer FICA share got booked as a liability instead of an expense, a state unemployment payment never matched, and a garnishment landed in the wrong account.
It's been like that for four months because nobody wants to open it.
The split is where the errors hide
This is the rule that catches real problems: employee withholding is a liability you hold and remit. The employer share is an expense. Confusing the two is the most common payroll coding error in a small business, and it's invisible in a balance total.
Four specific checks:
- FICA — employer matches employee. Unequal means one is mis-coded.
- Unemployment (FUTA/SUTA) — employer-only. Any employee-side amount is an error.
- Benefits — employer contribution is expense; the employee premium is a deduction, not an expense.
- Garnishments — always a liability, never an expense.
Findings name the account and the amount: employer FICA of $1,240 is coded to a liability account; employee FICA is $1,190; these should match and one is mis-coded.
Two tie-outs, both printed
gross − employee_taxes − employee_deductions = net_pay
total_cash_out = net_pay + tax_deposits + benefit_remittances + fees
If either doesn't hold, that's a finding with the exact amount. Never plug — a variance is reported with candidate causes (a misclassified employer share, an unmatched remittance, a period cut-off), never smoothed away.
Stale liabilities are a red flag
Every open liability gets aged against your deposit schedule. Anything older than one period means a deposit was missed or a payment never matched.
What you supply
Your own Claude Code login, plus two exports into ~/payroll/exports/ — a payroll
register with the tax and deduction breakout, and your ledger's payroll liability
accounts (QuickBooks: Payroll Liability Balances + Payroll Summary).
No API key. Exports are the input, which is also why nothing can post or file.
If your register lacks the employer/employee breakout the split checks can't run — and it says so rather than guessing.
Where this stops
NOT TAX ADVICE on line one. It does not post journal entries, file returns, or
pay a liability.
It won't state deposit schedules or penalties as fact — it says "confirm your deposit schedule", because they vary by lookback and they change. Exempt/non-exempt questions and state requirements route to the For your CPA section.
Verified on build: the skill, the working tree, both guards, the split rule, all four checks and the never-plug rule are present on a fresh fork. Running it on your own books is yours to do.