Tax Jurisdictions

Tax Jurisdictions

Tax Jurisdictions help you keep payroll and sales tax straight when you work across more than one state, city, or special tax district. You describe the places you actually work and the taxes each one charges, tie each job to the right places, and then hand clean, location-by-location reports to your bookkeeper or payroll provider. Nothing here is hardcoded, you build your own tax world, so it fits your trade and your states.

1. Set up your jurisdictions. Navigate to Setup Items > Tax Jurisdictions.

• Add a place: Add each place you work, usually a state, and you can narrow it to a city, county, school district, or special district when a local tax applies. Give it a clear name (for example, "OH - Blue Ash"), that name becomes the label you'll see on your reports.
• Add the taxes that place charges: For each place, list the taxes it levies, state withholding, a local earnings or payroll tax, sales/use tax, gross receipts, contractor excise, and so on. Add as many as the location actually charges; if your area has a tax that isn't in the list, you can add it without any setup help.
• Add your work types: Define the kinds of work you do (for example, real-property improvement, tangible goods, or service), since some taxes only apply to certain work.

2. Assign a job's jurisdictions. Open a job from the Jobs list to reach its detail view, then use the Tax & Jurisdiction panel.

• The panel has five dropdowns: one primary (payroll) jurisdiction, plus separate ones for sales, income, gross receipts, and business activity.
• The four non-payroll dropdowns inherit the payroll jurisdiction automatically, so for most jobs you only pick one place and you're done. Only change one of the others when that tax is actually owed somewhere different.

3. Override a single time entry. For the rare punch worked somewhere other than the job's usual location, open that entry's detail page and use the Jurisdiction & Work panel to set the correct place for just that one entry. The job's own settings stay untouched.

4. Run the reports. Navigate to Employees > Reports:

• Payroll by Jurisdiction: hours and gross pay broken down by state, then local area, then employee.
• Certified Payroll: a worksheet for public or prevailing-wage jobs.
• Revenue & Sales Tax: revenue and sales tax collected by location.

Hand these to your bookkeeper or payroll provider. Best Decision Project Tools does the location math and feeds the allocation; your payroll provider and QuickBooks Online still do the actual filing.

Two things to know: overtime lands in the jurisdiction where the post-40 hours were actually worked, not wherever the week started. And any hours the app couldn't tie to a jurisdiction show up under a "Review Needed" line, so nothing is ever silently dropped, you can spot and fix it before payroll.