My first thought was that you were in manual calculation mode, but you indicate it is only random employees, not every employee.  You do not indicate if it is the same employees all the time though.  If so, then I would suspect you are using recurring transactions and they were originally saved in Manual calculation mode.

We are not using manual calculations and we are not using recurring transactions. All individually done up at payroll time. And yes, random employees, not the same all the time.

Any other ideas?

Most of my ideas are blown out of water by your comment

TrishCHP said:

but when we RECALCULATE taxes, the correct $$ appear. Have checked everything, # of pay periods, payroll tax settings in employee records, all employees making enough to be calculating taxes

I don't understand why you have to go into Adjust mode to recalculate the taxes.  You should be able to do that before you post.  Is the Recalculate button available when you start a paycheque?  If so, then you are in Manual mode when you open the module.  Check the buttons on the toolbar.

I can see CPP not calculating even if you have the checkbox checked if you have entered the wrong year for the employee's birthdate.  That happens more than you'd think, but it doesn't account for EI and Tax.

Are you still in History Mode starting up your company file?

Absolutely not.

So, just for clarification, the only reason we need to ADJUST is because we have 150+ employees, payroll is done more like a data entry function and not all these employees with $0 were caught at time of entry. They were noticed when we did a verification of payroll - then we went in and adjusted, recalculated because we knew it was incorrect, and correct payroll tax $$ appear.

I was testing the Paycheques module but are using the Payroll Cheque Run module?  If so, there is no manual mode, the calculations should be happening all the time for every employee.

I'm out of options in this case.

Anyone else want to jump in?

I hear what you're saying, you're not the only one experienced this issue. Same thing happened to me  two days ago,I was creating a pay cheque for one employee, and noticed all the taxes were zero, which I felt so strange. Like you said when I hit recalculate taxes, the taxes appears again. It's lucky I only dealt with one employee. Suspect a Sage glitch or something? Hope it doesn't happens again

Hey TrishCHP,

Thanks for reaching out. I think I found your account on the backend and everything looks normal, you have payroll access. Was payroll working prior to 2020.1? Richard S. Ridings seems to be right in thinking something is going on with settings. KB 10611 may have a listing for something you haven't already tried.

To enable tax for one employee, for instance:

1. Open the employee record.
2. Select the Taxes tab
3. Make sure Calculate Tax has a checkmark.
4. Select the Personal tab
5. Verify the Birth Date

or

Is the Payroll ID active?

To check:

1. Select Help, About Sage 50..., Support Info.
2. Confirm the Payroll ID is (Active)

If you're still unable to locate the cause, let us know, I can have an L2 experienced with payroll reach out.

Warm Regards,
Erzsi

We've had this happen before.  When we manually calculate taxes for an employee, then the next employee we go to pay, it doesn't calculate the taxes for them - $0 taxes taken.  However, the next employee after that calculates taxes fine.  It seems to only happen to the first employee AFTER we choose to manually calculate taxes for the employee before them.  Seems like a bug in the program, and we just have to remember to hit calculate taxes automatically to ensure the next employee has taxes taken.

Yes, your above #1-#5 all that is fine, and yes of course our payroll id is active. Any other suggestions?

We had Sage login remotely and they did a rebuild of our data BUT couldn't guarantee that would work... REALLY need some solid advice with this especially since I see others having the same issue...

Hi TrishCHP,

Believe I located your support ticket ending 800xxx3379  about this and have asked Sage 50 Support Management to review and have a payroll guru reach out. Will update you wih any news.

Warm Regards,
Erzsi

Update that my colleague Zoranco will be reaching out today

Yes, he did contact us - thank you! We did some maintenance items and we are hoping this will solve the problem but no guarantees. We will be running payroll again last week of March and will advise if there is anything still happening at that time. Thanks again.

Yes he updated saying that he suspects settings to be a culprit. Keep us posted

Just so everyone is on the same page, there was nothing wrong or incorrect in our settings. He suggested we clear out some history that may be bogging things down, but we have no issue with our settings. We could not replicate the problem, but hoping that with the maintenance he did in rebuilding data and us removing some old history, the problem will disappear. But there was NO CLEAR answer nor fix. Just making sure Sage is aware of this especially since as you can see there was another sage client with the same issue... we are hoping its repaired but not positive nor was Zoranco. He did tell us to contact him directly should the issue arise again when we do payroll in 2 weeks...