NSF for Direct Deposit Payroll

Challenge for the Week
A client processed and sent direct deposit payroll via QuickBooks Do-It-Yourself payroll service last month. When QuickBooks tried to withdrawal the funds from the bank account, there were insufficient funds to cover the payroll. In response, QuickBooks voided the sent paychecks in the check register and added the memo “VOID: Funds Not Available”. Apparently, QuickBooks then attempted, successfully, to withdrawal the funds paycheck by paycheck. QuickBooks then re-entered the paychecks (since the originally sent ones were voided). This all happened without the bookkeeper’s knowledge.
The problem was that the paychecks re-created by QuickBooks were actually never “sent” (although they were processed), had no lightning bolt mark and so were waiting in the queue to send. When attempting to send the current payroll, a message appeared saying that QuickBooks was unable to process direct deposit paychecks before a given date, and sending of the current payroll was automatically aborted.

The Fix?
The only solution I could figure was to “unvoid” the paychecks marked as “sent” by re-entering the payroll data that was originally sent within each paycheck. That was fun. Then the duplicate, unsent paychecks which QuickBooks entered when funds became sufficient were deleted. This allowed the YTD payroll, the Direct Deposit Payroll and Payroll Tax liability accounts to be correct.

If there is a more efficient way to correct this QuickBooks payroll fiasco, I’d love to hear it!