The better prepared you are for your workers’ comp audit the easier they are. Using two simple fields in your QuickBooks can make preparing for your audit a 5 minute project not a two day ordeal.
If you open up your vendor details and select the additional info tab you will see some fields that can be used to help you track important non-financial information about your vendors. On the left side of the window is a drop down list called “type” This list can be customized for your business. Creating an item called “Subcontractor” will allow you to pull a quick report that shows all vendors who provide subcontractor services. This “subcontractor” vendor type can then be selected each time you add a new subcontractor to your vendor list.
To the right you will see an area called “custom fields”. This area can be customized for your business needs. Once custom fields are created they will appear in the custom fields area for all vendors. When dealing with subcontractors it would be suggested to create three custom fields for your vendors.
1. Liability Expiration Date
2. Workers’ Compensation Expiration Date
3. Insurance Agent
These fields are not exportable, but can be printed and searched.
At the time of audit a report will need to be printed. To print that report:
- Go to “Lists” / Vendor Profile List/ Vendor Type List
- You can then select the vendor type “subcontractor”
- At the bottom of the page you click the report button and quick report.
- That report can then be modified to your audit date range by clicking on the modify report button.
- While in the modify report section you should check the workers’ compensation expiration option from the columns drop down list.
The final report will show all subcontractors paid during your audit period, their workers compensation dates and your auditor can either work from this list for a random sampling in an in person audit or it can be printed and included in a mail in audit. Certificates should always be filed in paper or electronic form in such a way it will allow you access across fiscal years in order to provide them to the audit company if required.
