Minnesota New Hire Report in QuickBooks: What Employers Need to Know

Minnesota employers using QuickBooks to generate New Hire Reports have run into questions about which fields the software populates automatically, which ones require manual attention, and what the state actually requires to be reported — and when.

The Core Issue

QuickBooks includes a built-in New Hire Reporting Form designed to help Minnesota employers comply with state reporting requirements. However, users preparing the form have found that several fields do not auto-populate correctly — or at all — and the rules around who must be reported, and within what timeframe, are nuanced enough that relying solely on what QuickBooks fills in can leave the report incomplete.

Minnesota’s Reporting Requirements

Minnesota law requires employers to submit new hire reports to the Minnesota New Hire Reporting Center within 20 days of hiring, rehiring, or calling an employee back to work. Employers who file electronically must submit reports in two monthly transmissions spaced no more than 16 days apart.

The obligation covers a broader range of workers than many employers realize:

New employees — Anyone who resides or works in Minnesota and is expected to receive earnings must be reported, even if they work only a single day before being terminated.
Rehires and returning employees — Workers who return after a termination or unpaid leave must be reported. This also applies to employees who remain on the payroll during a break in service or gap in pay and then resume working, including teachers, substitutes, and seasonal staff.
Temporary employees — Staffing agencies must report each worker once upon hire. Re-reporting is not required each time the worker is assigned to a new client, but a rehire report is necessary if there is a break in service or wages.
Independent contractors — Government agencies must report independent contractors they engage. Other employers may voluntarily include contractor information.

Fields That May Need Manual Attention

When generating the New Hire Report in QuickBooks, three fields in particular have caused confusion for Minnesota employers:

Employee Date of Birth

QuickBooks imports the date of birth from the employee setup record. This field is optional for Minnesota’s form, so employers who prefer not to share it can delete the imported value before submitting.

Employee Date of Hire

The hire date is also pulled from employee setup. If the imported date does not reflect the actual hire date — for instance, if the setup record was created before the employee’s true start date — the field can be edited directly on the form.

First Day of Work

This is a mandatory field, and it is defined as the date the employee first performs paid work. QuickBooks attempts to simplify this by automatically copying the Date of Hire into the First Day of Work field. In most cases that transfer is correct, since employers typically treat the hire date and the first day of work as the same. But if the two dates differ — for example, when someone is officially hired on a Monday but does not begin working until Wednesday — the auto-populated value will be wrong and must be corrected manually.

What This Means in Practice

The takeaway for employers is straightforward: QuickBooks can produce the report and pre-fill much of it, but the output should be reviewed field by field before submission. The most common pitfall is assuming the Date of Hire and First Day of Work are always identical. When they are not, leaving the auto-populated value unchanged means the report goes to the state with inaccurate information.

Beyond the form mechanics, employers should also confirm they are reporting everyone Minnesota requires — particularly short-tenured workers, seasonal returnees, and rehires after unpaid gaps, all of which are easy to overlook. For general QuickBooks payroll help and related troubleshooting, additional resources are available.

The form window itself includes a Help button for guidance on navigating the report and addressing field-specific issues.