QuickBooks Colorado Form DR 1093: Annual W-2 Transmittal Field Guide
QuickBooks prefills most of Colorado's Form DR 1093, but account-number formatting and amended-return gaps trip up filers at year-end.
QuickBooks Desktop handles the heavy lifting for Colorado’s Form DR 1093 — the Annual Transmittal of State W-2 Forms — but several fields and edge cases still catch users off guard during year-end filing. Here is what the community has established about getting this form right.
What Form DR 1093 Is
Form DR 1093 is the transmittal sheet used to send the state copy of W-2s to the Colorado Department of Revenue. For active withholding accounts, the form is due on the last day of January following the year in which withholdings were made. If that date falls on a weekend or holiday, the deadline moves to the next business day. For closed accounts, the form is due within 30 days of the business closure.
One important wrinkle: if you electronically file your W-2s, you only need to send Form DR 1093 if there is a balance due or an overpayment.
A separate form — DR 1106 — is used to transmit the state copy of 1099s, so users should not confuse the two.
How QuickBooks Handles the Form
QuickBooks prefills most fields on DR 1093 automatically. In the typical case, if all company, payroll, and employee data lives in QuickBooks, you will not need to manually enter much — if anything. The software pulls withholding figures and employer information directly from your payroll records.
Users should still review every field QuickBooks did not fill in. The form window includes a Help button for general guidance on navigating the form and troubleshooting specific issues.
The Account-Number Formatting Trap
One of the most commonly encountered issues involves the account-number field. QuickBooks fills this in automatically, but the formatting matters. The number must be eight digits long.
If your Colorado account number uses the format with a dash — for example, where the number appears as two digits, a hyphen, then five digits — QuickBooks strips the dash and prepends a zero. The result should look like an eight-digit number with a leading zero.
This automatic reformatting has caused confusion for users who do not recognize their own account number in the field and assume QuickBooks entered it incorrectly. In most cases, the transformation is intentional and correct.
Amended Returns: A Known Limitation
QuickBooks does not support filing amended returns on Form DR 1093. The checkbox exists on the form to indicate an amended filing, but the software will not complete the process for you.
Colorado’s Department of Revenue requires a separate amended return for each period. The amended return must show all tax columns as corrected — not merely the differences — and it replaces the original return entirely. Users who need to amend must handle this outside of QuickBooks’ automated workflow.
Penalty and Interest Calculations
For returns filed or payments made after the due date, Colorado assesses a penalty of 5% of the tax due or $5.00, whichever is greater. An additional half-percent accrues for each additional month of lateness, up to a maximum of 12% of the tax due. The minimum late-filing penalty is $5.00.
Interest is computed on the balance of tax due at the current statutory rate if the return is filed after the deadline. QuickBooks does not automatically calculate these penalty and interest figures, so users must enter them manually based on Colorado’s rates.
Missing Employer Identification Numbers
If the federal employer identification number is not available, the form allows entry of the Social Security numbers of the company’s officers instead. This is an edge case but one that users have encountered, particularly for new businesses that have not yet received an EIN.
Exporting and Saving Form Data
For users who need to work with their payroll data outside of QuickBooks — whether for reconciliation or record-keeping — the software supports summarizing payroll data in Microsoft Excel. The form can also be saved as a PDF for your records, which is worth doing before submitting the transmittal.
The Bottom Line
Form DR 1093 is one of the more straightforward state transmittals in QuickBooks, but the account-number reformatting, the lack of amended-return support, and the manual penalty and interest entries are the areas where users most often stumble. Reviewing every prefilled field before filing — especially the account number — remains the best safeguard against a rejected transmittal.