QuickBooks Hawaii UC-B6 Report: What It Fills In and What You Check
QuickBooks prefills most of Hawaii's quarterly unemployment form UC-B6, but employers must verify totals, excess wages, and employee data before filing.
QuickBooks Desktop includes a built-in payroll report designed to help Hawaii employers complete Form UC-B6, the Quarterly Wage, Contribution and Employment and Training Assessment Report. The form covers unemployment insurance tax on wages paid during a calendar quarter, and QuickBooks attempts to prefill most of the fields automatically using existing company, payroll, and employee data. Even so, employers are responsible for reviewing what the software filled in and completing anything left blank.
What the UC-B6 Report Covers
The UC-B6 is a controlled form. It cannot be downloaded or reprinted from QuickBooks or any other software — Hawaii only accepts the original forms issued directly to each employer. What QuickBooks produces is a supporting report that mirrors the form’s structure, giving employers the numbers they need to transcribe onto the official document.
Employers with nine or more employees must submit their quarterly contribution and wage reports electronically through the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. Smaller employers mail the completed form to the State Tax Collector in Honolulu. The filing deadline is the last day of the month following the close of the calendar quarter.
How QuickBooks Populates the Key Lines
When all payroll data has been entered correctly throughout the quarter, most fields require no manual input. The report walks through several line items that commonly raise questions:
Lines 4 through 6 — Total wages. Line 4 sums the wages shown on the current page only. Line 5 carries the total from any continuation sheets, which QuickBooks generates as Form UC-B6-A when a business has more than eight employees. Line 6 is the grand total of all wages paid for the quarter. If that figure is zero, QuickBooks enters “No Payroll” — and active employers with no payroll during the quarter are still required to submit the form with that notation.
Line 7 — Excess wages. QuickBooks calculates this by subtracting net taxable wages on line 8 from total quarterly wages on line 6.
Line 9 — Contributions due. This reflects the unemployment insurance tax owed based on the taxable wages reported.
Employee Listing Details
QuickBooks only includes employees who actually received wages during the quarter. Anyone with zero wages for the period will not appear on the report. Additionally, if an employee’s Social Security number is missing from their profile, that field is left blank on the form — employers should verify all SSNs are entered before filing.
When Numbers Look Wrong
If a figure on the UC-B6 report does not match expectations, the issue almost always traces back to underlying payroll data. Wages that were recorded incorrectly, paychecks dated to the wrong quarter, or employee profiles missing key details will all produce inaccurate totals. Running a payroll summary for the same quarter and comparing the wage totals is the fastest way to isolate discrepancies.
For broader help troubleshooting payroll reporting problems in QuickBooks Desktop, verifying that each paycheck posts to the correct quarter and that employee records are complete will resolve most mismatches.
Saving and Exporting the Report
QuickBooks allows users to save a copy of the completed payroll form as a PDF for their records. The software also supports exporting payroll data to a spreadsheet, which can be useful for reconciliation or for employers who need to build a custom wage summary before transcribing figures onto the official UC-B6.
What to Watch For
The most common stumbling block employers encounter is assuming the QuickBooks report is a substitute for the official form. It is not. The report is a preparation tool — the actual UC-B6 must come from the state. Employers should also confirm their filing method, since the electronic filing requirement for businesses with nine or more employees means the QuickBooks report serves as a data source rather than a printable return in those cases.
Reviewing every field the software left blank, confirming that all employees with quarterly wages appear on the report, and cross-checking the total wages line against a quarterly payroll summary will catch nearly all errors before the form is submitted.