QuickBooks New Hire Report for Alaska: Required Fields and Manual Entries

QuickBooks Payroll includes built-in New Hire Reporting forms designed to help employers comply with state-specific filing requirements. For Alaska employers, the form pulls employee data directly from the records set up in the company file — but several fields may require manual attention before the report is ready to submit.

Alaska’s Filing Requirements

Alaska, along with federal law, requires employers to report new hires to the Alaska New Hire Reporting Section within 20 days of the hire date. The report must capture the employee’s name, address, Social Security number, date of birth, first day of work, and whether the employee was rehired or recalled. Company-side details — the employer name, address, and Federal Employer Identification Number — are also required.

The State of Alaska additionally encourages employers to include information about medical benefit availability and whether the employee is a rehire, though these items are not strictly mandated.

Fields QuickBooks Imports Automatically

QuickBooks populates portions of the form using data already stored in each employee’s setup record. Two fields in particular depend on what has been entered during employee onboarding:

• Employee Date of Birth — This is a mandatory field on the Alaska report. QuickBooks will transfer the date of birth from the employee profile, but only if it was entered during setup. Employers who skipped that detail when creating the employee record will need to supply it manually.
• Employee Date of Hire or Rehire — QuickBooks imports the hire date from the employee record. Alaska defines “date of hire” as the first day an individual performs services for wages. If the imported date does not reflect the actual first day worked, it can be corrected directly on the form.

Fields That May Need Manual Entry

Several fields on the Alaska New Hire Report fall outside what QuickBooks can reliably auto-populate, either because they are optional or because they depend on circumstances the software cannot infer.

Medical Benefits Availability

This optional field asks whether health insurance benefits are available to the employee. Employers enter “Yes” if coverage is available and “No” if it is not. Because this depends on the company’s benefit offerings and the employee’s eligibility — information QuickBooks does not track on this form — it must be entered by hand.

First Day of Work

Federal law made this a mandatory field starting in 2012. It is defined as the date an employee first performs paid work. In practice, most employers treat the hire date and the first day of work as the same day, so QuickBooks automatically copies the value from the Date of Hire field into the First Day of Work field. If the two dates differ for a given employee, the imported value should be reviewed and corrected as needed.

Rehired or Recalled

This required field asks whether the employee was rehired or recalled to work. Employers enter “Yes” if that applies and “No” otherwise. QuickBooks does not make this determination automatically, so it must be completed manually for each report.

Getting Help Within the Form

For general guidance on navigating the form window — or for troubleshooting a specific problem with how the report is generating — the Help button on the form window itself provides additional context. QuickBooks also offers further background on the New Hire Reporting Form through its in-product help resources.

The Bottom Line for Alaska Employers

The Alaska New Hire Report in QuickBooks is designed to streamline compliance, but it is not fully hands-off. Employers should confirm that date of birth and hire date were entered in each employee’s profile before generating the report, and be prepared to manually verify the first day of work, medical benefits availability, and rehire status fields. Reviewing these items before submission helps ensure the report meets both state and federal requirements within the 20-day reporting window.