QuickBooks Prefills Arkansas Form ARW-3, But Users Must Verify Key Fields

QuickBooks Desktop users preparing year-end Arkansas wage statements can generate Form ARW-3 — the Arkansas Transmittal of Wage and Tax Statements — directly from within the software, though community questions suggest some filers struggle to locate the form and understand which fields need manual attention versus which QuickBooks populates automatically.

What Form ARW-3 Is For

The ARW-3 serves as a cover sheet — a transmittal form — for the Arkansas copies of W-2 statements. Employers send it to the state’s Withholding Branch along with copies of each employee’s W-2. The form is due by February 28 of the year following the tax year being filed.

One point the accepted answer emphasizes: do not include any payment with the ARW-3 and W-2 packet. No cash, checks, or money orders should accompany the transmittal. The ARW-3 is purely a summary and cover document.

It also does not replace the AR3MAR (used by monthly filers) or the AR941A (used by annual filers). Those are separate filings with their own requirements and deadlines.

Mailing Options and a Deadline Trap

Employers have flexibility in how they submit the ARW-3. You can mail it together with your annual reconciliation form — the AR941A — or send it separately. But there is a timing catch worth noting.

The AR941A carries a due date of January 31, which is earlier than the ARW-3’s February 28 deadline. If you choose to mail both forms together in a single envelope, the entire package must be postmarked by the earlier date — January 31. Bundling them does not extend the AR941A deadline.

The mailing address for the transmittal and W-2 copies is:

Withholding Branch P.O. Box 8055 Little Rock, AR 72203-8055

What QuickBooks Fills In Automatically

For most users whose company, payroll, and employee data is fully entered in QuickBooks, the software prepopulates the ARW-3 fields with little or no manual entry required. The auto-filled areas include:

• Company name, address, and state ID — drawn from your QuickBooks company setup.
• Number of employees — tracked based on employees who had tax withheld during the year. This figure may be modifiable if it needs correction.
• Total state income tax withheld — the full-year withholding amount, which should match the total Arkansas tax withheld shown on the W-2s.
• Total state wages, tips, and other compensation — the full-year wage total.

Users should still review every field, even the ones QuickBooks fills. The answer notes that if any company, payroll, or employee data was missing or incomplete in QuickBooks, the form may contain gaps or inaccuracies.

Fields That May Need Manual Review

The state ID number on the ARW-3 follows a specific format that QuickBooks may or may not have captured correctly. It should be 12 characters long: the first eight characters must be numbers, followed by a hyphen, and the last three characters must be “WHW.” If your QuickBooks setup does not store the ID in this exact format, you will need to correct it on the form.

Another field to watch is the question about whether the annual report covers more than one Federal Employer Identification Number. If your filing spans multiple FEINs, you must indicate which ones are covered directly on the form.

Where to Turn Within QuickBooks

For fields that QuickBooks did not auto-populate, the form window itself includes a Help button. Clicking it opens guidance on navigating the form and troubleshooting specific issues — including tracing where the numbers on the form originated within your QuickBooks data.

The software also offers two related functions that users filing the ARW-3 may find useful. You can summarize your payroll data in Microsoft Excel for your own records or reconciliation. You can also save a completed copy of the form as a PDF before submitting it, which creates a clean archival record of what was filed.

The Bottom Line

The ARW-3 is a straightforward transmittal form, and QuickBooks handles most of the data entry. The issues users run into tend to center on locating the form in the first place, verifying the state ID format, confirming that withheld tax and wage totals match the W-2s, and navigating the dual-deadline scenario when mailing the transmittal alongside the AR941A. A careful review of all fields — especially the manually editable ones — before printing and mailing is the step most likely to prevent a filing error.