West Virginia New Hire Report in QuickBooks: What Employers Need to Know
QuickBooks payroll users preparing West Virginia's mandatory New Hire Report may encounter confusion over required fields, auto-populated data, and submission timing.
QuickBooks Desktop payroll users in West Virginia have raised questions about the New Hire Report — specifically what the state requires, which fields QuickBooks fills automatically, and where manual entry may be necessary before submission to the state.
The Filing Requirement
West Virginia employers must submit new hire information to the State Directory of New Hires within 14 days of hiring or rehiring an employee. The obligation applies to any employer or labor organization doing business in the state that anticipates paying earnings to a worker who resides or works in West Virginia.
The requirement is broad. Employees must be reported even if they work only a single day before termination, provided the reporting deadline has not yet been met. Rehires and returning employees — including teachers, substitutes, and seasonal workers — must also be reported after a separation, a leave without pay, or any break in service or gap in wages.
Temporary agencies carry their own obligation: they must report any employee placed on assignment. Workers need to be reported once per engagement and do not require re-reporting for each new client assignment — unless a break in service or gap in wages occurs, at which point a rehire report is triggered.
What QuickBooks Handles Automatically
QuickBooks generates the New Hire Report form using data already stored in each employee’s setup record. Several fields populate without manual intervention:
- Employee Date of Birth imports directly from the employee profile. Because this field is optional under West Virginia guidelines, employers can delete the value if they prefer not to share it.
- Employee Date of Hire also pulls from the employee setup. Users can edit the date on the form if it does not reflect the correct hire date.
- First Day of Work auto-populates by copying the Date of Hire value. Federal law has treated this as a mandatory field, defined as the date an employee first performs paid work. For most employers the hire date and first day of work coincide, so the automatic transfer covers the majority of cases. However, if those two dates differ — for instance, when someone is hired in advance but starts working later — users should verify and correct the First Day of Work field before submitting.
What the State Requires vs. What It Encourages
West Virginia mandates the following data points on every new hire report:
- Employer name and address
- Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN)
- Employee name and address
- Employee Social Security Number
- State of hire (for multistate employers)
- Date of hire
- First day of work
The state also encourages — but does not require — two additional pieces of information: the employee’s date of birth and whether medical insurance is available through the employer.
Where Users Get Stuck
The confusion users report tends to center on fields that QuickBooks fills automatically but that may still need review. The Date of Birth field is the most common example: QuickBooks includes it if it exists in the employee record, but because it is optional at the state level, employers who do not wish to disclose it must manually remove it from the form.
The First Day of Work field creates a similar issue. QuickBooks assumes it matches the hire date, which is usually correct. But when those dates diverge, the auto-populated value will be wrong unless the user catches and corrects it.
For general guidance on the form window itself, QuickBooks includes a Help button accessible directly from the report screen. That in-product help covers navigation and basic troubleshooting for the form.
Bottom Line
The West Virginia New Hire Report in QuickBooks pulls most required data from existing employee records, but users should review auto-populated fields — particularly Date of Birth and First Day of Work — before submitting to the state. Missing the 14-day window or submitting incomplete information can create compliance issues, so verifying the form against the state’s required-field list is worth the extra step each time a new hire or rehire occurs.