For some reason, out of the box, Dynamics GP Canadian Payroll T4 Forms don’t have the employer address. Why? I have no idea… but the information is there to be added easily, and here’s how to add it to your T4 reports for Employer and Employee versions.
Make sure Employer record is fully set up
The first step is to make sure you have the company name, business number and address in the Employer window, as that is where the information on the T4 comes from, for Employer sections. The Employer Name is pulling from the Description field. It would be helpful to call this field “Employer Name” so it’s obvious!
Note: If your company name is too long to fit in the description field, then you will need to edit your T4 forms regardless to adjust the name. The field size for Employer Description is roughly equivalent to the size of the Employer box width on the form, at the default Courier 12 font.
Open up Report Writer - Canadian Payroll dictionary
I’ll skip the pre-amble about how to use Report Writer and best practices. If you are new to this, see my Report Writer series from a few years ago for the details. What I’m writing about today assumes you have a working knowledge of Report Writer concepts already.
- First, start with the Canadian Payroll dictionary when you open Report Writer.
- In the Reports list, assuming your T4 isn’t already modified, you will want to find “P_CPY_SETP_T4_EMPLOYEE” and “P_CPY_SETP_T4_EMPLOYER” and insert them into your modified reports list. These are the reports if you are in the T4 Print window, and select “Laser Employee” and “Laser Employer/RevCan” options.
The modifications to add the address are as follows (same basic steps for each, although you’ll notice on the T4 Employee, there are 2 places you need to add the address).
Field 1: Employer Name
This field is already on the report for you but if your company name is too long to fit in the field, you might need to replace this text or add a second line of text under the name field for the rest of the company name so it appears on two lines in your forms.
Field 2: Address
On the Employer Setup screen, and on the T4, there isn’t room for a large address block. In this example I am assuming you have one line for address and one line for City, Province & Postal Code (next step).
- On the Toolbox, select the CDN Payroll T4 Summary Master table from the drop down list.
- Grab P_Address_1 and drag that field to the report, near the Employer Name. Ignore the fonts and size of the field for now. It’s easier to change multiple pieces of text at the same time after you’re done the next field.
Field 3: City, Province, Postal Code
Continuing from the above example, on the Toolbox, select Calculated Fields. Create a new calculated field, type String. There is a function for this for multi-line addresses where “address 2” might be blank but in this case, we only really need one formula for City, Province, Postal Code so it’s easier just to make a new one. Here are the pieces to the formula:
- From Functions, select the STRIP function and click Add.
- From Fields, select “CDN Payroll T4 Master” from Resources and “P_City” from Fields and click Add.
- Click outside of the right bracket of the function in the formula and click on the CAT operator (concatenate).
- From Constants, change the type to String and type in a comma and a space and click Add. Or if you don’t want a comma, just enter a space and click Add.
- Click on the CAT operator (concatenate).
- From Functions, select the STRIP function and click Add.
- From Fields, select “CDN Payroll T4 Master” from Resources and “P_Province_Code” from Fields and click Add.
- Click outside the right bracket of the function and click on the CAT operator.
- From Constants, change the type to String and type in a space and click Add.
- Click on the CAT operator (concatenate).
- From Functions, select the STRIP function and click Add.
- From Fields, select “CDN Payroll T4 Master” from Resources and “P_Postal_Code” from Fields and click Add.
- Click OK, you’re done, and you can now drag this field onto the report near the Address field.
The end result is something like this (except all on one line!):
STRIP( P_CPY_T4_Summary_1998on.P_City ) # “, " # STRIP( P_CPY_T4_Summary_1998on.P_Province_Code ) # " " # STRIP( P_CPY_T4_Summary_1998on.P_Postal_Code )
If you are modifying the Employee version of the report, drag both fields from the toolbox to the second address block.
Format the Font, Size, Location of the new fields
My recommendation is to format these fields at the same time by clicking on all of the new fields that are the wrong size or font style, while holding the CTRL key. Here’s how I format them quickly:
- Select the fields that are new (don’t select the employer name field yet, unless you added a new text block for a lengthy company name).
- Click CTRL-D to open the Drawing Options and select “Courier (generic)”. In my case, the size defaulted to 12 which was the same size as the rest of the form’s fonts. Click OK.
- On the Arrange tab of the toolbox, click the button to re-size all of the fields to the narrowest (to make them the same size as the calculated field most likely, in my case, that was the shortest and shorter than the Employer Name field, which is the one we all want to be the same size as).
- Now hold down the CTRL button and click on the Employer Name field and click on the button to make them the same size as the longest field (which should be the Employer Name field). Now they should all be the same size.
- Use the Arrange tab as well to align all of the fields to the same left hand location of the Employer Name field.
- At this point, the spacing between the fields wasn’t correct on mine and I had to use the arrow keys to adjust the spacing to make the 3 rows of address data spaced evenly. YMMV depending on where you dragged the fields on your report.
It should look like this when you’re done:
Final Step: grant security to the modified report
If this was newly modified (i.e. it was not already in your modified reports list), go to Alternate/Modified Reports and Forms and grant access to the Modified version of these reports as appropriate and test them. No other security change is needed, assuming the user(s) who print the T4’s already have access to the windows to do so!