The Payroll Annualizer turns a single paystub into a full-year estimate of a client's wages, withholding, deductions, and net pay. Grab the most recent paystub, enter the per-paycheck and year-to-date numbers, and Kerdora projects the rest of the year for you.
It's most useful mid-year: estimating annual wages for a tax scenario, checking whether withholding is on pace, or figuring out what a job actually produces in monthly cash flow.
Where to Find It
Open any client and click the calculator icon at the top of the page, then pick Payroll Annualizer. You can keep several annualizers per client — one per job or paystub — as tabs across the top. Click New to add one, or use Copy and Delete under Scenario actions on the right.
Setting It Up
Start with the basics at the top:
Person — which household member this paystub belongs to
Job label — a name for the job, so multiple annualizers stay distinguishable
Tax year — the year you're projecting
Pay date — the date on the paystub you're working from
End date — where the projection stops, usually December 31
Pay frequency — weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly
From those, Kerdora calculates Pay periods remaining between the pay date and the end date. You can type over it with your own number; click the refresh button next to the field to go back to the calculated value.
Entering the Paystub Lines
The input section mirrors a paystub. For each line you enter the per-pay-period amount and the year-to-date amount, and Kerdora annualizes it: YTD plus the per-period amount times the remaining pay periods.
Line types:
Gross wages
Bonus, Overtime income, and Tip income
Pre-tax retirement deferrals (401k, 403b, etc.)
Section 125 / pre-tax deductions not subject to FICA (health premiums, FSA)
Other pre-tax deductions - FICA taxable
Post-tax deductions
Federal tax withholding and State tax withholding
Non-taxable reimbursements
Two behaviors worth knowing:
Bonus, overtime, and tips use the year-to-date amount as the annual amount. They're irregular, so Kerdora doesn't project them forward by pay period. If you expect more (say, a year-end bonus), add it to the YTD figure yourself.
Lines can carry an annual maximum. Useful for capped items like 401k deferrals: if the projection would blow past the cap, Kerdora limits the annual amount and flags that the maximum was applied.
You can add multiple lines of the same type (two retirement deferrals, several post-tax deductions) and remove any line you don't need.
Reading the Outputs
The Outputs panel on the right updates live:
Gross payroll — wages plus bonus, overtime, and tips for the year
Federal taxable wages — gross pay minus pre-tax deductions; this is the W-2 Box 1 estimate, and the number to use for wages in a tax scenario
Social Security wages and Medicare wages — gross pay minus Section 125 deductions
Federal withholding — projected total for the year
Net payroll cash flow — what actually hits the bank account for the year, after every deduction and withholding
Monthly net payroll — the same thing divided by 12, handy for cash flow conversations
A Workflow That Works
Ask the client for their most recent paystub.
Enter the per-period and YTD numbers straight off it.
Use Federal taxable wages as the wage input in a tax scenario under Planning > Taxes, and compare projected Federal withholding against the scenario's safe harbor target.
Use Monthly net payroll when you're building or sanity-checking the client's cash flow.
Common Questions
The pay periods remaining looks wrong.
Check the pay frequency and the pay date. The count is the number of paychecks after the pay date through the end date, so a stub dated December 20 with biweekly pay may genuinely have zero periods left. You can always type in your own number.
Why isn't my bonus being projected forward?
Bonus, overtime, and tips are treated as year-to-date only, since they don't repeat predictably each paycheck. Enter the full amount you expect for the year in the YTD field.
Does this change the client's income data?
No. The Payroll Annualizer is a standalone calculator. Carry the outputs into the client's income or a tax scenario yourself.