RUN Powered by ADP® vs. QuickBooks Online

Anyone running a service or mobile business would love the ease of clocking in and out with GPS services. Small and medium sized businesses looking to offload some of their accounting and HR functionality would all appreciate it. I helped my brother-in-laws housecleaning business get set up with RUN Powered by ADP®, as well as a friend's dry cleaning company.

Incentivized

QBO is a great solution for small and midsize companies. If the goal is to record all transactions and pull reliable financial reports, QBO is a great option. QBO is also a great solution if most operations are run in a system like Ramp. It syncs well with systems like that and turns the data into something management can use to make decisions. QBO is great because so many people use it. It is easy to find training online, and many people have experience with it.

Incentivized

• Payroll runs are consistent, timely, and error‑free, even when handling multiple pay rates, deductions, or changes. Direct deposits process smoothly and predictably.
• RUN Powered by ADP® manages federal, state, and local tax withholding, filings, and payments without requiring manual oversight. This significantly reduces compliance risk and administrative workload.
• Common actions—running payroll, adding new employees, updating pay rates—are straightforward and guided, which helps prevent mistakes.

Incentivized

• Workflows for accounts payable invoice review are terrific.
• Bill payment allows you to pay vendors online via ACH or check without having to write a physical check, which reduces admin time.
• The cloud based login lends well to a remote or hybrid work environment for staff.
• QuickBooks Online allows you to pre-configure vendors' general ledger expense accounts. This helps with general ledger coding accuracy and consistency.
• QuickBooks Online integrates with Rippling HRIS, Coast, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, etc., which lends well to an efficient month-end closing and reduced administrative time.

Incentivized

• I do wish there were additional custom deductions available rather than a limited amount.
• Sometimes employees have trouble accessing their account after the initial invite has been sent.
• Sometimes employee accounts get locked due to a reused email if their profile is deleted before they've signed up. Only a call to support can correct it.

Incentivized

• I dislike that the online bill pay option through QuickBooks is required for their invoicing.
• The auto-fill portion of the customer setup, specifically the company name, is listed, but it also auto-fills in the name portion, which is inconvenient and time-consuming to remove.

Incentivized

It is much better than the payroll system I used previously. The integrations that RUN has for on-boarding new hires are very convenient when they work properly. It saves a tremendous amount of time being able to email a link to new employees that allows them to enter much of their own demographic information. Payroll feature alerts me when someone's pay is significantly less or more than usual.

Incentivized

It like the product 'right out of the box' and I trust Intuit will continually improve it over the years based on my experience with their desktop products. The large providers of Apps makes customizing the entire package relatively easy and seamless for a wide variety of business types.

Incentivized

I have been using this system for years and they have actually made it easier and easier. The system is always making great upgrades that don't necessarily require any additional information or training. I love when I log in and see a new feature or button that I get to use to make my life easier!

Incentivized

Beyond being overkill for a small org's needs, QBO is constantly stealing screen real estate and attention by hammering users for account upgrades, connecting to one of their approved consultants or buying add-ons. The idea of using a simple configurable bookeeping and light accounting interface is completely missing. At the very least, we should be able to hide functions like inventory that we will never use.

Incentivized

We've had very little issue with RUN availability, only a couple times there were outages when least expected which occurred on our actual payroll due date

Incentivized

We have rarely had outages in the last 10 years. I can only recall 2 times in the last 10 years where we were not able to access our client files.

Incentivized

ADP Run loads a bit slowly at times, once I put in my credentials. However, that said, I think my perception of the time it takes is impacted by our "instant gratification" expectation of being able to get into everything quickly.

Incentivized

Everything process has its bugs lately with the new interface. Nothing has worked smoothly since this all began last month.

Incentivized

I appreciated having that issue finally take care of. it was extremely disheartening to see the issue had not been resolved. I also had my employees looking to me and thinking I was not trying to resolve the issue so it reflected poorly on my character. I do not know if i was because of a miscommunication, but nonetheless I was happy it was taken care of

Incentivized

In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.

Incentivized

they helped up with the 1st payroll after that we were fine - it is very user friendly- they wanted to be sure everything had imported correctly.

Incentivized

very easy to learn i think it took maybe one payroll to have it down and we were up and running

Incentivized

Make sure there's plenty of time between payrolls for the implementation and be sure to test all the manually inputted fields.

Incentivized

The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations

Incentivized

Based on our experience, RUN Powered by ADP® was selected by our small business because our owner was seeking a robust, all-in-one payroll and HR solution that scales with our growth. It allowed us to move away from manual spreadsheets and our less sophisticated payroll systems to ensure accurate tax compliance.

Incentivized

As a freelance bookkeeper, the Desktop version of QuickBooks Online doesn't allow for ease of access from any device. Having to be on a computer with the software downloaded creates additional work to gain access to all required filings etc. Also, I personally find the linking functionality on the Online version to be much more streamlined and user friendly.

Every summer, we hire three new college interns who have to be entered into the system. They can enter their information themselves, which takes a load off me. The onboarding is quite straightforward, and today's college kids are techy enough to be able to understand it.

Incentivized

As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere

Incentivized

• Time savings: Automated payroll and tax filing reduced manual processing by 40%, freeing staff for growth initiatives
• Cost efficiency: Lowered compliance errors and penalties, saving an estimated $5,000 annually
• Scalability: Supported onboarding across multiple states, enabling expansion without adding HR headcount
• Accuracy & trust: Improved employee satisfaction with timely pay and reliable W‑2/1099 delivery

Incentivized

• QuickBooks has given us a useful portal by which to get an overview of our financials.
• QuickBooks has given us a relatively easy way to send out invoices quickly and efficiently.
• Due to the customization limitations on QuickBooks, we've had to get creative in third-party implementations to better represent our brand and to track financials.

Incentivized