ADP Streamline is a payroll and benefits administration offering specifically for companies with multi-national / global employees.
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Intuit Online Payroll (discontinued)
Score 8.1 out of 10
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Intuit Online Payroll was a small business payroll option available as a standalone SaaS solution, that Intuit announced it was discontinuing in favor of Quickbooks Online Payroll, available via Quickbooks.
For any business looking for a solid and reliable payroll system [ADP Streamline Payroll] is perfect. It is a little expensive but you certainly get what you pay for. It is easy to implement for your business and to get your employees set up. Gathers all of the needed tax documents and payroll stubs easily and makes them accessible.
I believe the ideal scenario is when you are already using the Intuit family of products and the payroll bolts on to your existing QuickBooks infrastructure. Payroll software products have been around a long time, and this is a very competitive niche. Most of the companies do a good job of filing taxes promptly, reporting W-2 items properly, providing good reports, etc. Where you might really get some extra efficiency and benefit is the fact that the payroll is woven into the accounting system, creating one seamless enterprise solution. Also, where it might be less appropriate is in a really simple use case such as a one person company where there aren't complex fringe benefits to deal with. In that scenario, you can set up the ACH debits directly with the state agency and the IRS and possibly file your own 941, 940, W-2/W-3 and state equivalent forms. Of course, if you're willing to do this and are good with details, you can save yourself some money.
Integration with QuickBooks Desktop. This is the key strength of IP... it is a complete, native integration and let's you maintain all employee records and time keeping in QuickBooks
Job Costing. Another key differentiation -- some payroll outsources say they do true job costing (by work or item code). Don't believe them. If its' not integrated with your accounting system, you will not get "TRUE" job costing. You can get costs ASSIGNED to jobs (which may be fine), but you won't get item level detail in QuickBooks from anyone but Intuit.
Variety of Payment options. Use Direct Deposit or manual checks... or whatever you want. Since its in QB, you can make payments any way you want.
Cash Flow. This is both good and bad, but IP will not take taxes out of your bank account until they are due. That's different than some other providers that want assurance that you have the tax payments available at the moment you push "SUBMIT."
Happens rarely, but sometimes Customer Service has to look up an answer. I would prefer they simply upgrade my call to someone who knows the answer.
If you are going through a huge company change, let them know ahead of time so you can get a timeline of when changes should and can be done. Implementation of a new company takes considerable time.
Offer more LIVE webinars to get more interaction. Listening to webinars, not so exciting and you can't ask questions while you are listening.
My biggest issue is that they do continue to raise their prices on a regular basis and it makes people feel stuck when there are so many clients already using the system.
They do not support roaming employees, so employees that cross over into various tax jurisdictions in one pay period pose a challenge for calculating taxes and pay.
The setup can be a bit daunting still if you are not familiar with the system or the various taxes and requirements for reporting.
I would rate it a 0. It gets worse and worse all the time. It seems like every time I go into IOP to run a payroll for one of my clients, I have one more problem.
I give this a 9 rating because the customer support is great. I have had issues that needed to be solved very quickly and they are always so eager to help. They can give you a solution to your problem and if they try everything and still can't, they will connect you with someone that can or will.
The customer support personnel have always walked me through the steps they need to take to assist me. Never rushed through anything. Always exceptionally thorough, answering all my questions and even sharing my screen visually (I have control, not them). It actually helps me to resolve future issues and questions, if they should arise.
ADP Streamline Payroll has a great stack for employers looking to provide all of the basic payroll benefits to employees. I think ADP excels with its UX/UI, which is typically a problem for this industry. It's fairly easy to set up and use, compared to other systems. Try it out!
It's a payroll software with decent customer support readily available and direct integration with my accounting tools. This made it a prime fit for me, and made payment and tax reporting relatively simple, and errors readily correctable. It does not have time tracking, and I still believe that this software is overpriced, but it's the best fit for me right now.
ADP Streamline was just a function to us so I can't really say it had a positive or negative effect on our business objectives. We went with Streamline because we already were with ADP. We didn't really shop.
Because of the great rep we had we were able to get a more positive response from our German staff to their pay. Before I came on board there were a lot of payroll errors which had an effect on staff morale. With help from the rep we were able to improve our accuracy and pay people correctly.
Positive: Less of a learning curve to train payroll accountants, as they are already familiar with using Intuit. Also, in general there are a larger pool of candidates who know this system than many of the other "niche" lesser known payroll products.
Positive: More options to choose from depending on the level of service needed. For example, there is a Full Service offering if needed. This might apply to an organization that doesn't have the resources available or an internal person who has the time/bandwidth to handle the entire company's payroll. Thus, it is possible to cherry pick the level of service needed depending on the type of company/situation.
Positive: Good audit trail. This can be extremely important and cost efficient when a business is going through an external audit by an outside CPA firm and the payroll accounting function is undergoing testing (ie. less time required by the external auditor would likely lower their bill for their services).
