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.
$22.50
per month
Paychex
Score 6.8 out of 10
N/A
Paychex Flex, of Paychex' Online Payroll Services, is a cloud-based human resource management and payroll platform. Paychex offers core and specialized services, and scales to meet the needs of small businesses, SMBs, and large enterprises.
This is a different product in my eyes. Most of the "outsourcers" really take over the entire payroll function, which divorces it from your accounting records --- and then later they try to stuff the results back into accounting through a GJE entry. If the circumstances are …
Paychex Flex works better than Intuit's plan for the simple reason that I have entered data incorrectly into Intuit and Paychex Flex prevents me from entering the data incorrectly. There are checks and balances and in the end, it is generated automatically and accurately.
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.
Paychex is great option for smaller employers as the site offers perk benefits to employees at no cost to the employer. I don't see anything like this being offered at competitors such as ADP RUN/Total Source, Bamboo, Trinet, Justworks or Gusto. Also, the initial set up is relatively easy and the dedicated support for set up is great along with our regular dedicated payroll support.
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."
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 understand logging you out is a security function, but I'd prefer it not to log you out so soon.
The training we received for the team's meeting was subpar, in my opinion. Probably better geared for people with little to no computer experience. Very slow pace; we could have easily received all of this from some tutorials in a few minutes.
Overall I like the features that Paychex Flex offers. I am sure that there are other features that I am unaware of, so I am excited to see if there is more that Flex is capable of to make my job easier. The basic features are really user friendly and easy to access. If there ever is an issue customer service is great
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.
Employee usability is very good and user-friendly. For the most part, the employer usability is good, but for complicated rules and policies, it requires technical assistance, which in our case, was clunky and slow in implementation. Once is place, everything works as it should
We have not experienced any difficulties with unplanned outages. Notifications are always made for outages, and they do not effect normal business operations.
Unless there is lag time within the internet, the Paychex Flex website loads exceptional fast, pages load quickly and reports that I need to print or download load quickly. If I need to create a specialized report, once I complete it I receive an e-mail telling me my report is ready to be downloaded. Changing between web pages is fast as well.
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.
Chat has been helpful but the person I chat with isn't always able to help me with my questions. Phone support is ok, depending on your payroll specialist. We have a great one currently, but the few before that were never available and did not return calls.
It was easy to understand and follow along. I do like the informational videos that we can utilize before we opt to call in for customer service support. It has made a difference since sometimes that resolves the issue I may have had and saved myself a phone call to Paychex support.
Implementation was very smooth. The most cumbersome task was entering the current employees into the system during initial set up, but Paychex staff handled most of that and verified against prior system reports as well as internal reports provided to ensure 100% accuracy.
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.
We still use QB Desktop Pro to maintain a Check Register / Overall Balance for the company, but once having tried QB Payroll Online for about 3 months prior to finding Paychex Flex I can tell you that there's just no comparison. QB online is VERY EXPENSIVE and not so user-friendly. I hated every minute of those 6 payrolls we ran through QB online.
I generally do payroll at the office, however I have had to go remote due to internet issues and also had to take payroll on vacation with me. Very easy to log in wherever you are and manage your TAA and payroll
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).
