Intuit Online Payroll (discontinued) vs. QuickBooks Online

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.

Incentivized

I appreciate the ability to auto-generate invoices for recurring transactions, which saves time, as well as the option to set up auto-generated transactions. The report option is super helpful when reviewing information, as you can click to view the details in the report without having to go back and forth.

Incentivized

• 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."

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

• 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.

Incentivized

• The upsells have gotten worse over time and are on every screen in the most awkward positions. I don't need a constant reminder to upgrade, especially on a very old account that's paid thousands over the years.
• The interface has never been especially intuitive, but I was an old Quicken user and it was somewhat familiar. Over time, it's gotten worse, and in the last 2 years, the program seems to move things more often than I would expect.
• The software constantly adds features that I don't want and want to turn off, but the interface is so difficult to use that I find myself skipping it. Imagine seeing a message that the system recognized invoices that hadn't been paid so it prepared reminder notices for you that can be sent at the click of a button. Who thinks using canned reminders that you've never seen is a good thing?
• A lot of functionality seems to derive from connecting your bank accounts to QBO. I don't want Intuit to have an always-on connection to any bank accounts, even checking.

Incentivized

Works perfectly as advertised. Our simple needs are well taken care of.

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 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 had very little trouble setting up the program and migrating from our old accounting system. The daily usage is also very intuitive and easy. Anytime we run into minor trouble with the program, there are always tons of help available on YouTube, so we don't even look up the online manual anymore.

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

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

Incentivized

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

• 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).

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