Paychex Flex vs. QuickBooks Online Advanced

In my experience, Paychex Flex is well suited for small to medium sized businesses. It has been helpful in streamlining the onboarding process and it is easy to update and maintain employee profiles and records. It has worked will in a non-profit environment where there is clergy pay and housing, which can get quite complicated. I cannot think of a scenario where it would be less appropriate.

Incentivized

I gave this rating more from the standpoint that I enjoy using other bookkeeping platforms more than I enjoy QuickBooks Online Advanced. While QuickBooks Online Advanced is a solid platform that I have no issue working in, there are some areas that could be improved. The biggest of these areas is the overall design of the platform. I feel that when you first log in and are brought to the home screen, everything just looks cluttered.

Incentivized

• I like I can enter payroll and if I need to leave the program, I can resume at a later time and my information is saved.
• I like the analytics & reports features.
• I like how all my employees have easy access to their portal.

Incentivized

• It allows us to link to bank accounts in order to get up-to-date, real-time information, which is so important in today's lightning speed work world.
• The "canned" reports are excellent and allow for extreme customization also. This makes them very helpful to both me and my clients.
• The user interface for QuickBooks Online Advanced is easy to navigate and is intuitive for novices. The screens are well laid out and have cohesiveness on each screen to match tasks with others that match up well.

Incentivized

• Reporting writing is difficult to figure out
• Employee turnover inside Paychex was a problem, until we were assigned to Neil Williams - since that time it has settled down
• Pressure to convert personal connection with payroll advisor to using automated service

Incentivized

• Proper advice in QuickBooks Online Pro for the usage if QuickBooks Online Advanced will be more efficient.
• More features and space in the app for organization of the self-created workflows.
• The stability of QuickBooks Online Advanced can still be better.
• There are still file-size issues and limitations on transactions and attributes of transactions.

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

Incentivized

QuickBooks Online Advanced is not like any other accounting software. With how great the software is now, I would definitely renew QuickBooks Online Advanced

Incentivized

Some things could be streamlined. For example, we could do custom options for the "add items" tab which has so many options that we never use. "Medical Pay" could be something that the system remembers for the applicable employees. Salaried employees' salaries should definitely be auto-filled. Overall the system works well but I think it could be improved to be easier to use and read.

Incentivized

QuickBooks Online Advanced is great and effective. I use it for almost three months and it definitely does their job

Incentivized

We have not experienced any difficulties with unplanned outages. Notifications are always made for outages, and they do not effect normal business operations.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Our dedicated representative is one of the main reasons we are sticking with Paychex Flex. If it were not for this person, other platforms could provide the same/similar functionality. It is the ability to speak with someone that understands our business and is willing to get questions answered in a timely fashion that keeps us with Paychex Flex.

Incentivized

We did online training only

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The online training was easy to follow and understand. The online training gave us the specific instructions to follow

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Need to make an option for non-profit organizations

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I have not evaluated any yet. I have used QuickBooks since 2008 and I used Sage in the corporate environment before using QuickBooks. Honestly, I can't remember it because it was early 2000's. I thought about evaluating and looking because of the issues I've had with QuickBooks, but I haven't really investigated.

Incentivized

Employees can log in at home and get up to date information on their FSA balance and any medical bill reimbursements they may have uploaded. At renewal time they have the ability to make changes to their FSA or for new employees star the enrollment.

Incentivized

• I do not believe we have saved anything additionally. The time we've had to spend to get things to hopefully work is sad. This is the reason we've had to turn off all extra "products" of Paychex Flex. Time and Attendance is horrible. Benefits management is horrible. The user experience is horrible.
• One thing I do not understand is why are updates for states, cities, counties, school districts, etc. not automatically updated? Should we not get a big red flag if we have an employee living/working, being paid in CA, but they aren't set up for CA sick time? If it is required to be on the paycheck stub to show the balance of the sick time, why would we not be notified that we are out of compliance?

Incentivized

• Positive - time and accuracy: Improved bank feeds with rules for automating categorization (expense account) of transactions.
• Negative - time and efficiency: Very slow response in data entry such as estimates, purchase orders, invoices, sales receipts, bills & bill payment, and even check writing.
• Negative - time and error correction: Payroll taxes and sales taxes remain in their own silos and are very difficult to correct OR wrong to correct with regular ledger and transaction entries.
• Negative - time and reporting: Customer activity cannot be tracked using deposits or JE'd transactions. Reporting and research require the use of transaction forms such as invoices, sales receipts, payments, and credit memos. As an example, the transaction register for a customer can be sorted by various parameters. A default is "All" transactions but does not include all transactions -- you have to select "All plus deposits" and you will also not see checks. This is about the same for Vendor activity, where deposits (e.g. refunds) will not show in the vendor's activity register. A vendor credit memo is required, then the refund can be pushed against that credit balance. The credit memo will appear in the vendor register, but a deposit will not.

Incentivized