Intuit QuickBooks Payroll – Review 2020

As you might expect, QuickBooks Payroll integrates with QuickBooks Online exceptionally well, but it can also be used as a standalone payroll-processing service. In fact, no other product offers such a successful partnership between accounting and payroll. QuickBooks Payroll has added new features and functionality in the last year, including auto-payroll, seamless TSheets integration, an accelerated setup process, and robust HR tools through third-party providers. Like other Intuit products, QuickBooks Payroll offers a simple, understandable user experience. But it lacks the flexibility and depth of some of its competitors, most notably Gusto and OnPay, our Editors’ Choices this year. 

QuickBooks Payroll Pricing

Intuit has altered its lineup since we last reviewed its payroll sites: There are now three subscription levels rather than two. Here we review QuickBooks Payroll Core, the least-expensive version of QuickBooks Payroll, at $45 per month plus $4 per employee per month. Its primary features include unlimited payroll runs, automated payroll taxes and filings, garnishments and deductions, and reports.

QuickBooks Payroll Premium ($75 per month plus $8 per employee per month) adds same-day direct deposit, workers’ comp administration, remote time-tracking, expert setup review, and the HR Support Center. For $125 per month plus $10 per employee per month, you can subscribe to QuickBooks Payroll Elite, which includes 24/7 expert product support and “white glove” customized setup. It also offers a personal HR advisor, remote project tracking, and Tax Penalty Protection. Intuit is currently running a promotion on all of its payroll subscriptions; the base price is 50 percent off for three months. There’s also a 30-day free trial. 

QuickBooks Payroll is roughly comparable to Gusto when you consider the differences in base and per-employee charges. But it’s more expensive than OnPay, which costs $36 per month plus $4 per employee per month with no add-on charges (QuickBooks Payroll charges for 1099s). QuickBooks is pricier than Patriot Software ($30 per month plus $4 per employee per month) but less expensive than the new Hourly, which is the most expensive payroll solution we reviewed ($80 per month plus $14 per month per active user).

Early Assistance With QuickBooks

Onboarding is by far the most challenging, complex element of any payroll system. QuickBooks Payroll Core offers extra assistance with this when you need it. If you’re using the site to pay your first employee(s) and don’t have any previous payroll data, you should be able to go through setup on your own (though chat and phone support are available from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. PST Monday through Friday). Since my last review, Intuit has added more flexibility to its setup process. You can now start running payroll without having completed absolutely every step of setup (though some information is, of course, mandatory).

The setup wizard first asks if you’ve paid any employees previously in your current business. If not, it asks for your next pay date and payroll contact. Then it opens the site’s main screen, which includes a series of steps needed to complete setup (employee records, tax information, bank account connection, and an electronic signature).

If you’ve already been paying employees or you live in a state that has complicated payroll tax requirements, you can enter that historical data on your own or request help from a payroll agent. You can ask for assistance online from the QB Assistant, a bot that “converses” with you about your questions, but most of the answers we received from it were about QuickBooks Desktop Payroll. Opening up the voluminous QuickBooks Support pages didn’t help much, either, since responses were not prioritized by usefulness. Many were posted by Intuit representatives, but others came from random individuals in the user community, which I wouldn’t necessarily rely on. As mentioned above, though, chat and email help is also on offer.

Most competitors provide you with extensive help for setup as a part of their service. Whether this is more or less than what QuickBooks Core provides depends on the individual site and the situation.

The QuickBooks Payroll User Experience

QuickBooks Payroll Core is unique in this category of sites in that it is one element of an all-encompassing small business accounting website, QuickBooks Online. So if you subscribe to payroll as a standalone application, you won’t see all of the entries in the QuickBooks Online navigation pane (like Expenses, Sales, and Banking). In fact, the toolbar looks quite bare in this case. There’s a horizontal toolbar at the top of the page whose links take you to individual sections of the site, including Overview, Employees, Benefits, and the new COVID-19 Resources. 

If you’ve used or are currently using QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Payroll Core’s screens should look familiar to you. They offer a user interface and navigation scheme that’s very similar to QBO’s. Even if you’re new to Intuit accounting websites, you’ll probably have little difficulty finding your way around, as QuickBooks Payroll Core uses standard conventions like buttons, drop-down lists, fill-in-the-blank data fields, and interactive links. It’s a pretty plain-looking site, though. Payroll is serious business and doesn’t need excessive adornment, but the only screen that uses icons and graphics and color is the Overview. More appealing visuals might help.

Employee Records

Adding your employees is the most time-consuming step in setup. Some sites, including OnPay use separate areas of the site for tasks like creating pay schedules and defining benefits and other withholding. Others, including QuickBooks Payroll and Square Payroll, take care of those tasks in the employee records. QuickBooks Payroll Core presents one lengthy screen for entering all of your employee information, though when you go in to edit or view an existing record, it’s divided into three sections. 

The first section, Pay, is the most involved. You enter a name, hire date, and email address, and then move on to pay schedule. Here, as in other areas of the site, QuickBooks Payroll Core uses simple language to describe each item, often posing it as a question, like “How often do you pay Tina?” You choose from the four most-common options, then give it a name, and enter the next pay date and the last day of work for that period. If you want to use that payday for other employees you plan to enter, you can check a box to do so. You can run an unlimited number of payrolls..

“How much do you pay Tina?” is the introduction to the next task. You can enter an hourly rate, salary, or commission-only and then choose any other earnings types that might apply (overtime, bonus, reimbursement). QuickBooks Payroll Core offers 20 standard rates and lets you create unlimited additional earnings types.

If you provide benefits, such as sick and vacation pay, you have to fill in the blanks to describe the formula for accruing them. Deductions or contributions and garnishments are next. You’re limited to HSA plans, health insurance, retirement plans, and Flexible Spending Accounts, though you can add loan and cash-advance repayments and other after-tax deductions. The final three questions here are easy: You’re asked for the employee’s W-4 withholding allowance, birthdate and gender, and payment method (direct deposit or check).

The next two tabs open screens that are far less complicated. You click Profile to add contact information (custom fields like OnPay offers would be welcome here) and Employment for information like hire date and work location. All of the data you just entered appears under the Employee details tab on the Employee screen. The other tab, labeled Paycheck List, opens just that. You can invite employees to access their W-2 and paycheck information from a separate, password-protected site. Patriot Software offers more data and tools for employees on its portals.

Almost all that’s left in setup is to enter your federal, state, and local payroll tax information, which can actually be quite a challenge. QuickBooks Payroll submits the filings and payments themselves, but you have to supply the background details. Patriot Software offers a lot of help in this area, links to state and local agencies that can help provide the minutia required. Intuit’s payroll agents can help with this element of the onboarding process.

Contractors are separate entities in QuickBooks Payroll. You create their records—which, of course, are far more abbreviated than those of employees—on a separate screen. You also have to do a separate payroll run for them. OnPay, for one, lets you handle both types of workers in the same procedure.

Payroll Runs

As is true of all the competition, actually running a payroll in QuickBooks Payroll Core should only take a few minutes, depending on how many employees you have and how varied their earnings types and hours are. You click the Run Payroll link from either the Overview or Employees screen to open your list of employees. Make sure there’s a check in front of every worker who needs to be included in that run and enter the number of hours in the box in the appropriate column (regular pay, holiday pay, commission, and so on).

With that screen still active, you can do a couple of things to check your work or make changes. Click the gear icon in the upper-right corner to see a checklist of the earnings types available. Click in the box in front of any you want to add or delete. If you want to make sure a worker’s withholding is correct, click the pencil icon next to his or her Total Pay. The screen that opens provides a comprehensive look at that paycheck, showing current (this paycheck) and year-to-date pay, employee taxes and deductions, and employer taxes and contributions.

If for some reason that paycheck should not accrue vacation and sick leave, you can uncheck that box. At the bottom of the screen are totals for time-off hours used and available. Click OK if you’ve made changes you want to save or click Cancel (or the big X in the upper-right corner) to close and get back to the Run Payroll page.

When you’re satisfied that your payroll is correct, click Preview payroll (or Save for later if you want to exit and come back). The next screen provides a comprehensive look at that payroll before you approve it. At the top of the page is your total payroll run cost, which is then broken down by net pay, employee, and employer in numbers and on a pie chart. Below that is a table listing employees paid in that run with columns for Total Hours, Total Pay, Employee Taxes and Deductions, and Net Pay.

The final column, labeled Compare to Last, opens a small table that does just that: It compares the current paycheck to the previous one. You can also click the pencil icon to see a comprehensive list of compensation and withholding again before you click Submit Payroll (or Save for later). All that remains is to enter check numbers if necessary, print pay stubs, and then click Finish Payroll to go back to the Overview.

Like many competitors, QuickBooks Payroll Core now offers automatic payroll. Next-day direct deposit is also available. And it’s added an unusual feature that I haven’t seen anywhere else—the ability to turn off automatic payroll tax payments.

QuickBooks Payroll on Mobile Devices

QuickBooks Payroll is available as an Android app and an iOS app, but neither is as comprehensive as the desktop interface nor as thorough as those provided by OnPay and Gusto. I couldn’t see any changes made since the last time I reviewed this service. 

The Android app opens to four icons. You can enter hours and run a payroll, but you can’t make any other changes to the run. You can, however, preview your payroll and see what checks and direct deposits need to be or will be processed. The Pay History icon opens a list of previous payrolls; you can drill down on these dates to see underlying detail. Taxes and Forms shows forms and payments that have been submitted. In addition, you can see very abbreviated employee records—just contact and basic pay information.

The iPhone version is different. It opens to your list of employees, with a bar graph showing totals for the most-recent four payrolls. Clicking on an employee’s name opens the same brief record as in the Android version, and a Payday link in the upper-right takes you to a payroll run. You click on a worker’s name to enter hours, click to preview, and click to approve. 

A link in the upper left of the screen opens your navigation menu. Besides payroll, you can access tax information and payroll history, but there’s also a link to Settings, which was absent in the Android version. Here, you can set reminders, set up Touch ID or Passcode, toggle sounds and contact photos on and off, and opt to have the app remember your payroll hours.

Good Reports

Reports are impressive in QuickBooks Payroll: There are 19 of them, with limited customization options—usually just date range. It’s a better, more focused group than what Square Payroll offers. They range from Employee Details to Payroll Summary to Total Payroll Cost to Workers’ Compensation. You can print them or export them to Excel; Gusto offers more options here, however. If you’re using QuickBooks Payroll Core integrated with QuickBooks Online, you’ll have access to many more reports, some of which intersect with payroll issues.

Like its competitors, Intuit has rolled support for payroll-related COVID-19 issues into its existing site. It supported the Payroll Protection Program (PPP), and it built in features to administer the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES). It also provides a link to the COVID-19 Crisis Response Center, powered by ThinkHR and Mammoth. 

QuickBooks Payroll Core automatically prepares and files your W-2 forms. It, of course, has the information you need for 1099s, but you’ll run into some extra costs here to have them dispatched to the IRS and your contractors. Before January 16, the first three forms are $12.99. Forms 4 through 20 are $2.99 each and Forms 21 and up are free. On January 16, the prices go up to $14.99, $3.99, and free. Alternatively, you can purchase a 1099 kit from Intuit ($58.99 for 10 forms and envelopes); you’ll have to print and mail them yourselves. Most sites offer this service as a part of their subscription prices.

Future Features?

It’s smart to start slowly when you’re introducing a new application—especially one as exacting as payroll. QuickBooks Payroll Core is fleshed out enough to successfully run a complex payroll, and its level of detail and usability are good, and even excellent in some places. There have been some exciting additions to the QuickBooks Payroll line as a whole since last year, like the seamless integration of Timesheets, automatic payroll, and faster payroll setup. It’s missing some of the flexibility and depth offered by sites like Gusto and Workful, however, including robust employee portals, focused online help, custom fields (and more detail) in employee records, and a meatier mobile presence.  

Gusto and OnPay are our Editors’ Choices this year for online payroll services. We reviewed Gusto’s Core level, which combines a smart set of features for a wide swath of small businesses with a clean, understandable user experience that simplifies the most complex element of accounting. OnPay does the same and adds impressive customizability. It’s also the most versatile of the sites we reviewed, offering specialized support for numerous vertical industries.

For more reviews of financial services for yourself and your small business, take a look at our roundups of the best online accounting services and tax software.

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