QUICK BOOKS PRO AND PAYROLL

Maybe I can make you feel better.  You can say "At least I'm not paying as much as THAT GUY!"     I use ADP for my payroll (weekly) and last year, my fees were just south of $4000.  🤕

I pay weekly about 13 checks x 52 weeks.  Averages out to about $6.09/person/paycheck.    Paying less often is cheaper.  (This is supposedly discounted 45% due to my CPA client discount vs me just calling and signing up.  Who knows?)  The advantage is that my CPA does not mess with payroll taxes and filings, so I pay less there.   They pull the money, escrow the taxes, create and file all of the needed state and federal tax forms.    All I have to do is enter hours / $'s.   Look at the total.  😭 Then press the go button.   😉  

Pretty much, CPA said he wouldn't work with me if I didn't use a payroll company.  He said that I'd screw it up, some way, some how, then it would be VERY expensive for him to fix my mess.   I'm about 99% sure that he was on target with this comment.

You might check out https://paymatesoftware.com/

I talked to one of their reps because they integrate with Protractor.   I thought their pricing was fair and their cloud software looked easy enough to learn.  I hope this helps someone!

Gerald

14 hours ago, Gerald Martin said:

You might check out https://paymatesoftware.com/

You've heard the expression that you can't teach an old dog 🐶 new tricks, right?   Well, my accountant is older than those dogs.  He doesn't like anything new!   So, I'm using a few programs that I might otherwise not want.    As well, I spoke with the Paar-Melis Accounting team at Vision and their pricing is about 40% higher than my accountant.   He knows this industry, is always accessible and otherwise doing good work, so I have no impetus to change at the moment.   No change means no new accounting toys for me!

P.S.  Hi Gerald!!!

We pay QB payroll over $700/yr and were using QB Pro 2020 Desktop.  Since they are discontinuing support for 2020, they force you to upgrade and you can no longer purchase the software.  It is all subscription based now which will be more costly than before.  The desktop version is a $550/yr subscription, which you have to call QB sales to even get it.  It is not available online anywhere.  When you call to order, they will try to push you into going to their online platform which I didn't want to do after using the desktop version for over 20 years.  Like others have stated, it's the cost of doing business unfortunately.  

I hope Quickbooks figures out they shot their foot off with this change.  If you upgrade past 2020 and don't keep your subscription active you loose access to your data.

It's my understanding I can use Quickbooks 2020 desktop forever but will not have support, security updates or access to online things like payroll. 

I am sticking with 2020 and letting my payroll expire in May.  

It looks like ONPAY.com may be who I am going with, they state they integrate with Quickbooks.

I will be making the change when I close this quarter, fingers crossed it will be a smooth transition.

You must be using Quickbooks online.

I have ROWriter and the Back Office has a program on my computer that does the integration.

I don't know if you can find an older version of quickbooks and use your database.

In my research I found people that hadn't needed to update quickbooks for the last 15 years because they were not using quickbooks for their payroll. 

I am using Accounting Link by The Back Office to integrate ROW to QB.

Fortunately I did not upgrade to QB 2022 or 2023 before this change.

Here is a statement from QB about using 2023 without a subscription, maybe you don't have this version or can move to an older version/

Here is their statement about earlier versions.

I have used QB Desktop for the last 20 years. 

I bought the payroll subscription every year and updated QB Pro every 2-3 years when they said it would not integrate with payroll anymore.

With this latest change I have decided QB will not get another dime from me.

Next week I will be moving to this. They seem to be less expensive.  They state they will take my QB payroll data and merge it to their program and when I run a payroll I can merge it back into my QB Desktop.

I didn't find anything,  you might call the back office and ask what they work with. 

I think intuit bought the competition and now have us over a barrel. Everything I found was cloud based and a recurring subscription and even more expensive than QB.  Some of the SMS programs have accounting built in but changing everything is a pain and still doesn’t solve the problems.

I been using QB's only for all my business and they are great. Watch out for the scammers that E-mail with QB's e-mails trying to get money out of you. They E-mails look like they are right from QB's but they are not. Try calling the phone number listed with a cell phone with the caller ID blocked, if they do not pick up the call they are the scammers.  

On 3/10/2023 at 8:11 AM, bantar said:

You've heard the expression that you can't teach an old dog 🐶 new tricks, right?

What an amazingly beautiful shop you have. I wish I could put something together like that. Maybe in 5 years after I finish off some more debt, maybe. I am nervous to make another leap like I did when I first started out. Great work.

I somehow missed this thread, but just recently went through the BS that Intuit is pulling with their Quickbooks 2023 onward. We have been Pro and/or Premier users for 20 years (even before my time). We were doing a similar every 3 years upgrade and paid the $500 for the annual standard payroll. I was getting the program from POSwarehouse.com for $279 instead of $849 from Intuit/Newegg/OfficeMax/etc.

Now to switch to the subscription model for Pro with 2 users, it was going to be $749 for the program, a $500 annual payroll fee, plus $8/mo per employee... We have 40 employees wtf... The annual cost used to be $593/yr and now 2023 onward would have been 749 + 500 + (40x8x12=3840) = $5,089

It's disgusting how greedy they got here. We have a few different businesses and unfortunately, QB is our best option. We moved to Enterprise Gold with two users through Fourlane.com (the parent company the POSwarehouse) for $2134/yr. It has enhanced payroll, no employee fee, and can have more than one company file open. The program is still basically the same thing it was since 2008 with a few nice extra features, but certainly not worth an extra $1541 per year. Still painful to think about.

It's not the price I have issues with. I don't like being held hostage by a program that won't work with out a subscription.  I grew up with programs that you bought and if the company made it better you would upgrade.  If it did what you wanted you were free to keep using it as is. I think the subscription model makes a software company lazy. 

My head is wrapped a different direction than yours.  We bought our own uniforms and quit dealing with shop rags and we own our real estate. I know it’s still all fixed costs but landlords, uniform companies throw me surprises that frustrated me.  Quick books did it this year by tripling my payroll cost and said I could not use my accounting anymore without a subscription.  Subscription based things are fine until they change and it doesn’t work for you anymore.  At least when I own something I can decide when I want or need to change.

My bookkeeper HATES QB online!!  ADP charges per payroll, with some other fees, same for Innovative Business Solutions.  Yest. talked to a rep from GUSTO, they have a plan called "Payroll Only", that'll run about $60 per MONTH (three employees for us)! They came up more than once on Google searches as #1 according to research companies.  QB screwed the pooch on this decision.  I also didn't know about this happening from them directly, I found out through the newsletter from my shop software company AutoFluent (TABS).

I ran my first payroll with ONPAY this week.  It took about a week for them to pull my first quarter from QB so my end of year reports and W2's will be correct.  I did several support calls and emails getting everything set up to make a smooth transition.  My first payroll was quick and easy and the numbers integrated into my QB desktop in just a couple key strokes.  Hopefully I am still happy with them by the end of the year. 🤞