Cents of QuickBooks Subscriptions
One thing to keep in mind is that QuickBooks subscription fees continue month after month, year after year. This fact can result in some sticker shock if you’re accustomed to paying one time for a perpetual software license for, say, QuickBooks Desktop. You can run, but you can’t hide though, as QuickBooks Desktop requires a subscription for the 2022 version and beyond. Table 2-2 shows the current monthly and annual costs so that you can budget accordingly.
TABLE 2-2 QuickBooks Online Subscription Pricing
| Version | Sale Price (Per Month) | Regular Price (Per Month) | Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-Employed | $7.50 | $15 | $180 |
| Simple Start | $12.50 | $25 | $30 |
| Essentials | $25 | $50 | $600 |
| Plus | $40 | $80 | $960 |
| Advanced | $90 | $180 | $2,160 |
Payroll charges are billed monthly as part of your QuickBooks subscription. You can test-drive payroll processing at no charge for up to 30 days. After that period, your overall subscription fee increases to include payroll. Conversely, QuickBooks Payments feature, which allows you to accept online payments from your customers, doesn’t have a monthly fee; you’ll pay per transaction instead. As of this writing, the rates are 2.4 percent for swiped credit card transactions, 2.9 percent for e-invoiced transactions, and 3.4 percent for key-entered transactions, plus a 25-cent fee per transaction. Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions incur a 1 percent fee up to a maximum of $10.
As I write this chapter, QuickBooks is rolling out an additional subscription-based feature called QuickBooks Commerce, which is designed to make it easy to place and sell your inventory products on a variety of major online shopping platforms. You can bet that additional premium offerings will become available in QuickBooks as time goes on.
Accounting professionals can use QuickBooks Online Accounting for free and also sign up for the Wholesale Pricing program, which offers you discounted pricing on QBO subscriptions for companies that you create or manage. Your credit card is charged each month for all the subscription fees, and you can pass along the discounted price to your clients or charge the market rate. As discussed in Chapter 12, Intuit will send you a single consolidated bill for all the QBO subscriptions you manage.
If your client initially sets up their own QBO subscription, you can move it to your consolidated bill at the discounted wholesale rate. If your arrangement with your client doesn’t work out, you can remove the client from your consolidated bill, which means that the client will resume paying for their own subscription.
Payroll Options
When you establish your QBO subscription, you can choose add-on payroll from the start or elect to incorporate payroll later from the Employees screen (see Figure 2-1). Alternatively, your accountant can enable payroll on your behalf by way of QBOA. In the past, QuickBooks offered self-service versus full-service plans, but now all plans are full-service, meaning that QBO will handle your payroll tax deposits and payroll tax returns. If you opt in to QBO Payroll, you can’t complete those tasks your own even if you want to. But who would want to?
FIGURE 2-1: If you sign up for QBO on your own, you can turn on Payroll from the Employees screen.
All QBO Payroll services include the following features:
Paying employees with printed checks or by direct deposit
Calculating tax payments automatically and paying them electronically
Processing federal and state quarterly and annual reports, and preparing W-2 forms
Processing payroll for employees who work in your company’s state or another state
Keeping payroll tax tables up to date without having to install updates (as you do with the QuickBooks Desktop product)
Using the QBO Payroll mobile app to pay employees, view past paychecks, file tax forms electronically, and pay taxes electronically
Migration from QuickBooks Desktop
Yes, you can migrate your accounting records from QuickBooks Desktop to QBO, as
