alt="Snapshot of turning on Payroll from the Employees screen."/>
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 sport the following features:
Paying employees with printed checks or by directly depositing paychecks
Automatically calculating tax payments and paying them electronically
Processing federal and state quarterly and annual reports and preparing W-2 forms
Processing payroll for employees working in your company’s state or another state
Keeping payroll tax tables up to date without having to install updates like you do with the QuickBooks Desktop product
Using the QBO Payroll mobile app to pay employees, view past paychecks, electronically pay taxes, and electronically file tax forms
If an accountant who is not enrolled in the Intuit Wholesale Pricing program creates a QBO Essentials, Plus, or Advanced company for a client, the client company can turn on QBO Payroll (QBOP) from the Employees screen in the client’s company (refer to Figure 2-1). Clients can prepare payroll for themselves, or accounting professionals can manage all payroll functions for clients.
If the accountant is enrolled in the Intuit Wholesale Pricing program and creates a QBO Essentials, Plus, or Advanced company for a client as part of the program, the accountant can set up the QBO company to use QBO Payroll (QBOP).
Last, an accountant can add an Intuit Full Service Payroll subscription (where Intuit prepares payroll forms and pays taxes based on paychecks created outside of QBO) to a client company subscription through QBOA, regardless of whether he or she is enrolled in the Wholesale Pricing program.
Switching from QuickBooks Desktop
At this point (or maybe earlier than now), you might have been wondering if you can easily switch to QBO if you have been a QuickBooks Desktop program user. And, the answer is yes. Chapter 12 provides details on importing QuickBooks Desktop data into QBO. And, the import process doesn’t affect your original desktop company; it’s still available via the desktop product. After you import your data into QBO, you should run the Profit & Loss report and the Balance Sheet using the accrual method for all dates from both QBO and QuickBooks Desktop to ensure both versions show the same information.
And, if you want some reassurance that you’ll get the same accurate information from QBO that you got from QuickBooks Desktop, you can “run in parallel” for a time period you specify. For example, you might decide to enter all your transactions in both versions of the software for one month; at the end of that time, you can run reports from both products and make sure you see the same information.
Where Add-On Apps Fit In
QBO doesn’t operate as a complete, standalone accounting solution. It has functional limitations. The section “Addressing Payroll Needs” highlights one such limitation — and shows how you can use Intuit add-ons to achieve more functionality in QBO. And, earlier in this chapter, we briefly mention Intuit’s Payments app, which supports electronic customer payment processing and integrates with QBO.
But those aren’t the only add-on apps available for QBO; third-party developers have been creating apps to enhance the functionality of QBO. And, over time, you can expect more apps to be developed.
You can click the Apps link in the Navigation bar that runs down the left side of QBO to visit the App Center and explore available apps (see Figure 2-2).
FIGURE 2-2: Take a trip to the App Center to search for additional functionality for QBO.
Click any app to navigate to a web page that describes the app, provides pricing information, and often provides a video about the app (see Figure 2-3).
FIGURE 2-3: When you click an app in the App Center, you see details for the app.
Although add-on apps can provide additional functionality in QBO, some functionality is still missing; no doubt, that functionality will appear over time. For example, using QBO, you can’t
Track your balance sheet by class.
Process more than 350,000 transactions annually without QBO Advanced.
Manage a robust inventory.
But
