QuickBooks Online For Dummies. Elaine Marmel

you are an accounting professional, you can sign up for the Wholesale Pricing program and use QBOA for free. If you create a client’s company as part of the Wholesale Pricing program and you manage the client’s subscription, your credit card is charged automatically for each client subscription. It is your responsibility to bill the client for the QBO subscription. The bill you receive from Intuit is a single consolidated bill for all the QBO subscriptions you manage. For a little more information on the Wholesale Pricing program, see Chapter 11. But, for the complete skinny on the Wholesale Pricing program, contact Intuit. Note that accounting professionals might be able to get QBO for their clients at a reduced price.

      

If an accounting professional creates a company through QBOA, the company does not come with a 30-day free trial. Instead, at the time the accounting professional creates the company, he must provide a payment method to ensure uninterrupted service.

If your client initially sets up QBO with his or her own subscription, you can move that existing QBO subscription to your consolidated bill at the discounted rate. And, if your arrangement with your client doesn’t work out, you can remove the client from your consolidated bill, and the client can begin paying for his own subscription.

Addressing Payroll Needs

      QBO can handle payroll regardless of whether an end user or an accountant creates the QBO company.

If an end user signs up for QBO Simple Start, Essentials, Plus, or Advanced on his own, he can create his own company using the appropriate “with Payroll” option — Core, Premium, or Elite — or, after the fact, he can sign up for QBO Payroll from the Employees screen (see Figure 2-1).

      FIGURE 2-1: If you sign up for QBO on your own, you can turn on Payroll from the Employees screen.

The distinction between the three options, aside from price, is that you choose Self Service Payroll if you want to file payroll forms and pay payroll taxes on your own; for details on preparing payroll in QBO, see Chapter 9. Alternatively, all of the current QBO Payroll plans integrate with QBO, where Intuit pays taxes and files payroll forms for you. For those with an interest in history, Self Service Payroll is the current name for what used to be called Enhanced Payroll. Beginning in February of 2020, all new QBO subscriptions have access to the newest Payroll lineup, Core, Premium, and Elite.

      

It’s easy to get confused here … we know we were. Intuit also offers another payroll product, Intuit Full Service Payroll, which is a standalone product that doesn’t integrate with QBO.

      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.

      

Although you can continue to use the QuickBooks Desktop product, once you make the switch to QuickBooks Online, be aware that no synchronization occurs between QuickBooks Desktop and QBO. So, changes you make in one are not reflected in the other. Unless you’re temporarily running in parallel, continuing to use both products could really mess up your books because you might accidentally enter transactions into one product and not the other. And it certainly would be time-consuming.

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.

In Chapter 1, we made a distinction about apps: In that chapter, we use the term to describe the versions of QBO available from mobile device stores (Google Play and Apple App) and distinguish them from QBO Desktop, which is not available in mobile device stores but works on both Windows and Mac computers. In this section, when we refer to apps, we refer to products developed to enhance the functionality of QBO; these apps are available through Intuit’s app store, called the App Center, and you can find them through QBO.

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