Intuit Online Payroll — Products that Suck

Published on March 30th, 2009

Talk about a waste of time. You would think that a company like Intuit would be able to get it right. I signed up with them to do payroll. My expectations weren’t much. Set up employees. In my case 1 employee. Figure the payroll. Take the money out of my company account, deposit my paycheck in my personal account, and send Obama and Arnold their cut. How hard can that be? Am I being unreasonable here?

But that’s not what you get. They took the money out of my company account, they are currently sitting on it because they took it out a week early, and they are supposedly going to deposit my paycheck on the first. What they aren’t going to do is send Obama and Arnold’s cut to the government. What is the point of having a payroll service that doesn’t send the withholding to the government. All they are doing is the calculations and holding my money for a week. What is wrong with these people? They’d have a great product if they would just finish the job.

Still looking for an online payroll service. One that actually works.

24 users responded in " Intuit Online Payroll — Products that Suck "

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# 1 GetReal said, on March 30th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

Holding your money for a week – multiplied by all the others who signed up – nice interest free loans.

Think it’s an accident? Get real!

# 2 Robart said, on March 30th, 2009 at 2:14 pm

I’ve used QB for years and I have just about had it. When I start the program there are more pop up ads then a porn website. I am constantly being nagged to upgrade or try this or that new product.

# 3 technow said, on March 30th, 2009 at 2:24 pm

Try Bank of America Easy Online Payroll.
If you have your business accounts there and do direct deposit the charge is only $15/mo
and they do the withholding and make the 941 payments to the Feds and the State every month.
Best deal I could find out there and have used Paychex, and ADP in the past at about 4 times the cost.

# 4 . said, on March 30th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

“The took the money out of my company account, they are currently sitting on it because they took it out a week early, and they are supposedly going to deposit my paycheck on the first.”

You should proofread what you are posting. You’re making Dvorak look even more unprofessional.

# 5 FRAGaLOT said, on March 30th, 2009 at 3:24 pm

why would you want to have an online service like this with your employee’s pay roll records sitting online? Isn’t that some sort of violation of privacy, or at least putting that information at risk?

# 6 Paddy-O said, on March 30th, 2009 at 3:27 pm

http://paychex.com/

I used them for a payroll that ran ~$100k per run. It was in CA so should work for you.

# 7 deowll said, on March 30th, 2009 at 3:29 pm

I think your head line sums it up neatly. They don’t even do the basics.

# 8 mlubby said, on March 30th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

We Prime Pay (www.primepay.com) for our firm of 12 people with insurance, retirement, tax withholdings and only pay $35/month for the service. Everyone gets direct deposit. Very easy.

# 9 Bishop G. Honeyflow said, on March 30th, 2009 at 5:38 pm

Sheeeeit, y’all actin like a bunch a candy bar punks. I call my payroll White Kastle. I drop that bitch off and tell her she can have anything on the menu plus ten cent for a water.

# 10 Cap'nKangaroo said, on March 30th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

Par for the course. I used Intuit TurboTax and my first pass thru said I owed $1200 federal and $400+ state. Even though I travel constantly for my job, it never asked me for travel expenses. I had to back up and dig into the forms before TurboTax started asking the proper questions. In the end I got $4000 back total, but only because I knew to make sure I took these deductions.

# 11 ChuckM said, on March 30th, 2009 at 7:45 pm

Umm… I’m from Canada, so maybe it’s different in the USA… but, are you saying that you think that a payroll company is supposed to calculate and take your company money and pay the government for you?

Ar you also implying that companies PAY the goverment payroll taxes every two weeks. I think a company would want to hold onto a much money as long as possilbe and not pay the government every two weeks but instead submit it when expected to the goverment (quarterly, etc…). I know I would.

# 12 huskergrrl said, on March 30th, 2009 at 8:11 pm

It’s a huge ripoff, but if you’ve ever done payroll accounting by hand, it is difficult to make disparaging remarks about Quickbooks (even their over-priced, under-serving payroll service).

It’s not terribly difficult to do payroll using Quickbooks without the payroll service or tax table subscription. You can still do the paychecks within Quickbooks and enter the withholding amounts manually. Quickbooks will still create withholding tax liability checks and export into Excel the information necessary for your 941/944 and state tax forms as well as the year-end W-2s and W-3.

With their basic in-house payroll service ($9/mo for 1-3 employees), you just enter the hours and it calculates the withholding, but you still must do the quarterly and year-end forms yourself. For one employee, it will take about 30 seconds to look up the federal and state withholding on the free tax tables available from the IRS and state revenue departments and another 30 seconds to figure the FICA.

# 13 rance bleester said, on March 30th, 2009 at 8:12 pm

Quite yer whining, Mark.

Just do it yourself – it’s quite simple.
If you pay yourself qtrly, that’s 4x yearly you have to write a check and make deposits.
If you have an accountant, have him do it.
You can also do stuff online with the govt. thieves.
And don’t they charge 40-50 bucks a month, even for 1 paycheck?

# 14 Mark Derail said, on March 30th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

#13 there is an advantage to oursourcing the payroll and the various tax deductions.

My advice is do what I do – outsource to a BANK not a Mickey Mouse software company.

Quicken, Quickbooks, Simply Accounting

All Mickey Mouse programs, that try to cater to larger that they can chew.

Those programs are 100% ok for General Accouting. Payroll? No. Inventory control? No.

# 15 Norman Speight said, on March 31st, 2009 at 3:41 am

Here in the UK we have an option of ‘direct debit’ for paying electricity bills. It has emerged that even those heavily in credit are having amounts deducted from their bank accounts by the electricity suppliers which increase the credited debt the electricity supplier is holding.
We are here are talking of some who is £100 in credit getting a bill for £170 and the supplier deducting much more than the balance (£70) to increase the amount of credit owed. By this method the suppliers (and it isn’t just one) holding vast amounts of improperly obtained amounts. The government supervisory body has shown no willingness to stop these improper (and quite possibly illegal)deductions. As we have not yet passed any restriction on banks to lend or not-to-lend as they see fit, one must conclude that the evidence that the Government is in bed with big businesses – against the interests of the population – a bit hard to refute. Might have nothing at all to do with the fact that most of our Parliamentary representatives have big business directorships of course, even though the current, well reported, ‘expenses’ fiddles give them an income WAY above any average.
Dishonesty rules – and ther’s nothing you can do about it.

# 16 Norman Speight said, on March 31st, 2009 at 3:44 am

# 17 doidford said, on March 31st, 2009 at 6:45 am

try espace communication’s projectload.

They tailored their product to meet my needs.

# 18 rance bleester said, on March 31st, 2009 at 8:04 am

#14 – he said he had ONE payroll item.
Puh-leez. If he talks to his tax acct or any small biz guy he will find that they will tell him what I said – and, if he asks nice, they will explain how to do it as well.

# 19 QB Pro said, on March 31st, 2009 at 9:46 am

You are an idiot! Maybe if you took the time to actually research the products offered you would pick the right one. I have used Intuit’s tax service for years and love it. You signed up for a Direct Deposit only service, not a DD plus tax service which they offer.

Maybe next time instead of wasting time blogging something you know nothing about, look into what you are getting.

# 20 MikeR said, on March 31st, 2009 at 10:34 am

Try the Canadian method: Send the government your entire payroll, they’ll send back whatever they don’t need.

# 21 gseevers said, on March 31st, 2009 at 10:44 am

Try http://www.PayCycle.com. They file all the forms and pay all taxes electronically. Customer support is off the charts good, free and unlimited if you ever need it.

# 22 TroyH said, on June 2nd, 2009 at 5:52 pm

Now that PayCycle is being purchased by Intuit, maybe he should try SurePayroll.com – a way better service to begin with!

# 23 rainy said, on October 27th, 2009 at 5:23 am

intuit sucks you do have to dig for information and they do have alot of surprises.

# 24 Natalie said, on December 19th, 2009 at 12:29 pm

I have the Quickbooks 2009…had to call customer service to get the software registered…was on the call for 1 hour and 31 minutes…over an hour on hold because I refuse to give a credit card number for the so called service plan…I asked the non English speaking rep to transfer me to a supervisor…she refused…out right refused…thank god there are other programs out there that do what Quickbooks does…you are completely correct….Intuit SUCKS…

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