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 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.
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.
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