What If I Don't Want to Pay For Payroll Services?

Question:

I Am new to QB pro…

Don’t want to pay extra to have QB do my payroll for me… However, when I try to setup payroll, the program never lets me complete everything and pay employees because it says I am not signed up for one of their payroll services…in my opinion, this is a rip-off…

please help,

Charles

Answer:

Charles,

I agree, Intuit may be a bit overzealous in marketing their payroll services. Don’t panic though, they still allow you to calculate payroll the old fashioned way. Here is the information directly from the QuickBooks Help menu. I will agree with you…they did their best to hide it from you.

“If you don't sign up for one of the Intuit Payroll Services, QuickBooks won't calculate your payroll taxes or provide payroll tax forms. You will have to calculate your payroll taxes manually and enter them for each paycheck.

Before you start:

Set your company file to manual payroll setting. (This is a one-time task.)

1. From the Employees menu, choose Payroll Services and then choose Set Up Payroll.

2. Click Choose a payroll option.

3. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and in the paragraph that begins, "If you don't want to use an Intuit Payroll Service...", click Learn more.

4. Click "I choose to manually calculate payroll taxes."

NOTE: Payroll tax information for the federal, state, and local agencies can change at various times throughout the tax year. To avoid penalties, be sure to consult your tax agencies often for any changes.”

I think that that note is important…I would say 75% of the problems that I see with QuickBooks are payroll related. Just be careful, the penalties for screwing up payroll taxes are expensive.