Coffee & Donuts with Laurent Sellier, the head of QuickBooks Workforce Solutions

We heard your feedback, and on May 3rd, we held a special Coffee & Donuts with Laurent Sellier, the head of QuickBooks Workforce Solutions, which includes online payroll and time tracking. During the session, we discussed that we had accountants from across the US and Canada who manage payroll for companies with 10+ employees. We reviewed what they like about QuickBooks Online Payroll, what they would change if they were in charge, and then had a Q&A session with Laurent. Here’s a summary of what was discussed.

What you like
There was a lot of love for QuickBooks Online Payroll, with the comments being bucketed into five main categories:

1. It’s an ecosystem
   You love that you have accounting, payroll, and time tracking all in one place, with no need to import.
    
2. Lot of love for specific features, including:
   - Automated paying and filing of payroll taxes & forms.
   - That 1099 eFiling is included in the subscription price.
   - The Workforce employee portal where employees can self-onboard and view their paychecks and W2s.
    
3. It’s Online
   This gives you anytime, anywhere access, and it’s always up to date!
    
4. Easy to use
   We make running payroll simple!
    
5. We respond to your feedback
   We do listen and take action! More to come on this topic.

    

What we’d work on if you were in charge
We know we have more work to do, but there were some things you called out that you’d really like us to work on.

1. Increased flexibility
   You want to be able to do more on your own. While you can now do payroll corrections until forms have been filed, and you can retroactively update SUI rates for any open quarter, we hear you loud and clear that you want even more, and we continue to work on new features to give you even more flexibility and control!
    
2. Job costing
   Setting up and creating projects is great, but you need more, including multiple classes per employee.
    
3. Easier to use
   While the main flows are all easy, there was an ask for more guided flows, especially for the more complex parts of payroll. Keep a look out as we improve these flows, including setting up local taxes!
    
4. Report customization
   While you can create customized reports in QuickBooks Online for Accountants and share them with your firm members, you want to be able to customize accounting reports and payroll reports.
    
5. Support staff - increased payroll & product knowledge
   You want us to continue the great improvements we’ve made over the last few years for both you and your clients. Keep watching as we help make things easier and clearer for you, incorporating more videos from the people building the product and using AI and machine learning to provide you the right help at the right time. We are also working on improvements to our support staff.

    

Q&A with Laurent Sellier, head of QuickBooks Workforce Solutions
Here are the top 10 questions that were asked, a summary of Laurent’s answers, and some additional resources.

1. What is the vision and current strategy for Quickbooks Online Payroll and Time?
   Our vision is to serve small and medium businesses and accountants by offering tools to help them manage their workforces combined with seamless integration with the larger QuickBooks ecosystem. We want to create products that are simple for everyone to use with quick, easy and compliant payroll.
    
2. How are features prioritized / How do we influence those decisions?
   We listen to you to determine what features you want us to build. We then prioritize features based on how they align with our vision, how many customers will benefit, and how long they will take to build.
   The best way to influence what and when we build something is to provide feedback (log into QuickBooks and select the gear icon at the top, then “Feedback”) and to leave comments in the surveys that pop up in the product.
    
3. How to improve conversions from QB Desktop to QB Online - the benefits and how can I help my clients move?
   There are many benefits to QB Online versus Desktop. Customers report that QuickBooks Online is more efficient than desktop, saving users, on average, more than 51 hours a month. In a recent survey, 95% of accountants say they can give better advice to their clients when they use QuickBooks Online because of the data insights provided. For example, the Cash Flow Planner which can forecast cash flow 30-90 days out.
   We’ve been making the migration process easier based on accountant feedback. We now offer the following:
   - Free migration assistance for your clients
   - Migration toolkit with step-by-step resources for the migration process, including the option to schedule a call with an expert.
    
4. How can ProAdvisors better support our clients (tools to do what customer support does or edit things in bulk, etc.)?
   We are consistently listening to you and taking action on your feedback. Recently we made improvements to tools like Books Review to help you quickly and efficiently get to completed, correct books—every month. Some of the recent improvements include bulk transaction review and easier access and storage of client documents. The best way to stay abreast of new tools for ProAdvisors is on our Firm of the Future site (see link above).
    
5. What's the best way for Accountants to get payroll support?
   The best way to contact support is by logging in to your QuickBooks company and accessing Help in the upper right corner. You can ask our support team about any of your clients - whether they’re on QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop.
    
6. Are there plans to improve the payroll setup process?
   For setting up local taxes, the team is working on improving how we support and manage them in the product.
   For State Unemployment Insurance (SUI) Rates - all customers can now update their SUI rate on their own for any open quarter, and customers in some states ( (AZ, CA, MA, MN, NC, NY, WA, with more coming soon) can upload their notice in the QB Assistant for it to automatically update the rate for them.
    
7. Does Intuit take on the liability for payroll mistakes?
   With all of our QuickBooks Online product tiers (Core, Premium, and Elite), we assume responsibility for federal and state payroll filings and payments directly from your account(s) based on the data you supply. As long as the information you provide us is correct and on time, and you have sufficient funds in your account, we’ll file your tax forms and payments accurately and on time. We’ll pay the resulting payroll tax penalties If we don’t file them accurately or on time.
    
   We also offer an amazing feature called Tax Penalty Protection for our QuickBooks Online Payroll Elite customers. With this protection, if you receive a tax notice and send it to us within 15 days of the tax notice, we will cover the payroll tax penalty of up to $25,000.
    
8. Does the payroll subscription include filing 1099-nec?
   Yes! We included unlimited 1099 preparing and e-filing with the launch of QuickBooks Online Payroll Core, Premium and Elite in 2021. We are also working on improving the 1099 preparation and filing process, especially for those customers who don’t have QuickBooks Online Payroll and need to use the add-on service for a fee to pay and file their 1099s.
    
9. How do we find out about the latest updates?
   As accountants, the best way to stay in touch with the last information is through Firm of the Future. You can also sign up for upcoming In the Know webinars or review past recorded sessions online. In addition, all customers are encouraged to check out the QuickBooks Online Payroll & Time Product News blog post for detailed information on new updates to those products.
    
10. What are the benefits of QBO Payroll vs. a Professional employer organization (PEO)?
    As we roll out more and more Human Capital Management features and expert support in QuickBooks Online Payroll, our goal is to give our customers the support and peace of mind they are looking for when they go with a PEO, but at a fraction of the price and without the intrusive co-employment model. We have a lot of new features coming soon.
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