I am a small bookkeeping service and have been in business, using Quickbooks, since 1998. I own 22 different QB desktop versions. I only have one client who uses QB online. QB online is a terrible product for anyone who actually does accounting. Very slow, not user friendly at all, extremely clunky and completely lacks required reports I use for other clients. It is also a nightmare to find/fix issues when making corrections to client mistakes. Other than my one client, I will NEVER use it. I would go back to pencil and recording keeping graph paper before I switched to online.

The last QB Pro 2021 desktop I purchased was $404.69 from Staples, and I was able to use that for 3 years before now needing to upgrade in order to continue having the pleasure of using the software.  I just spoke with the billing dept and they told me that it will now be an annual cost of $649 for the QB Desktop Pro Plus subscription, but could not confirm whether or not there will be price increases at the time of the automatic renewal to my credit card. I forgot to inquire if that price includes the payroll or if I will have to continue paying the additional (approx) $550 annual p/r fee as well.

These are steep price increases for small bookkeeping services like mine. Maybe it would just be cheaper to farm out the payroll to a third party service and continue using the old desktop without the updates. Does anyone know of a good payroll service?