09.24.24 - Dude, Where's My Payroll

Join us for an engaging session on why keeping payroll separate from QBO can enhance your accounting setup. Valerie Heckman from OnPay will discuss how this approach improves security, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness. Discover how distinct systems can simplify troubleshooting and offer specialized payroll solutions.

Handouts and More Resources on today's episode available at: https://www.qbpowerhour.com/09-24-24-dude-where-s-my-payroll

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants and QuickBooks professionals hosted by Michelle Long, CPA, and Dan DeLong.

Watch past webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog and register for future ones at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/.

Transcript

Dan DeLong: 0:30

Welcome everybody to another QB power hour. Today is going to be dude, where's my payroll? This is actually going to be talking about, we're not going to be talking about like the money movement, like an employee asking about where's my payroll money. We'll be talking about the advantages and disadvantages of separate payroll management, having payroll in your QuickBooks or outside of QuickBooks. So a little bit of today, Michelle's not with us today. She's finally on her vacation of a lifetime again. So she went to Papua New Guinea, I think a couple of years ago, and that's where she broke her foot and had that nasty surgery and missed out on an opportunity to just snorkel in the barrier reef. So, leave it to Michelle not to let that go unturned and made that she's now making that up. The possibility for her so she is doing that. So the next couple QB power hours, she'll be off gallivanting world traveling and enjoying her semi retirement. But of course she'll be coming back after that. My name's Dan DeLong, co hosting today owner at Danwidth and School of Bookkeeping. Worked at Intuit for nearly 18 years, co hosting today, as well as the workshop Wednesdays over at School of Bookkeeping and doing some tech editing for the Dummies series of books that deal with QuickBooks. And joining us today is another fellow Intuit alum, Valerie Heckman. As I was reaching out, I was like, oh my goodness, all my normal co hosts are here. At Appicamp or on vacation, and I can't do that alone. Valerie, help me out! And and SB has it. She's she's available. Valerie, you want to explain, or Introduce yourself, not explain yourself.

Valerie Heckman: 2:17

Explain myself. Oh no. Hi. Hi, Dan. Good to see you and great to be here. Hey, everyone. For those who don't know me, I'm Valerie Heckman. I'm the Accountant Community Manager at OnPay which essentially means that I'm an advocate for the accounting community. I go to events and conferences. I do webinars and other things like this as well as take feedback from accountants back to our team. I've spent the last 13 years working with accountants, bookkeepers, and advisors in various capacities. I'm a public speaker and educator. And you may have seen me at Scaling New Heights this year. I did a keynote and a session. I speak at various conferences and events too. And I did work at Intuit for 10 years with Dan. So good to stay connected with you over the years, Dan. I also when I left Intuit, I went to a sales tax advisory startup. So I spent some time in that world started my career in payroll. Went into QBO, went into tax sales tax. And then I've headed back into the world of payroll at OnPay. So been there a year now and I'm excited to talk to you about it a bit today.

Dan DeLong: 3:17

And and this is what you mentioned when you're keynoted at Scaling New Heights and that, that's what clicked for me where, and we had talked about this a little bit where kind of OnPay has this. Almost like Intuit has its own branding issues, right? Where OnPay has this Mindset in the community of where it fits in the payroll offerings. And then I saw you on stage and I really should double check and then circle up, circle back with on pay, because I had that same feeling when I had learned about what on pay was before, but talk about your to da list your, the takeaway of of the of the keynote that you did.

Valerie Heckman: 3:56

Sure. So I, I did a keynote on prioritizing enthusiasm in your life and in your work life, and one of the things that people took away from that, I talked a lot about mindset and building community and building new things. And I mentioned that you should consider keeping a to do list in addition to your to do list. So everybody tracks to do list. What they have to do and it feels really good to cross those things off. But sometimes it's good to put that to the side and focus on what you have accomplished. And not even just accomplished, but the things that, that you've done that are meaningful to you. Like it doesn't just have to be, Oh, I got a reconciliation done. It can be, Hey, I had a, got a reconciliation done, but I also had a really great conversation with a friend, or I got a walk in today, or whatever, and just take a few moments in your day to reflect on the good things that did take place. So that's the to da list. To do list is for keeping track of those tasks. To da list is a way of celebrating them.

Dan DeLong: 5:00

There we go. It was it was a great great keynote. And and I don't know, are you able to, I guess if you're a member of Woodard, you can go back and watch the keynotes and those types of things. But if you are definitely suggest checking that out. It was a really great speech.

Valerie Heckman: 5:15

Thank you. Thank you.

Dan DeLong: 5:17

So a little bit about do some housekeeping here. So a little bit about the QB power hour webinars or every other Tuesday at noon Eastern. Our friends at makers hub are sponsoring our CPE credit. This 1 is not eligible for CPE. That's only the 1st webinar of the month, not necessarily the 1st week of the month, but the 1st webinar of the month this being the 2nd 1. It's not this 1 particularly is not eligible for CPE credit. But you can always go to qbpowerhour. com slash resources if you need the PDFs of the slides, the recordings, the podcasts and other resources, which now has reminded me of a few of the housekeeping tasks that I forgot to do because this is where Michelle would help me out. With putting slides and whatnot, so we'll make sure that we do that once we get going here. Other housekeeping, if you have specific questions, especially for Valerie at OnPay, as we talk a little bit about what OnPay does and can do, please put them in the Q& A, because especially if we can't get to it live, we'll want to follow up with that and putting it in the Q& A as opposed to the chat. Will be super helpful for us to follow up with that. If you do have any general comments of things things that we're talking about or just want to have a a chatty type of thing please put them in the comments in the chat. And then so new for this year we are simulcasting on Facebook and the YouTube channel. So if you are on YouTube in the group watching on the group please use the QR code to allow the streaming platform to see who you are so we can see see your comments and engage in the conversation as well. We do have a store. Please check that out if you feel so inclined. And you too can wear a pink hat like me on this for today. So we'll talk a little bit about the agenda that we're going to be talking about here today. We'll recap some of the QBO payroll offerings. So we'll review the payroll lineup. Also remind folks that QBO can be a a standalone payroll offering. And then we'll talk about integrating the payroll inside of your QuickBooks Online. Whether you're, whether that's good or bad, we'll talk about the, some advantages of doing that, some disadvantages of doing that, and then we'll throw in a horror story or two where we can talk about the worst case scenario, and then we'll flip things over to to Valerie on pay to talk about what what else is out there when dealing with with payroll, and if time permits, we'll have some Q& A. So we'll start off first with our first polling question. Do you offer payroll services to your clients as a part of your core offerings? Or most clients have payroll services when they come to you, or maybe you got burnt by something and looking for other payroll offerings, which I think Valerie, maybe you can chime in here. But The task of switching payroll providers. I think that's more of a we've called it a thing. We called it, we've called these types of things as like a grudge purchase where there's typically an event that happens that is like the, this is the last straw or cause it's like switching banks, right? You get, Into a bank financial institution relationship and then something happens. There's a trigger event that is like causes you to look, most people don't go looking for new banks or new payroll hiders. They have something like that. It's like a. Like a plumber, right? Like you don't go looking for a plumber until you've got a leaky faucet or a leak somewhere, right? And is that what you're, what in the payroll?

Valerie Heckman: 9:01

Yeah, I, we definitely see that. I'd say that either people run into something like that, right? Where. There's a thing that goes on and they realize they need to switch. And sometimes that's not always bad. It could be that they've expanded what they're doing and they need a payroll service that has more features and functionality. Sometimes it can be, yeah, a support thing or, problems that have developed over time. Sometimes it's a pricing budgeting type situation. And then sometimes with accountants, we'll see people trying to, Standardized clients onto one solution. That might not be the best reason, but it is a something that we see sometimes. I prefer not to disrupt payroll if you don't have to, but there can be some reasons to do that as well. Especially if if it's going to be a good fit for your clients.

Dan DeLong: 9:49

Yeah, and I see some in the chat, I see some of those trigger events. That would that are bringing people to the webinar today at the 100 percent price increase for desktop for enhanced payroll for accountant is is is a triggering event. So definitely, um, possibility there. All right, so move on here. I added this slide. I think

Valerie Heckman: 10:11

you're still

Dan DeLong: 10:12

going. Okay.

Valerie Heckman: 10:15

I wasn't sure if that was blocking their view.

Dan DeLong: 10:17

Oh, yeah, just sharing the results with the with almost about half the folks here where payroll is one is part of their core offerings. And. Most and then followed closely by about a quarter where they already have the payroll service when they come to them. I did want to recap. We had we had Intuit on a couple of years ago where we were talking about desktop migration best practices, and they brought up this slide, and I wanted to, recover, re cover this, not recover it, but cover it again. There we go. Where, QuickBooks Online and the apps ecosystem where and you can probably attest to this, Valerie, that Brad Smith originally, laid down this whole idea of QuickBooks being the ecosystem of small business and being like the hub of a wheel when you look at, QuickBooks Online and the other, and the workflows that businesses do where QuickBooks would be the center of that. And then the middle circle is the QuickBooks for offerings that can be connected. Directly within with inside of QuickBooks and then that outer ring is the the app ecosystem of specialized workflows where you see the build. com for AP noify for construction, contracting, job costing, specify, reporting at inventory management. So those things that, that QuickBooks doesn't. Do at its core you have those applications that, that you can work with. Now, since this slide was was created. You can tell that there's, there's payments, there's payroll there's the capital, MailChimp is in there QB time but since then, Intuit has now brought in another core offering or core connected service of the QB bill pay, right? So what we see in this inner circle is a lot of a lot of things that deal with money movement, movement of money coming in, money going out. Money going to to payroll in this particular, the case so that we have this core group of services. And now I think back of like when QuickBooks online was, coming into the market really making some headway. That was fact that it didn't do a lot of real world. Money movement I think was actually an advantage to QuickBooks online, and now that we're seeing a lot of more services, more core services that QuickBooks is where it's dealing specifically with money. I think that is, it's trying to think of the phrase or the word, um, this is this puts QuickBooks and Intuit in more of a higher urgency when things don't go right, right? So, there's always going to be a problem when it comes to a soft, a software, but when it has to deal with money, the transfer of money from one entity to another, whether that's, business to business or business to, employee those types of things where it's really involving money, it gets higher higher level. And I remember working it into it and it was payday, Friday. People will call in on Friday. And there would be this, you could hear the employees knocking on the door, like, where's my money? Yeah, we often say,

Valerie Heckman: 13:44

there's not a lot of emergencies necessarily in accounting and tax, but payroll is one, right? It's super important to keep those employees happy. Even a few errors or late. Payments can really have a detrimental ripple effect on a lot of people's lives. So we are definitely dealing with human beings and their livelihoods when we're working in payroll, obviously, but that, that creates a lot of urgency.

Dan DeLong: 14:12

And then we're, and then we're talking about these trigger events that cause people to look elsewhere, right? If you have all of your eggs in this money movement basket inside of your QuickBooks and something happens with your payroll. Then that could sour the whole apple cart, so to speak, or the everything else. Do I trust them with, me receiving money or for books payments and there's all sorts of, things that we've talked about, in the past couple of weeks about, ACH delays and those types of things with money coming in. This is This is a delicate balance, I think, for, for this sort of thing. And that's what kind of what we're going to unpack here today with, the advantages and disadvantages of having payroll directly within your QuickBooks online. So we wanted to review that the QuickBooks online payroll lineup Valerie, close your ears, we're talking about QuickBooks, but all about this this stuff anyway, because,

Valerie Heckman: 15:13

Yeah, and I should give a, I should give a disclaimer that while UnPay is a competitor we also are a partner and we'll get into that a little bit with how we sync and there's enough room at the playground for everyone. But I think it's really important for accountants and bookkeepers and advisors to be able to be a buyer's agent for your clients and help them through the options that are on the market and what's going to be the best fit for them. Hey, this is a great fit for a lot of people. But we can have options. And that's the beauty of the open ecosystem that you just showed a slider app, in my opinion.

Dan DeLong: 15:43

Next, next time we'll be talking about e commerce fundamentals. And that, that becomes, what's the best way to get Shopify into QuickBooks? The answer is it depends, and we'll unpack that next time. So this is another. Another set of core workflows that we're talking about. What's the best payroll service? It depends, right? It depends on what you're solving for. I used an intuitism there. What are we solving for? So in QuickBooks online payroll there's three flavors of services, core, premium, and the elite. And they all come with a a varying increased Of service offerings or features and benefits, right? So they're all full service, meaning that full service in QuickBooks speak is. Once you process the payroll, the tax payments will be made for you. Everything else garnishments and 401k health benefits, those other types of liability, payroll liabilities, may or may not, depending on the flavor of service and the connected service that you might have to that. But they're full service in that once you process payroll, your tax payments should be made. I'm gonna use their quotes there, be made on time. And then going up to the elite, they actually do have a guarantee on making those payments and filing the forms on a timely basis. And if you do get tax notices they will stand behind the penalties for you, even if it's your fault. But pretty. And the other main differentiator between the three offerings is the level of setup that's required by you. Where Core is, it do it on your own, you're on your own. If you fat finger the account number, I'm sorry, right? That this, that, that's the answer that you're going to get. And then they won't necessarily stand behind you setting it up. Premium they'll have a payroll expert come behind your payroll setup and validate and make sure that you've set it up properly. Hey, you missed you missed a payment entry in here for payroll history, that, that sort of thing. But elite is more of where they bring out the they want to be preemptive and make sure it's set up properly because of that guarantee that they offer it, they don't want to, um, they don't want to be on the hook for those tech payments if they, if it's not set up properly. So they want to make sure that happens. And then, varying degrees of the speed of money movement, same day direct deposit as opposed to next day or needing to do the two day and those types of things, those those are the two or three flavors of that. And one thing that I'm I want to make sure that people are aware of is that QBO payroll can be separate doesn't have to be activated within your QuickBooks Online subscription. You can have a separate QBO subscription for just payroll and export those. Those payroll transactions to your QuickBooks account, so it can be completely separate from that because that will unpack the horror story of the day. That might be a good idea, but again, the answer is it depends, right? Um, The they will come in as check as opposed to paycheck. So running those report and those types of things inside of your QuickBooks when it is separate is a different challenge. But, understanding that at least you can do that if you wanted to. So let's talk about some of the advantages of adding payroll directly within QuickBooks online. And this is. You know where QuickBooks will have and Intuit will have a distinct advantage because they own the end to end experience of QuickBooks online, as well as the payroll providing. So the deep integration is where, the biggest advantage of adding payroll directly within your QuickBooks online with project costing we're finally getting the the option of spreading out those payroll costs per job a little bit more in detail than they were in the past, because it's always been a criticism of QuickBooks Online, doesn't do job costs, air quotes there, so it does to a degree and payroll was one of those things, the payroll job costing allocation was one of those things that a lot of people Preferred the QuickBooks desktop route of the way things that were handled there, as opposed to QuickBooks online they've been talking about the the allocation of that in payroll is getting better, right? And eventually it'll get to the point. Where it does hopefully the same thing that it does in desktop, but you're going to have more detail on reports. And then, of course, you're going to have consistent navigation. You don't have to go into another outside application and run payroll. That looks and feels differently than it does inside a QuickBooks. So your QuickBooks time, your QuickBooks payroll, your QuickBooks, they all have that same familiar feel. Once you're in that online ecosystem, or if you're coming from desktop, then that's another conversation. But you do have that one stop shop with regards to. Having your QuickBooks and your payroll in one place, one place to log in, you do all your things in one place. Now, the disadvantages is typically going to revolve around user access concerns, right? So who can see the payroll information? You're going to have permissions issues. And even QuickBooks Online Advanced as it's You know, touted advanced or greater granularity when it came to permissions initially was I called it a light switch, right? It was either on or off and there was no dimming of the light between the two now it's getting there with with the greater advancements that they're making with the user permissions and whatnot. But. You have more people in inside of your QuickBooks with your payroll in it, you're going to need more users. And even though a time entry user does not count as a billable user someone in there to run payroll and those types of things, that's the only thing that they do now, that's a person that takes up a slot in, plus only gives you five people. Is that going to make you go to QuickBooks online in advance, just because you have. Payroll inside of your inside of your QuickBooks, that is a consideration.

Valerie Heckman: 22:21

And that I think is a common thing that we see with people, right? They don't need the functionality of a higher tier, but they might need some, the extra user seats for one reason or another. And payroll is one of those reasons. So it's if somebody could stay on a lower version, to have things separate, right? Make a difference. Maybe.

Dan DeLong: 22:41

Yeah. Consider if users is the only thing that's driving them to a higher version. Obviously, there's other features and functions that they'll have available to them. That's quite a jump. Go from 99 a month to, to 35 just for, people to do payroll out inside of QuickBooks. And then there's the gripe of fixing mistakes is difficult. Once you do process payroll and record payroll inside of QuickBooks. Incorrect account mapping and those types of things. If you put the wrong bank account or map it in there that once you record it, then re record it, you can't like edit the transaction. Cause normally you don't want to be go going in and modifying a recorded paycheck. After the fact and typically the answer from support is you got to delete void or, recreate that, that check after you've made the change. So incorrect account mapping is a challenge. There's some of those things that you're, that you get with with QuickBooks online payroll is just, that's the, the answer is. That's the way it worked. A lot of times there are certain payroll deductions or liabilities that are Not the account type that the accountant and bookkeeping professional wants, but if they're only listed as an expense, and they, rather have it be a liability or an asset or, employee loans or one of those things that, people, there's different schools of thought of where they should show up on the On the general ledger but they're only offered a certain number of accounts that you can choose from or a certain type and then the answer ends up being you're going to need to make a journal entry. So now you've added a task for something that you're You know, would rather not right. So making those account mappings exactly dialed in or fine tune might not be the experience that you want. And then there's this nebulous thing of payroll corrections where hope something was recorded wrong or I set up. A pre tax deduction when it should have been post taxed after the fact I've recorded things, and I need to make a payroll correction, or we're setting up payroll for the first time, we forgot to put in, certain things, and we want to make sure the W 2s are correct at the end of the year there's this nebulous escalation called payroll corrections that You may or may not hear from someone for two months before it actually gets it corrected. That is one of those things where adding it directly within could cause a hardship. And then one of

Valerie Heckman: 25:19

the challenges I've seen with that, that folks have mentioned to me over the years is Wanting to get the books accurate and sometimes people don't realize that making changes in the books doesn't make changes in the payroll. It's still a one way street, even though it's embedded within. And so that workflow, especially if your clients are the types that are doing some of those changes. edits and journal entries and things themselves or reconciling their own books or whatever, that there can be a disconnect sometimes that things that happen in the books don't influence the payroll and vice versa in some cases, depending on how things are mapped and what the issue is. So that, that can create some challenges as well.

Dan DeLong: 26:00

Yeah. And then and then there's the whole thing of the service after the service, resources trying to contact somebody I hate when it when I have to call into it. Not that I don't want to talk to somebody. It's just the call routing. Do I get to the right person? There's typically one number for accountants to call and then The voice, they pick up a an errand dog barking and sorry, I couldn't understand that we'll send you to a nebulous triage system before you actually get to somebody that you can actually do when you're dealing with, a specific service you're just, you're going to be talking to somebody. At at that provider, right? The resources and support that you get could be a challenge after the fact, because, technology is great. When it works. But we all live in that that, that small percentage when it doesn't. And it's what happens when that is you were talking Valerie about, some of the resources that, that on pay might have and want to talk a little bit about that.

Valerie Heckman: 27:04

Yeah, we can get to that in a moment. And I'm certainly I, there's some amazing people into it support teams. I don't want us to sound like we're totally putting that, but one of the advantages that I see, sometimes people start to look at other options is when they they want. A dedicated payroll team, not to talk to somebody who payrolls one of one of the things that they're supporting. It's the only thing that they're supporting. And sometimes that can make a difference depending. And of course, that's a decision that everybody has to make for themselves, but it can be a difference. There is at on pay. We are a payroll company. That's not just one of the things that you do. It's the core of what we do. Whereas sometimes, and not just into it, lots of companies. Falls in as just one of the things that a given support person is talking about all day, so it can make a difference.

Dan DeLong: 27:56

There's always that pendulum of specialization and generalization that, that could swing either way depending on the time of year. So let's talk about the horror story. So I, I don't want to necessarily say that this is always going to happen. Just like what Valerie was saying, there's plenty of opportunities and Elizabeth was saying in the chat, she's I'm, I don't experience any issues with customer support and that's

Valerie Heckman: 28:18

great that's

Dan DeLong: 28:20

great. That's great that's happened. But we had a post on on our Facebook group where Robin was converting a desktop file to, to QuickBooks online and needed some help on a weekend. So that was. Part of the challenge of getting to the right place at the right time when help was needed and one thing led to another and their converted data converted into the QuickBooks online accountant, your books. So basically she overwrote her clients data or her own data with her clients data, which included payroll, right? So that was A terrible realization, right? So you log into your QBOA, you go into your book and you see all of your clients data and none of your of your firm's information in there when that happens, when you have a conversion from desktop to online that data is overwritten, right? Part of the challenge that we have is that. In QuickBooks Online Accountant, the backup company, because you do have QuickBooks online backup service as an advanced subscriber. And as yearbooks, you have the. Advanced some advanced functionality, however, not for QuickBooks Online account. So you can't set up the backup service on QBOA, your book. So basically the books that you have for your firm can't be backed up and subsequently restored because QuickBooks Online The QBOA backup service does not back up payroll. That was the discovery of all of this. Does it back up

Valerie Heckman: 30:04

payroll when it's a client's account? Or it doesn't back up payroll at all?

Dan DeLong: 30:09

Payroll is one of those things, right? Because of the So the short answer is no, it doesn't it doesn't back up for your client it doesn't back, it doesn't back up payroll, um, even rewind as we'll talk a little bit about them. They can't back up payroll. The QuickBooks online payroll service is unable. To be backed up, right? Because there's so much PII, personally identifiable information right there, social security numbers, there's that API accounts that yeah that, that ship has sailed, right? So you can't necessarily back up. And that's one of the main reasons that when you convert from desktop to online or online back desktop, is that those paychecks. Don't get created as paycheck because it's virtually impossible to have a one to one relationship because one, the payroll service would need to be set up exactly the way it is. Sometimes people can get pretty creative on how they set things up. And it's a domino effect. If one thing can't be set up, then everything that happens after that doesn't happen. They're typically created as checks when they convert from one to the other. But with With the online backup service with that was chronobooks only in QuickBooks Online Advanced, but not an option for QBO accountants and it only provides a restore point, meaning that if something happens today, and I want to go back to tomorrow, or I can't go back to tomorrow that I want to go back to yesterday or the week ago, that will allow you to do that. However, anything that occurred after that would have to be reentered. And the big thing about not all data is going to be restored of the payroll service. In this case Robin ended up having to recreate and set up payroll entering in. Um, year to date to get things get things working again. And, but you do have the ability to copy your data into another and then one other QBO subscription provided of course, that is also an advanced option, right? Because our subscription level, so you have to go from advanced to advanced, but. Don't expect your payroll to be part of that process, which then leads to all sorts of reconciliation nightmares. Because if you've got your paycheck and you've reconciled your paycheck and that paycheck is now not part of the copied data you got to recreate those transactions and recreate those reconciliations as well. There is another outside backup service out there called rewind. It does work with all versions of QBO. It does. Does the same thing where it's that restore point of all data where you can do. Okay, I want to go back to yesterday. But it also does individual transaction. Now, payroll is not part of that. Just bear in mind that it's not going to back up payroll transactions. But if your customer is something of a heavy clicker and they, If you delete a large transaction, like an invoice that's 26 pages long, you can go into into Rewind and restore just that one transaction or several transactions if they got click happy again and decided to do that they do have a nice accountant program. And that can be one of your service offerings as a as an accounting professional to offer that backup service through re want. Can't say that. So let's listen to our polling question. This one is actually a two parter. So do you use the QuickBooks online accountant to manage your firm books and as an accountant, of course, you get the elite payroll service as part of that. Two, two parts there. Do you do you use the firm books to manage your books? And do you use the included elite payroll service as well? Any anything that you saw in the chat or the Q and a Valerie that I'm, I might've Yeah, I'm looking through it,

Valerie Heckman: 33:56

one thing I I feel terribly that this happened to somebody and I don't think it's A thing that happens all the time. I certainly hope not, but I'm glad that, this is what got us, us talking as if I'd ever seen anything like that. And I hadn't, but I think it is good to realize that it's there and just knowing that somebody in the chat said, this is why I still keep paper files, keep paper copies. Even just having a drive of some reports and things after your run payroll is probably a good option to have a little insurance against some of these problems, if you're in this, in the solution. So terrible that happened.

Dan DeLong: 34:34

And the bottom line is you just want to weigh your options and at least know what, what would happen in that worst case scenario. I remember, getting trained in Intuit. And part of that process was before you act on something, make a damage control plan. So if the worst thing, worst case scenario would happen, you have, something to fall back on. I've done horrible things I care not to repeat, but I remember shutting a business down because I repaired their office, their Microsoft office and their outlook blew up in the whole process and didn't make that damage control plan and felt terribly terrible, horrible about the whole situation because. I basically did something that caused a business impact. And so having that damage control plan in place, whether it's the backup service or at least separating the two so that you know that if there is, worst case scenario where something gets overwritten, your payroll is Allocated outside of that. So I just want to end the poll here, share the results. It looks like a lot of people are using the firm books. However they're happy with their payroll provider. So now we're talking about that grudge purchase, right? So long as they're happy with that, they're not going to be changing, which is perfectly okay. So let's talk a little bit about on pay and it, just knowing what else is out there is a great, knowledge is power and knowing is half the battle, the GI Joe would say.

Valerie Heckman: 36:04

Sure. So a little bit of, about OnPay and again, this, I think this was something that kind of got Dan thinking, Hey let's see. What is, what else is out there? Let's talk to Val about OnPay a little bit. So that you know your options. So we are a full service payroll solution as well. We're part of that QBO ecosystem. So we connect up with QuickBooks Online. We also have an export for QuickBooks Desktop. I'll talk about that a little bit more in a moment. And really, What's interesting about us, I mentioned before, we are a payroll company that has great software. Our company was born out of our founder going to work for his grandfather's old school payroll clerking company in Atlanta, saw the opportunity to help those payroll clerks more effectively serve clients, and then Built on paste or letting businesses use it themselves and the rest is history. And so we have a really deep pay payroll history. And I think that's really continued forward and everything that we do from a customer service perspective, especially that payroll service provider is a is in our DNA. And then we have awesome software as opposed to being a software company that also does payroll. Which is Intuit and a bunch of other different companies out there. So we give you the option to run payroll for your clients, or you can refer them, or you can collaborate. Together inside of on pay. I'm going to bring up and I don't I realize do I have the option to share my screen here. Yeah,

Dan DeLong: 37:36

Let me go ahead and stop sharing so that you can share

Valerie Heckman: 37:40

a couple of things. Get out of the slides for a moment.

Dan DeLong: 37:43

While you're sharing it. I did see a note in the chat. Because I mentioned that you can't restore a transaction with the QBO backup service. Yes, you can use the the audit log to see a deleted transaction. There is a, accountant report for deleted, avoided transactions. So you can see the transaction, you can see the prior iteration of that. But there's no E button to restore that transaction. It had a lot of information or line items on it. Recreating that as you will have a blueprint to do that from the audit log. Restoring that transaction would be a manual process of recreating that transaction from scratch.

Valerie Heckman: 38:28

Okay. Alrighty. So a couple of things with on pay if you were to want to compare it to other providers a feature functionality set, The best thing to do is probably set up a conversation with us. We'll jump into a demo. We'll talk to you about your clients. Of course, we work with accountants closely, so we can really assess your client needs and show you a functionality in a one on one. So I'm just going to go through a couple of things pretty quickly here. We do have a couple of areas on our website that you can dive into, of course, to learn more about us. One that I like pointing out is we have an area where you can compare providers. You can read our ratings and reviews and there's an option on this page. We pull in a bunch of the G2 reviews, but also pick a provider and you can see a side by side comparison of on pay versus QuickBooks payroll or some of these other options. And that'll give you a kind of a side by side breakdown and you can collapse and expand and see. The the different things that we have a couple of sort of high level things that I love to point out is we we have full service payroll with the federal, state, and local tax filings. We don't charge anything extra for multi state, so that's included, and that tends to be an area that people rack up some hidden fees and other, Providers likewise, we will not have any additional fees for offset gold pay runs. So it's unlimited payrolls included in the subscription price. A couple of other things is we have some built in HR. And we have an in house benefits team, so there's some extra services that you get included with Anke without having to add on different apps. But we also have a bunch of integrations and things that you can connect with. For 401k and workers' comp. If you do need some HR help, kinda beyond the, just using the tools inside of on Pay. And of course we sync up with QuickBooks Online Zero and QuickBooks Desktop. I was gonna jump in. I know we are coming up on time here, but let me jump in and just run a payroll and kind of talk through oh, I need to enter my. Multi factor code here to get logged in.

Dan DeLong: 40:42

I just want to talk while you're doing that. I think that's one of the things that I that it's really I don't want to say that you're vulnerable, but being having something on your website where you can where someone can go to actually compare. And it's not just on pay with X, it's, others together, right? So you've made that as a, it's a great resource so that people can go and take a look and compare these these payroll offerings side by side and really make that best decision for them or their client and that, that's a really great great page to either, either bookmark and make available when it comes time to, okay, is there a reason to change change payroll providers? Which one will be the best?

Valerie Heckman: 41:27

Absolutely. And we can talk, feature little comparisons and things all day. One of the reasons I think people switch to UnPay the most is for our ease of use. Our service and our great integrations so everyone who's on pay will get a dedicated partner support channel So if you're an accountant bookkeeper advisor coming through you'll get this dashboard that i'm logged into now where you can manage Your clients and your team members similar to what you would do in QBOA. And then we do full service onboarding including data migration for every client that you have on unpay. So they don't have to be on a higher subscription level. We will do the work and the expert review for every client that you have. And that really helps us. Set those clients up for success from the get go and take that work off your plate. And then ongoing email, chat, phone support for your clients and for you. We do revenue share and discounts. So if you're setting up a new client in here, it's pretty easy to start an enrollment. And if they're added through you you really have the option of whether you want it to be billed to the client, billed to you directly. Do you want to be involved in working with us to get them up and running, or would you prefer to invite the client to work with our team themselves? So a lot of different ways that you can work with us. Of course, if you've got a client already on OnPay, you can invite them in to be part of your team. part of your firm's platform here too. I'm just going to launch into a client and show you just a taste of what our interface looks like and point out some things. Would of course love to do full demos for anybody that's interested. But we're brought into a dashboard. I'm going to see the same thing that my client sees. We show you the recent pay runs the next scheduled runs, important dates. So we can set up multiple pay schedules, even custom. Pay schedules if we want and then see the upcoming periods and our deadlines. Like I mentioned before, we have a bunch of HR functionality built in. So you have a whole HR toolbox really awesome tools to hire an employee. Have onboarding documents, get electronic signatures, have the employees fill out their own profiles. Every employee gets a portal that they can log into for those onboarding steps if you choose to use them, but also to view their paychecks view their, pay stubs, view their W 2s, 1099s. You can have employees and contractors in here. One kind of thing on how we build too, is we just have one subscription level 40 a month, 6 per worker paid per month. And that's who's paid, right? So you can have as many pay runs as you need, and we just add up the employees and contractors. You don't have to activate and deactivate and do that whole dance. If you've got like seasonal employees or something or restaurant workers we tend to be a good fit. And then when it comes to running payroll, just to show you a little taste of what this is like. If I jump into a pay schedule, we'll pull in all of our employee profiles super configurable from a company settings perspective and on the individual workers. There's a lot of things in OnPay that you can turn on and off and that's part of what drew me to this, is it's super configurable to even some very complex business needs and you can pay, we typically say under 500 employees are a good fit for OnPay. I'd say we. We probably see a lot of the businesses that are more in the under 100 range, since they tend to be the folks that are a good fit for QBO and Xero. But we can support 500 and even go over that a little if we need to. I'm going to just check off a couple of employees here to give you a sense of what this looks like.

Dan DeLong: 45:08

A quick question that somebody brought up is, Do you handle class and or location as far as the integration into QuickBooks, where you can split them by class? Great question.

Valerie Heckman: 45:17

Yeah, so we can map up the classes, we can map up departments. I'll show you a little of that in a moment. We don't have. A allocation by class on the paychecks themselves. So that gets into the more what I would consider like advanced type job costing. There are some things that folks do with setting up custom pay types and adding those to the check and then having those flow to the general ledger. So there's some ways that people get through that with what I would call light job costing. I could probably talk about that for the rest of the time we have together and then into the afternoon. So I won't go deep here. But yes the the mapping piece will have that. And we'll look at that in a second. When we're setting up a check, we of course can input hours. We can bring that in from if they're using QuickBooks Time or Deputy or When I Work. If they're using some other time tracking system, we've got like a CSV import option. Or we can type them in as we go here. And then of course I've got the option to configure the check. It'll pull in some things I have set up on the employee's profile. But if I wanted to, Add another pay item to this check is a one time thing or something. I can rearrange stuff. And we can have a lot of custom pay items. I rarely see anybody run out of space with that. We can, I think it's something like, 50 or 60 items that you can set up in addition to what's built in. And then, of course, we can do some overrides in the moment as well. So super, super configurable if you need to go through and make some changes. So I would toggle through my various employees here. And then I'm brought into a page where I can preview everything. I love this because I've got the option to review the company costs and really drill deep and see how the taxes and contributions and whatever else I've got set up played out. I can download this as a PDF. We can drill into the check itself if we want to see how it all broke down. And then down along the bottom, you'll see what the total costs are, our debit dates and debit amounts, direct deposit dates, direct deposit amounts. We do tax impoundings, so you'll see a payroll sweep and a tax sweep when you run payroll with us. And we've got options for 4 day direct deposit. And then when I go to submit, it'll tell me if there's any warnings maybe I've got somebody who my pay is unusually low or unusually high, this is a test account so it's probably a little bit wonky, but you'll get some of those warnings if things are a miss. And then I can jump into submit my payroll and confirm that out. When I confirm it, it'll automatically sync to QBO or I have the option to push that over. So this is our kind of our, where our app directory lives with all the various. integrations we have for time tracking for 401k, workers comp, compliance all those things. This is where I would set up my connection to QBO. I realized that this account is not connected up, so I have some screenshots to give you a sense of what this looks like. Let me zoom in on these a little. And this, That was one of the

Dan DeLong: 48:22

things that I was investigating because it's always down to, devil's always in the details. How does this show up in, in QuickBooks, especially when it's outside of that. And you do have provide the option of detailed versus summary. There's still the same transaction type of a journal entry, but you can break it out by employee, right?

Valerie Heckman: 48:43

You can, yes, so we can sync it automatically, or you can choose to push it over, and that's actually another reason, we didn't even talk about this, Dan, sometimes people don't want payroll data to immediately show up in the books, they've got their reasons, we don't have to get into all those reasons, but sometimes that's a thing, we don't want that payroll data sitting in the books until we're ready for it If you've got payroll outside of the system, whether it's on pay or something else, you have that option of when it comes over. And then, yes, in, in detail will be the full breakdown of each employees versus a a summary. Then we map up our checking accounts, clearing accounts, any, if you've got controlled tips, you'll have a clearing account for that tips, payable accounts. And then, this is a help article, so it guides you through some of the configurations, but we'll be able to connect up our expense accounts, our liability accounts departments, classes, all of that, our help resources also we'll break down those summer, summary, And in detail journal entry examples, so you can see, I know it's a little small here. A summary one's pretty basic, straightforward journal entry. And then here's the tax sweep the detail, separate journal entries for each employee, the tax sweep, and the direct deposit sweep. So you have more. More information. And this gives you a sense of what that looks like. One of the things I get complimented on is how well our transactions match up in the bank feed. I don't know if that's true for every bank. I won't make that guarantee, but I do hear that compliment a lot from accountants I talk to. So take that for what it's worth. And then of course we've got a robust report center. The filings that we do on behalf of the business will show up here. You'll be able to see the liabilities. I mentioned the HR settings. Ooh, looks like you're popping up another poll and question. We are running out of time. I want to make

Dan DeLong: 50:33

sure we get the last poll question in there before the end of the webinar. If you've got some time to maybe stick around for a few extra minutes, there are some

Valerie Heckman: 50:41

good

Dan DeLong: 50:43

questions. A

Valerie Heckman: 50:45

lot of good stuff. A lot of things that we can say and I know payroll, one question leads to another question leads to another. So we we have a dedicated partner team. Like I mentioned, we have a partner program to give you resources, to give you discounts or revenue share with us and then also to. Support you ongoing. We've got dedicated support for our partners. So something to keep in mind. And thanks for inviting me on before we run out of time. Let me make sure I thank you for having me today. It's an interesting topic. And and it is. It's a good thing. I think to have some different options for clients when they need them. Keep us in mind.

Dan DeLong: 51:21

Always great to have more information or at least more options than than realizing, Oh, all my eggs are in one basket. But I wanted to ask you the rapid fire questions here, Valerie. Okay. That I saw going through here. Is there a PEO option? Or or is it because you essentially have a one size fits all service offering. Is there a place to grow if they do need PEO? Great

Valerie Heckman: 51:48

question. Not at this time. Not at this time. So we do have an in house benefits team. We've got licensed brokers. They can help employers through picking plans, setting up plans, doing open enrollment with their employees and all of that. But no, it is not a PEO option. We'll keep, if that's something people want, keep asking us for it and we'll see if we have it in the future, but not at this time.

Dan DeLong: 52:10

And I'm not sure if you mentioned it, but where is OnPay based out of and is that where all the employees are?

Valerie Heckman: 52:16

Yeah, I flew through that, didn't I? I knew how much time we had left. OnPay is in Atlanta. We're headquartered there. And then we do have some employees throughout the country. The folks that are in the Atlanta office, a lot of them are hybrids. They work at least three days in the office and then they spend some time working from home as well. Everybody is U. S. based. And we don't do any offshoring or any of that. And everyone gets trained in house, which I think is really wonderful. We also give all of our employees the option to go through payroll or payroll dot org to get a certification. So if they want to get certified by the. Oh, I'm blanking on the acronym right now, but the the payroll certification option. It'll come to me later I think that as soon as we hang up most of our especially in our partner team most folks do and then a lot of the the small business team does as well, so you tend to Get somebody who's been trained by payroll professionals in house and then has also done some continued education outside of that

Dan DeLong: 53:14

Perfect. And then I'm going to ask, can you do split payroll split payroll? Split across

Valerie Heckman: 53:19

bank accounts?

Dan DeLong: 53:20

I'm not sure Carolyn, if you want to add in your labor. It's either split payroll schedules. If you have bi weekly and then monthly on the same. Oh, yeah. Multiple schedules. Yes, yeah. Or can you do multiple direct deposits? Okay. The different bank accounts. We'll cover both. We can

Valerie Heckman: 53:41

do both. So yeah, so we can set up pay schedules. This account just has the typical, but if you wanted to batch employees together, like maybe you want all your contractors on a schedule or all your part timers on a schedule and you configure that, you absolutely can set up custom pay schedules. And then as you're running payroll, we can do off cycle, right? This is where we could. Change the dates and we've got some like customization options with that. Yeah, in the company settings, and I'm realizing the poll is still going and probably covering the screen. Let me go ahead and end the poll there. Yeah, no problem. Oh, a number of you would like to see it. That's wonderful to hear. Yeah, we can do a lot of configuring in our Company settings on the individual employees and connect up our apps and stuff from here, too. So we can do that. You had

Dan DeLong: 54:30

mentioned that multi state is not an additional fee for on pay, but that brings up a great question about if they do venture into another state and they have to add on all of the account set up and configuration. Is that something that, that on pay can help with as far as getting that established in that new state?

Valerie Heckman: 54:52

Yeah a couple of things to unpack with that. So yes, we include multistate. We feel strongly, we want you to be able to have employees everywhere and not have these kind of gotcha fees that we sometimes see. So we don't, we're not charging for onboarding. We're not charging for multistate. Really the only add on fees outside of if you of course add Benefits workers comp, that kind of stuff you'll have charges there, but is if you want us to deliver the W2s, there's an extra fee for that. But if you just want to make them available electronically, W2s and 1099s are also included in all the year end forms. Sorry, I got distracted talking about that. Yes. The I'm boarding a new state, so we'll do all the new hire reporting, if we're hiring new employees, and then we partner with MidDesk for state registration. So it's an optional add on, but MidDesk will, they work with accounting firms directly, accountants and bookkeepers and they will do all of the correspondence back and forth with the states get those, state IDs and rates. Set up and then all of that will flow into on pay if you're adding a state. So a lot of our partners choose to do that. Or, of course, if you're doing it on behalf of your client, you're just adding the state inside of on pay and signing the work site to the employees and giving us any permissions that we might need with the state to be able to. Pay the taxes and file the forms.

Dan DeLong: 56:13

All right. We're a little bit over and we want to make sure that we're valuing everybody's time because we could sit here and chat about all these questions as we as we go. But on the QB power hour landing page for today's webinar there is a link there to to reach out and schedule schedule time with Valerie and our team to get these. granular questions answered and take a deeper dive into OnPay. And Valerie, I appreciate you joining us here today. And I am going to, I'm going

Valerie Heckman: 56:42

to plug just in case you're, in case you're humble about this that link that Dan has on the QB power hour. Is a referral link from QB Power Hour, and if you sign up through there for our partner program, you add clients I didn't mention this before, but I should have, you do get free firm payroll with us if you've got one active client, we don't make you add more clients every year, it's just we want you to have clients. Have somebody on the platform to give your firm pre payroll. But you also, if you sign up through that link, you'll get a 500 gift card. If you, when you go to add a client and they run payrolls we wanted to give you a little bit of a bonus, check us out. So use, use that link for sure.

Dan DeLong: 57:21

I'll post the link there. Yeah, Jennifer's asking for it in the chat. So I hope, hopefully everybody has a great week ahead. We really appreciate you taking time out of your day. You join us and the dog's barking. So we'll we'll sign off for now. We'll see you next time on the QB Power Hour. Thanks again

Valerie Heckman: 57:39

for having me, Dan. Take care, everybody. Bye