Benefits of QB 2009?

Yes Intuit will soon sunset version 2006 and you will not be able to renew your tax table subscription in the future.

I also notice that when buying QB Pro 2009 for $99.99 they also give free QB Credit Card Processing, Basic Payroll, and Learning QB. I do payroll with QB 2006 now. Why would anyone buying QB Pro need a separate Basic Payroll. Or does QB 2009 not have a payroll feature?

The basic Payroll subscription was just a bundled freebie. Normally QB Pro (or Premier) do NOT come with a payroll subscription. Basic payroll is, well, basic. If your company is growing then you will outgrow Basic quickly. Meanwhile, Intuit has you hooked on how easy doing payroll in QB is and you will need to upgrade to a higher payroll subscription level.

I spoke with QB sales on the phone. If I understand correctly, someone buying QB 2009 now has to also buy QB Payroll (Basic or on-line) in order to do payroll, calculate taxes and print tax forms--and they have to purchase the annual subscription to tax tables at $250 or so.

Since I have QB 2006 with "standard" payroll, I can purchase QB 2009 and continue to process "standard" payroll as I have been doing as long as my tax table subscription lasts (next December). If I "upgrade" to Basic Payroll then I'll have to pay $99 a year and still won't be able to print tax forms. If I "upgrade" to Enhanced Payroll at $174.00 a year, I'll be able to print tax forms. This is stuff I already do with the standard payroll. Intuit seems to me to be moving backward.

Do I understand correctly? Apparently QB has split off the payroll function so they can sell it separately. Thanks for everyone's help in making me understand this.

"Standard" payroll subscription has been grandfathered. You can now either purchase Basic or Enhanced. Basic gives you paychecks only. Enhanced gives you State and Federal tax forms while Standard only gives you the Federal forms. Check the list of states available to see if you really need to upgrade to the Enhanced version. I believe that you can opt to stay with the Standard version. If your state is not supported by QB yet OR your state requires you to file & pay online then paying for the Enchanced version is probably not worth it. I don't recommend downgrading to the Basic version if you currently use QB to print your federal forms. I would stick with Standard as long as you are allowed to. I suspect you will have Standard at least until December but you will need to upgrade your QB program.

The pricing you quote is a current special going on. From the Intuit website:

**Discount expires January 31, 2009 and is valid for new QuickBooks Payroll subscribers only. Subscribers to Enhanced Payroll for up to 3 employees/unlimited employees will receive a 30% discount on their Customer Fees for their first year of service; Enhanced Payroll for up to 3 employees will be billed at $174.30 for the first year of service and Enhanced Payroll for unlimited employees will be billed at $244.30 for the first year of service. Customer Fees exclude Direct Deposit and any additional optional service fees. After the first year, customers are responsible for the then current rate of their respective service (currently it's $249/year for Enhanced up to 3 employees and $349/year for Enhanced for unlimited employees).

QB has not "split off" the payroll function. It has always been a separate package.

------So I assume by purchasing QB 2009 I will be able to print checks, calculate taxes and print federal forms without any add-on product.

-----Office Depot is currently selling QB 2009 for $99.99.

-----I've been using QB for at least ten years and purchased at least three or four upgrades. Payroll was always included in the basic package. I never had to pay extra for it and I've been able to print checks, and print federal forms such as 941 and W-2.

Yes, and I used to pay 25 cents for a gallon of gasoline. Prices usually go up, fact of life.

That $99.99 price with payroll, etc is a special that they are running. Or rather were running. I don't see that special anymore. I think it ended on

1/17/09.

Here is a link to their normal product for $199.99:

And here is their link to their Basic Payroll product: As you can see they are 2 separate products. They also are not offering the Pro with Basic payroll anymore. The financials software (QB Pro) does not come with payroll. Never has. Payroll is not software that you install. It is an extra pay-for subscription that requires activation though Intuit.

To further support the 2-separate products take a look at this page from Staples:

As you can see from the image, the financial software and payroll are 2 separate products.

I suspect that you purchased QB + payroll years ago and you have been merely renewing your payroll subscription each year for more $$.

"Laura"

Laura, you are nearly always right, but I don't believe entirely in this case.

Prior to this recent change, QuickBooks Pro could be purchased on its own and a free one-time update to the payroll tax tables and forms could be applied, allowing for paycheck and federal forms printing for one year. No subscription required. And since Standard payroll included federal forms, even buying the subscription, allowed for a reasonably low-cost option with the use of one of the many third-party state forms options available.

It seems to me that by removing federal forms printing from all payroll services below Enhanced, that's a significant change in terms. Intuit certainly has the right to make such changes, but no doubt it will upset users that have minor payroll needs. No matter how you slice it, either moving "up" to Enhanced, or cobbling together a third-party solution, it's a rather stiff price increase just to get back to the same level of functionality.

Sure, as Haskel pointed out, prices go up in general. But Intuit has a way of not-so-gently pulling the rug out from under users.

Except in 2009 thanks to Dubya!!!

My first copy of Pro was 2002. I also have 2003 & 2004 (somewhere). None of those versions came with Payroll. At least they don't advertise that they did.

I dug through my bag of software and found my 2002 Pro CD. It came with a whole bunch of info on added services that you could purchase. In the payroll section it had 3 levels of payroll: Basic, Deluxe and Premier. The Basic version gave you the federal forms only. That is equivalent to the now grandfathered Standard package one of my clients has. There is nothing in this packet that discusses prices so I don't know how they priced it back then. I don't think they had the "up to 3 employees" like they have today. That new pricing is another way of hooking customers into paying for the higher priced package.

Now that you mention it I do recall reading here in this newsgroup how you could get a one time tax table down load but it was not widely publicized. Some how the readers of this group discovered it because I never saw it mentioned on the other more active QuickBooks Users forum. I don't remember if that tax table also included tax forms or not. I was using Peachtree for payroll back then and did not pay much attention to the QB payroll issues.

I agree with you on that one. It is a significant increase in price although I do know plenty of people that merely use QB payroll for doing the checks and manually do the forms each quarter. For a handful of employees having Basic is enough assuming you know what you are doing when it comes time to fill out the forms.

Sage is doing it too. I used to be able to use PT to print the w-2s without a payroll subscription. Not this year. The dang forms say EXPIRED across them making them unusable. I ended up setting up a dummy company in QB for this PT client of mine and entering quarterly checks so that I could print their w-2s. What a pain.

This year Intuit begain tax season by including the ability to only print and e-mail one tax return with Turbotax. Additional returns required additional fees. Users voted with their pocket books and that policy was reversed. Now unlimited returns can be printed and 5 returns e-filed are included with the price of the software.

Klunk, yes that is correct. I still have my QB Pro 2002 manual and it included the payroll feature with either "basic" or "deluxe." Basic replaced the former tax table service and one update was included at no additional cost. There was no employee number limit and all federal forms were printable. But I guess those days are gone... ...what I still am not sure of is whether I can prepare payroll for my

20 employees and print federal forms with QB Pro 2009. Laura says standard payroll is grandfathered in. Does that mean the payroll feature is on the CD or not? If it is on the CD why isn't it available to everyone? If not on the CD how do I access it? Thanks for your help.

You still have the ability to activate your Standard payroll subscription in

2009 because you currently have that subscription level. All that grandfathering means is that as long as you don't fail to pay your annual fee you can still renew the "standard" subscription. New subscribers only have access to basic or enhanced. If you want to prepare state forms then you should pay the extra $10 or $20 to get the state forms. For my Standard customer, I don't have that need because their state is currently not supported in QB so we just do the pay/file on the state's website.

It is not an install program that is available on the CD. You have to activate the subscription number after you install 2009. If you upgrade your

2006 program to 2009 then it might even recognize it automatically. If not you will need to enter the payroll service key. Then you will be prompted to download the latest payroll tables & forms from Intuit. A normal install of QB out of the box does not give you access to any payroll checks or forms.

Older versions of QB let you turn on the payroll module by clicking a button in Preferences. Then you either had to manually enter the taxes or pay for a subscription to one of their services which would then d/l the tax tables & automatically calculate the taxes. For a while, a new purchase would be allowed one free tax table download, and since QB didn't deactivate payroll tax calculations & payroll forms, you could use it until (or after) the taxes/forms changed. At some point QB decided to deactivate the tax & forms (but NOT the payroll module) if you didn't have a current subscription, purportedly because you might use an out of date rate/form but more likely because they wanted the continuing revenue stream from subscriptions. Newer versions (not sure about 2009 yet) seem to insist you need a payroll subscription service to use payroll, but there was a small note at the bottom of the page touting the services saying "if you want to manually calculate your payroll click here". I believe you could also get there through the help section. Clicking on that & the following "are you SURE you don't want to send us money" enabled the payroll module so you could enter checks & run reports but had to calculate all taxes manually. At first you could also print out payroll forms but now that is disabled without a subscription. So the payroll MODULE is included in QB, just not the ability to access it unless you select a service or find the manual option.

Scott

"Ed" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@k36g2000pri.googlegroups.com...

Around 15 years ago I bought a Panasonic combination Microwave over for £500 Same thing today... £100 to £130.

20 years ago we chortled and rediculed the man in our office that suggested at some time in the future PC Memory and HD storage would come down to less than £1/MB (in the days of 20MB HDD at around £200) and PC's ran on 256kb memory.

So NO, it's far from a fact of life. :¬)

Yes indeed, computer memory and old hookers are the exception to the rule. that is why I said usually.