WSW - Podcast QuickBooks Payroll Updates
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[00:00:00]
Introduction and Apologies
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Dan DeLong: Oh, welcome to another workshop Wednesday, which is all about casual conversations for serious workflows brought to you by school bookkeeping.com, which is allowing you to keep learning QuickBooks your way. And I'm sorry, my, I'm, my hair is all messed up and I'm [00:01:00] mirror the image and I can't decide which way my hair is supposed to go today, but that's the least of our worries.
Biggest worry is, rachel's not here. This is what happens when you try to do a live webinar and manage live accounting accountants at the same, or clients at the same time. Sometimes there are fires that come up and, and her attention was required. Glad that she's taking care of her clients.
Today's Topic: QBO Payroll Updates
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Dan DeLong: But so our topic today is all about. The latest QBO payroll updates, in, this in this year of, 2025 that we wanna unpack and talk about.
School of Bookkeeping's Course Offerings
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Dan DeLong: We have modeled at School of Bookkeeping. We've modeled our. Course offerings or our subscription levels based off of the the QuickBooks online payroll offerings.
So [00:02:00] we have same thing. We have core for small business, the bare minimum allowing you to be able to access our course content designed for small businesses. And and then we have premium. Which is designed for accountants and bookkeepers to be able to access our entire course library.
And then we have Elite so just QuickBooks Online Payroll School, bookkeeping has memberships that give you a little bit more than, for, depending on which, which subscription you. You opt in for. So, we want to talk about now on that vein we have courses lemme just share this QR code here about our payroll courses that we have.
We have the same thing. We have, we, have broken down each layer or each flavor I should say, of [00:03:00] qBO payroll, the core pay premium and, elite. We have tutorial content small consumable lessons for each each flavor, and you can access that. And we also have a what payroll service is right for me.
So you can look at that, the mini course and, determine which is. Which is better? Desktop payroll, online payroll. What options are out there, other payroll services that, that might be out there like a DP or Gusto or on pay, helped you decide. We also have a payroll chooser on our tools and resources page, so lots of things about payroll that we have on school bookkeeping.
But today we're just gonna be focused on.
Detailed Payroll Features and Changes
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Dan DeLong: Those things that have changed since the last time we talked about payroll. So for this year, let me share my [00:04:00] screen here real quick. We have we've created a blog article and if you want to have a concise, if you want to hear a concise reading of the, article we do have an audio overview of.
This blog article at the top, it only will take you five minutes and 30 seconds, which I've already talked longer than that today. And I haven't even talked about anything we're talking about today. But there's a little audio overview that you could listen to at the top there. But we wanna talk about those main features that have been introduced, in QBO payroll.
One of the big. Drawbacks of of QuickBooks Online payroll has been, the, fact that you really can't go back and and modify a paycheck once it's [00:05:00] been deposited, or at least that's, that was the gripe, about QuickBooks Online payroll. That has changed over time. So you're able to to modify paychecks even after they've been deposited.
By direct or cashed or, what have you. And what was the sticking point at that point? Is being able to modify or correct a paycheck for a closed quarter. In the kind of example of June 30th was the end of the second quarter, so in July you have all of your things that are due for those quarters.
That could be your state. Unemployment, or your your nine 40 ones, those are payroll forms that need to be filed and, completed by the end of the, after the end of [00:06:00] that quarter, and, so there's a challenge there, right? If you fi filed your payroll return for that quarter, and then you're needing to be able to make a payroll correction.
That was a long, arduous process called payroll corrections when you had the contact Intuit to be able to do that. So in order to, when that, actually happened, you would've to reach out to Intuit, they would've to submit a payroll corrections, and then you would've to supply a lot of supporting documentation to be able to do that.
And then at the end of the day, because you've made a. Payroll correction in a prior quarter that came with, okay, you gotta file an amended return for the federal, state, or, and, or local local tax agencies to be able [00:07:00] to access that, right? Or to be able to make sure that the right agencies have the right things reported.
So the challenge which. When you do that is that quite a, that's quite an undertaking. And being able to know who do you need to talk to and submitting the right information that is, is part of a, that's an under, that's an undertaking that you don't really look forward to, is the nicest way, I think to say it.
But now in. Premium and elite so the upper levels of the different payroll services you're able to edit void and record paychecks in quarters that have already closed, right? It's very flexible. It allows you to do that. And when you, do that it will give you this message here on the screen that I'm showing here.
I'll make it a [00:08:00] little bit bigger. I'll try to make it, there we go. That it's giving you a warning, right? That's giving you the op option to be able to, make that change, right? So this is more of a. Are you sure Type of message to be able to accept the, date that you're, putting in there or, making those changes.
And then if you are using Premium and Elite, you can actually request payroll tax amendments through QuickBooks and then Intuit will work with the tax agencies to provide necessary adjustments. What this doesn't say here is whether or not they will actually file amended returns or not.
However, the fact that they do all the other things sounds like, sounds promising, right? That, that they're able to be able to, submit amended returns. But I'll, [00:09:00] double check on that and I'll, put that on the, blog article here, but. This is pretty exciting for, for people who have, if you've ever gone through a payroll correction process, this will, avoid all of that because you can self-service.
Right? And that's again, been a major gripe of QBO payroll is that. If you do make a change in a period, especially where the form filings have been, already done, it is, a proverbial act of Congress to make those changes and get, those changes pushed through.
Here, you can do it as a self-service type of situation to be able to make those changes that, you need to. Some of the other things that are in in QBO payroll now is an employee cost rate calculator. [00:10:00] So now there's a built in cost rate calculator that's available for online plus in advance.
And it allows the calculation of employee cost rates more so than the gross payroll, right? So this will, enhance or, yeah it'll enhance your, job costing capabilities with payroll. And that was another big yeah. But when it came to, QuickBooks Desktop Payroll versus QuickBooks Online payroll one, if you've ever used the desktop payroll service inside of QuickBooks Desktop, the job costing when it came to payroll, allowed the pro, pro, not, rational, but base proportional. That, that, that's the word I was looking for. [00:11:00] So when you have a paycheck and you have different jobs calculated and split between different jobs or projects the other factors that go into the cost calculation of. To the business, went by the wayside there because in desktop it would proportionately take the hours and time that was spent on different jobs and proportionately.
Allocate the other costs to the business because of that payroll check, right? So in this example here if you've got benefits, right? Or the taxes, the FICA taxes that the business has to do on the, on behalf of the employee. You know that 6 2, 6 0.2% for social security, the company match portion and then the 1.5% for Medicare.[00:12:00]
Those are costs that are. Allocated to the business because of the employee. So if they work half of their time between two different jobs, you would wanna split that, that expense, that cost across those two different jobs. And this will allow you to do that. So you've got other costs that are associated with payroll that you can now see in.
And, allocate in, in QuickBooks online. So the big, big change in, in that, again, that gripe against between against QBO payroll, in comparison to QuickBooks Desktop Payroll, which is a lot more, job cost allocation, friendly, so we talk a little bit about that there.[00:13:00]
And then also of, this is the payroll cost allocation that you can do as well. So these two things go in hand in hand. So one is more broadly, broad across the entire employee and understanding what the payroll cost. Of the employee is in general, and then other is based on the payroll cost allocation.
Payroll Agent and AI Integration
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Dan DeLong: And then the last thing I wanna talk about here is the payroll agent. Murph over at in insightful Accountant has created a really great blog article and I've, referenced it here because we wanted to, and we talked about this a couple weeks ago when we talked about. The agents that have been finding their way inside of QuickBooks online because of the new user interface change and a new a [00:14:00] agentic AI that's now present in, in QuickBooks online.
And he did a really great great job of some of the. Neat features that are available in with this payroll agent. Now, we had talked about the agents and I just go down here. The payroll agent is only in advance, right? And also only available if you have payroll. Not payroll as a business, but using the QuickBooks online payroll.
Those two things have to converge in order to see some of these functions. And I just wanted to bring up Murph's article here, which is really, great. Let me just make this a little bigger. So some of the things that you'll see and, some great screenshots in here, and you can kinda get an idea of [00:15:00] the new things that you're able to do.
But a lot of it is in service to finding discrepancies, things that are outside of the norm of setups, whether they're employee setups or the, company setup information. And then communicating some of these things with your team or yourself, right? In the business feed, you're going to have some of some of those notifications or alerts as far as what can be done with the payroll agent.
So if opt opt in or click on those, it will walk you through. The wizard. And, this is what it's giving an example here. The agent is explaining how they're gonna go about the process of assisting with payroll, starting with your hourly employees.
So you have [00:16:00] it'll look at the, way it's currently set up. You have, in this case, it's, you have 20 hourly employees with regular overtime paycheck tips, and then they're gonna reach out. So the agent will actually reach out to the employees, and then you can specify when that's gonna go out what you're able to collect by doing that.
And what, how that's gonna look, right? So you're able to edit the message right from here. And of course, these are all things that you can optionally do. It's not necessarily mandatory for you to do all of that. And oh, I also wanted to share the blog article as well. So while I'm doing this, I'll put it in the chat.
There we go. So here's how they're gonna reach out to you and your team. They're putting together, this plan and you can schedule [00:17:00] how that's gonna go out and what you're able to do and how it's gonna reach out. So it could send a text message or it could go into. The workforce mobile app, right?
So you could just make app notifications. This is showing that it's available soon, so eventually that will be an option. But right now it's a text message, and then you, of course can preview that. And then here's an example. Oh, and then they'll, ask about contacting salaried employees to make sure that their pay information is finalized by the end of the payroll.
Pay period. So that's that's that. And then here's another example in this screenshot here is that somebody has their phone number missing, right? So you may wanna make sure that your, employees are set up properly so that they can have that information set to them. And then you would finalize it.
And then here's an example of how it [00:18:00] actually would look to to one of the employees. So in this example it's, they'll be able to opt in and or, out and those types of things. But here is an example of, okay, I had 40 hours, two overtime. Here's what I should have. So they don't necessarily have to go in and put their time put their time in have someone approve it and those types of things.
Because as it's, what happens is just by that text message, it was able to extrapolate that there are some things to, to update on their, payroll run and it will get highlighted. So it's easy to determine that this information was collected from from a paycheck, or I'm sorry, from.
A text message. So you'll be able to hover over that and make sure that they approve it [00:19:00] or not. And then you'll be able to also get a text message sent to you from the payroll agent giving you an idea of your gross pay, the total payroll costs and what's gonna happen as far as the expectations of, the reality for that, right?
Yeah. Those are the main things that are associated with the new, lemme get rid of this here. Payroll updates in QuickBooks Online payroll.
Conclusion and Viewer Interaction
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Dan DeLong: And like we said, we have a, blog article. I'm covering over some of these things, and this is where I would normally ask Rachel her thoughts. But now I'm asking you based on what what do you think of these new these new changes?
Please put those in comments and we can address those those as well and and go. [00:20:00] So from there. So appreciate you joining us on this abridged shortened version of the workshop Wednesday. And we will see you next time as we talk about more topics dealing with QuickBooks and QuickBooks online today.
And we'll see you next time and hope you all have a great week.
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