QuickBooks Payroll starts at $45 per month, plus $4 per employee per month for the Core plan. However, you'll find the best balance between features and price on the next plan up, Premium, which is $75 per month, plus $8 per employee per month.
Those prices are in line with the industry average, and when you consider the time businesses will save by automating their payroll and taxes, they'll more than pay for themselves.
Our research puts QuickBooks Payroll at the top of the payroll software pack, thanks to its features, pricing, and high-quality support. Read on for our full breakdown of the value behind each of the service's three plans.
QuickBooks Payroll Pricing Plans
QuickBooks offers three Payroll plans, each offering more features than the last. A 30-day free trial is also available, and there's a money-back guarantee for those who decide they need to cancel.
- Core – $45 per month, plus $4 per employee per month. You'll get a full-fledged payroll system, including next-day direct deposit and health benefit management.
- Premium – $75 per month, plus $8 per employee per month. This plan adds features for large employee groups, including same-day direct deposit, time tracking, workers’ compensation, and HR resources.
- Elite – $125 per month, plus $10 per employee per month. The enterprise-level plan.
QuickBooks currently has a deal for half off of the first three months across all plans. They call it a “limited time” offer on their site, but it's been up there a while now, and we're starting to get suspicious. Regardless, we've included the full prices here, as you'll be paying them after three months anyway.
| Price | Highlights | |||
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QuickBooks | QuickBooks | QuickBooks | ||
Core | Premium | Elite | ||
$45/month + $4/employee/month | $75/month + $8/employee/month | $125/month + $10/employee/month | ||
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Core
The QuickBooks Core plan costs $45 per month, plus $4 per employee per month. With it, you'll get everything you need to operate the basics of a payroll service for your employees, with a fully automated process for sending payroll and tracking taxes. In addition, you'll be able to supply health benefits and 401(k) plans, although the latter is through a third-party service, Guideline, rather than Intuit. Core's next-day deposit process is reasonably fast: Submit payroll as late as five pm PT on the day before payday, and employees will get paid on time.
You should get QuickBooks Core if you're looking for a simple, easy, and painless way to pay your employees and file your taxes. QuickBooks is our top payroll service, and the Core plan is a great way to get all the essentials.
Features
- Full-service payroll
- Payroll automation
- Tax automation
- Tax forms
- Health benefits
- 401(k) plans
- 1099 E-File & Pay
- Next-day direct deposit
- Chat support: 24/7
- Phone support: Mon-Fri 6 am to 6 pm, PT. Sat 6 am to 3 pm, PT.
Premium
The QuickBooks Premium plan costs $75 per month, plus $8 per employee per month. You'll get all the features in Core, plus extra functionality geared towards a growing business. You can connect your preexisting worker's compensation policy, or get a new one through Intuit's broker, AP Intego. An HR support center is available through another third-party, Mammoth, Inc., to help managers ensure compliance with state and federal law.
In addition, same-day direct deposit is now supported, letting you submit payroll as late as 7 am PT on the morning of payday. Time tracking is also available for the first time, ensuring you can stay aware of your employees' hours logged, even if your teams has grown large enough that tracking them in-person has become unwieldy.
QuickBooks says that Premium is its most popular plan. It delivers comprehensive payroll, makes it easy to connect or add employee benefits, and adds HR support that can guide a business through the process of helping its employees. Premium is a great fit for a business that has outgrown the Core payroll plan.
Features
- Everything in Core
- Workers' comp
- HR support center
- Expert review
- Time tracking
- Same-day direct deposit
- Chat support: 24/7
- Phone support: Mon-Fri 6 am to 6 pm, PT. Sat 6 am to 3 pm, PT.
Elite
The QuickBooks Elite plan costs $125 per month, plus $10 per employee per month. It doesn't add quite as many additional features as the Premium plan adds to Core, but it does increase the personnel that can be summoned at a moment's notice. Elite gives its users 24/7 phone support in addition to chat, a QuickBooks payroll expert to onboard and complete your one-time setup, and – via Mammoth, Inc. – the opportunity to schedule one-on-one phone or online consultations with certified HR advisors.
New features include an expanded time tracking ability: You'll be able to track employees by project hours, account for labor expenses, and using a geofencing feature to prompt employees to sign in as they arrive and sign out as they leave. The plan's tax penalty protection is the final new addition, paying all of your business's IRS penalty fees and interest on mistakes made through its software for up to $25,000 per year – an enterprise-level feature if we've ever heard one.
Elite is best only for truly huge enterprise businesses, and stands out for its granular employee-tracking functionality and impressive 24/7 support options. Is your business so large that you need a high level of support constantly? Then Elite is worth considering.
Features
- Everything in Premium
- Expert setup
- Project and labor tracking
- Tax penalty protection
- Personal HR advisor
- Chat support: 24/7
- Phone support: 24/7
Quickbooks Payroll Review
QuickBooks Payroll scores highly across the five research categories we used to determine the best payroll software: These were software attributes (total functionality beyond payroll, like HR and employee time tracking), help & support, pricing, payroll features, and analytics. We give it 4.7 stars out of a possible 5, which beats every other competing payroll service.
Taxes and paychecks can be automated through QuickBooks, meaning that the core benefits of the software will run by themselves every time payday rolls around. Next- or same-day direct deposits are supported, depending on the plan, but either one helps make payroll simple. The service's time tracking tools give managers greater visibility as well, while payroll reports make it easy to gain insight on categories including wages, taxes, employees, benefits, and time activities, among many more.
A large list of more than 650 integrations will help users address other business needs, including accounting and invoicing. And, thanks to QuickBooks' plan structure, perks most useful to larger companies are available on higher priced plans – like tax penalty protection and expanded 24/7 support options.
How Does QuickBooks Compare Against Other Payroll Software?
QuickBooks came out on top in our research, making it the best payroll system out of all the software options worth considering.
If you want to further break that down, QuickBooks has three big advantages over its competitor software. QuickBooks offers the biggest range of different customer support options, meeting its customers with the aid that works best for them. It makes paying employees simple with short direct deposit timings, and offers great features to complement payroll, including time-tracking and HR admin.
| Price From | Key Features | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Our #1 pick QuickBooks Payroll | Square Payroll | Sage 50cloud | Gusto Payroll |
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Core: $45 a month, plus $4 for each employee | Employee tier: $29 a month, plus $5 for each employee | Pro tier: Starts at $911 | Core: $39 a month, +$6/employee |
Same-day direct deposit | HR functionality | Bundled with accounting software | HR functionality |
Verdict: Is QuickBooks Payroll Worth Its Price?
That said, plenty of payroll software is worthy in its own right, and might be preferable for certain companies – ADP RUN offers more customizable reports, while Gusto has a broader range of employee work and health benefits. Check out your options to find which one is right for you.
That said, the service with the most flexible pricing plan is Square Payroll, which starts at just a $29 monthly fee, plus $5 per employee per month.