Intuit – Schulz Consulting

Warning: Intuit Emails Requesting Personal Information Are Probably Bogus

February 15, 2012 by Wayne Schulz

There are several reports from Internet sources about bogus emails from Intuit. These messages may request personal information such as tax identification or bank account numbers.

Do not click through and provide the information. Companies should never request that you provide sensitive data via an email form. Such requests are very often bogus solicitations that attempt to get you to reveal personal information or whose web sites automatically try to install suspicious virus software to your computer.

If in doubt about the validity of an email — rather than click through on a link provided – close and re-open your browser and type the known good web address or call the company directly (avoid using phone numbers listed on the email itself as those can be bogus as well).

Bogus Intuit E-mail Leading towards Malicious Load

Snaptax from Intuit uses iPhone to file your 1040 for 2009

January 12, 2010 by Wayne Schulz

SnapTax makes it easy to prepare and file simple tax returns via your iPhone. Distributed by Intuit, publishers of the popular Turbotax software, this iPhone software will be available January 15, 2010 exclusively for California residents. It uses advanced optical character recognition software to allow
taxpayers to prepare and file their federal and state returns (California only for now) from their iPhones.

The procedure (as outlined below) is amazingly simply. Use your iPhone to take a photo of your W-2. The software uses OCR (optical character recognition) to import data from your pay form. Then it asks you a series of questions until it computes your refund (or payment due).

For the initial release ($10 download fee and due out 1/15/10) you’ll only be able to file California returns and only for simple tax returns like a 1040 or 1040EZ. You must have an iPhone 3G or 3GS in order to run it.

If the program is not able to file your return because your tax status is too complicated then you can take the $10 fee you paid for the software and apply it toward the full Turbotax software.

via: Macworld

QuickBooks Payroll Alive And Well

December 14, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

This morning I received a somewhat confusing email from my local Paychex representative. The subject line of “QuickBooks May Be Discontinued” caught my attention.

There was no message in the body of the email, however, attached was a graphic (see below) that stated QuickPayroll was being discontinued.

Sensing that something wasn’t right and that there’s no way that QuickBooks was going to be discontinued I contacted Intuit for their feedback.

As it turns out the notification, sent by my local Paychex representative, was only partially correct.

QuickBooks Payroll is not being phased out.

An older low-end version product called QuickPayroll is being discontinued in favor of any of Intuit’s other three payroll processing options.

With over 1.2 million payroll customers there’s a slim chance that Intuit’s going to turn their back on the payroll market. In July of 2009 Intuit actually increased their presence in the payroll market with a $170 million acquisition of Paycycle which also brought 85,000 additional small business payrolls under their arm.

Here is Intuit’s response:

Discontinuation of QuickPayroll

As of December 31, 2009, Intuit will discontinue its stand-alone QuickPayroll, a very basic payroll service that did not require the use of QuickBooks. We have notified the QuickPayroll customers (http://payroll.intuit.com/support/kb/kbitem/1012532.html) and have provided them with two offerings so that customers can continue their payroll services with Intuit. With its advertising,

QuickBooks Basic and Enhanced Payroll – payroll services that link to QuickBooks desktop
Intuit QuickBooks Assisted Payroll – payroll service in which Intuit handles the tax forms and payments; payroll integrates with QuickBooks desktop
Intuit Online Payroll – cloud-computing payroll service that runs stand-alone or integrates with QuickBooks desktop and QuickBooks Online.

So rest assured that QuickBooks and QuickBooks Payroll are both alive and well. While we don’t offer services on the Intuit product we wanted to provide this update for any users who might have received the same type of email with mis-information about the status of QuickBooks Payroll.

A full comparison of each option:

http://payroll.intuit.com/compare/compare-quickbooks-payroll.jsp

Quicken for Mac announced for February 2010 – pre-orders start October 2009

July 9, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

Intuit in a blog posting today announced the long awaited Quicken for Mac would be available for pre-order in October 2009 with final delivery scheduled for February 2010.

First due out in 2008 as Quicken Financial Life for Mac, the software release schedule has gradually slipped. Intuit spent the time working with beta testers and when they found areas that needed improvement rather than release the Mac product they continued to refine it.

Feedback from Mac customers led us to rethink our approach to developing Quicken for Mac. We went back to the drawing board and are making changes to everything from what the program does to how it looks. We spent extra time building a reconcile mode for the new register, a robust Windows-to-Mac transfer function for new Mac users (and existing customers running Quicken on a Windows virtual machine), and redesigned the experience to make it look and feel like a native Mac application should.

We understand our loyal Mac customers are disappointed that the product won’t be in stores until after the first of the year. For that, we apologize. We think taking our time to get it right will be well worth it and will make Mac customers even more excited when they use the new Quicken for Mac early next year.

Intuit

Has Intuit quietly doubled the price of QuickBooks Pro 2009 for payroll users?

April 2, 2009 by Wayne Schulz

Update 4-3-2009: Nope – it doesn’t look like Intuit doubled the price. The confusion stems from any number of issues – not the least of which Intuit’s web site is vague over what “payroll” processing means within older versions of QuickBooks Pro.

Turns out on at least QuickBooks Pro 2008 and 2007 there was a separate fee charged for 3 user and unlimited payroll processing. Sure, you could use Payroll within the older versions – so long as you didn’t mind manually entering many of your calculations. This information was nearly impossible for me to find on Intuit’s own site. Their 2008 “what’s new” guide seems to indicate that their QuickBooks Pro 2008 does indeed do payroll (with no mention of having to subscribe to a service that in many cases doubles the price of the software). Only once I made a trip to the Barnes and Noble was I able to pull out older reference guides stating that QuickBooks indeed offered an added fee payroll service at least for the 2007 and 2008 versions (and Inuit states that it has always been that way).

So how do people without a CPA degree and 20 years of accounting industry experience figure this stuff out? Beats me.

Caveat Emptor!

One of the emails that arrived in my inbox this morning was from Amazon advertising some software deals.

Amazon had a “special” on QuickBooks Pro 2009 plus QuickBooks Payroll “3 user” for $169.

Perhaps I’m a little out of touch with Intuit’s product line (I have an email in to them so they can straighten me out) — however last I knew you could run payroll from within QuickBooks Pro without limit on the number of employees.

Now if I read their marketing literature correctly, an end user wanting payroll and accounting within QuickBooks would be expected to pay:

QuickBooks Pro 2009 – $119
QuickBooks Payroll 3 Employee – $199/year
QuickBooks Payroll Unlimited – $279/year (this is, I believe, what used to be included in QB Pro)

By my quick math this is a 100% price hike.

Certainly there will be the explanation that it’s not a hike for people who don’t use payroll, (insert blah blah) — however comparing apples to apples you have a street price that was being offered previously of $99 to $149 for the QuickBooks Pro with Payroll versus the new pricing which appears to break out the accounting and the payroll (Note: Limited payroll functionality seems to be included in the QB Pro version but to get the SAME functionality it appears you now must buy a separate Payroll subscription).

The best way around this (for now) is to license the QuickBooks Pro 2009 plus Enhanced Payroll through Amazon’s $129.99 deal which is cheaper than renewing the annual payroll ($199).

Anyone have better information on this than me?

What can users expect next from Intuit?

Limits on the number of customers?
Limits on the number of vendors?
Limits on the number of transactions?

As Sage Business Partners we are very obviously not independent with our thoughts as to the above. We also don’t offer Peachtree or Businessworks (two of Sage’s lower cost offerings) and have not taken a complete study of whether Peachtree has a similar policy (they may). This information is merely an observation that after having seen the QuickBooks Pro product drop in price via online merchants that suddenly I’m now seeing it “bundled” with another product for Payroll when so far as I’m aware the prior versions included the Payroll without limits.

Set me straight if I’m wrong or you know more- in the comments below.

Here is Intuit’s response:

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