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,

1. QuickBooks Basic and Enhanced Payroll – payroll services that link to QuickBooks desktop
2. Intuit QuickBooks Assisted Payroll – payroll service in which Intuit handles the tax forms and payments; payroll integrates with QuickBooks desktop
3. 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