Intuit Snap Payroll
Intuit has released Intuit Snap Payroll, and iPhone (and to a degree iPad) app that a small business can use to process payroll for employees, for free! Let’s take a look at what it can do.
I’m running this on an iPad, but the program is set up only for the iPhone form factor. As I went through this the first time on my iPad I was a bit put out that we only had the iPhone sized screen. And, in that format, the app didn’t always handle screen rotation properly. Looks small on an iPad! OOPS – after I took all the screen shots I noticed the “2x” button in the lower corner. That expands it to full size. I’m still a bit grumpy as it just blows up the screen, so they show in low res.
Here is what it looks like in “2x” mode.
Intuit is aiming this at the very small (or new) business that is trying to calculate payroll taxes via spreadsheet or using printed tax tables. This really is the minimum system, not a lot of sophistication here. But, hey, if you are doing it by hand now, this might help you. And it is free.
I’ll flip through this quickly – this isn’t a “tutorial” on how to use it. Quite frankly, you don’t need a tutorial. Intuit made the program very easy to use, with a lot of helpful tips at every step of the process.
Start by selecting your State. Note the “sticky note” help, which appears at every new step (and then disappears when you have moved on).
In addition to the sticky notes there are help topics at the bottom of many screens.
You WILL have to accept Intuit’s terms of agreement. No surprise there. Keep in mind that this is Intuit, so you are giving them permission to use your information as a part of the “aggregated data” that the mine from us at every possible step (see my earlier rant on this topic).
So, let’s start using it. First step, add your employees.
Intuit Snap Payroll can send you an email that has the forms that you need to provide to your employee. Select the email option here.
You’ll get an email with a PDF attachment.
The PDF includes the W4 and state forms that you need, with some helpful information.
You’ll enter the deduction information for each employee (note that I’m skipping a few of the screens that lead you through the process).
Now that your employees are entered you can set up the information for the pay period.
When entering the pay period you have a calendar, and the app suggests the pay period to work with.
Click the Calculate button for the employee, and Intuit Snap Payroll does your calculations. No tables to look up, no spreadsheets. Simple!
You can see the details for the paycheck.
There is a History option on the main screen that will let you look back at any paycheck in the past (I don’t know how long they’ll keep your information). You can also click the Pay Taxes button to see information about making your payments. At the bottom of the screen is an Email Payroll Tax Info button.
This sends you an email with helpful information, and a CSV file as an attachment.
I wish that they split the to-from dates into two columns, as a two-date column like this is hard to work with. But that is a minor point.
Does this work? Yes, as far as it goes. If you are on a budget, this might be the way to start. Does it cover all of the bases? Certainly not, if you have anything more than a very basic situation. Then, it isn’t intended to be something for everyone. And, note, there isn’t any integration here with QuickBooks. This is a stand-alone product. At this point however I’m not endorsing it – too many unanswered questions.
You can see some information about Intuit Snap Payroll at http://snappayroll.intuit.com/, but at this time the information there is VERY limited. Download it for from from the iTunes store. It currently supports employers in Alaska, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming, with more states to come in the following months
What About QuickBooks Integration?
Intuit Snap Payroll is a stand-alone program. It doesn’t (at this time?) integrate with QuickBooks. However, you can take that Excel check listing and use the Transaction Pro Importer to import these as checks into QuickBooks. I asked John Magno of Baystate Consulting to take a look at this, and here is what he came up with.
Using Transaction Pro Importer (TPI) 5.0 look in Optionsand select the Advanced tab. Check the box as shown below.
Specify that the fields are CSV delimited, and select the Check import type.
Edit the Excel file (you can do this in TPI) to delete the summary row that Intuit places at the end.
Map the columns of the Excel file to the TPI check import. John provided this TPI map file that you can use. I’m showing the mapping below, but note that the Expenses Memo in this screen shot isn’t showing the complete formula (you can see it in the map file). The memo is set up to include the hours and pay rate.
Here’s the check as it would appear in QuickBooks, using the same data that I used in my screen shots earlier in this post.
Note that this is a regular check, not a payroll check. That is due to the restrictions in QuickBooks – they don’t provide a way to import payroll checks. Also note that since there is no check number from Intuit Snap Payroll that you need to update that field – this mapping put the check date there. John notes that it is important that the employee be set up in the QuickBooks file before the import, otherwise the program will create a new vendor record.
Another example of Lego Mastery and connecting the pieces!
Category: For Small Business Owners, Product Reviews
About the Author (Author Profile)
Charlie Russell is the founder of CCRSoftware. He's been involved with the small business software industry since the mid 70's, and remembers releasing his first commercial accounting software product when you had a one-floppy disk drive system, loading the program from one floppy and then replacing that with the other floppy to hold the data. He has a special interest in inventory and manufacturing software for small businesses. Charlie is a Certified Advanced QuickBooks ProAdvisor with additional certifications for QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Enterprise. He also is a Xero Certified Partner. Visit his CCRSoftware web site for information about his QuickBooks add-on products. Charlie can be reached at charlie.russell@sleeter.com He is also the author of the California Wildflower Hikes blog and a regular blog contributor to the Intuit Inner Circle. Connect with Charlie at GoogleSubscribe
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Thanks for drawing attention to this new app. For a very limited number of employees I can see it being of use.
Just one thing. From your screen shot of the exported CSV file I can only see the employee tax deductions. Does the CSV also have the employer taxes as well so that a user of the app has all the information they need to pay over their payroll taxes to the IRS?
Mark, what you see in the screen shot is what is sent to you. Thank you for bringing that to my attention, I totally missed that! From what I see, they just tell you that there are some due, and they do NOT give you any sort of calculation there. This makes sense from the standpoint of how this works, as it is a snapshot payroll.
I also wonder, now that you bring this up, if they are paying attention to annual limits on medicare, etc.?
Just how long does anyone think that this ‘free’ SnapApp (kind of catchy sounding isn’t it) will be around?
Charlie you are always bringing us excellent reviews (coupled with your own analysis and interpretation of products)…but in this case I just have some real concerns for people who get started using this ‘free’ approach to a very ‘important function’ of payroll processing, and everything related to payroll.
I suspect that Intuit will either start charging $9.95 per month (or maybe $4.95 per employee per month), or maybe more, in the not to distant future, or they will abandon the product entirely. They have a history of creating APPs and then abandoning them when they are not as profitable as they expect (program) them to be. Just one case-n-point was their “Commission Manager” application.
There are apparently other Apps on the center that ‘they had developers prepare’ but then they assumed control over and yet there has been no improvements and those are dwindling too because of a lack of support and features….soon they will be ‘by the wayside’ as well I suspect.
Maybe ‘free’ sounds really good to some people, but let’s face it ‘absolutely’ nothing is really free, someone is footing the bill somewhere….and I just hate to see people tied into an ‘unknown expense’ (at this point) to keep the App in the future, or find that they have lost their payroll tool.
While YOU did a great job working with Baystate (thanks to John too) to prepare an example of how someone could get the data the SnapApp provides in Excel format into QB, I seriously doubt that anyone who would use this ‘free’ SnapApp would foot the bill to buy the Transaction Pro tool; afterall they could purchase a basic payroll subscription for 1 to 5 employees for essentially the same expense. Still the same this ‘learning lesson’ may very well assist ProAdvisors or CPAs in working with ‘SnapApp’ users to get their data into a QB file for accounting, tax and year-end reporting purposes.
Murph
Thank you, Murph. To tell the truth, I didn’t do a lot of “analysis” here, I just rolled this out for people to look at. I’m not a payroll expert (I sold my company that had a payroll product long ago, back before 1990) and I’m a bit out of touch with that kind of thing.
The more that I play with this (after my initial review) the more concerns I have about how it works.
Intuit’s intent is to bring something to the person that is trying to do a payroll through Excel and looking at tax tables. How many people are doing that? I don’t know, but Intuit feels that there are a lot. Is this a better approach than doing it with Excel? Initially, I thought so, but ONLY for the smallest of situations (like, you just hired your first person, you have to get him a paycheck right now!).
Obviously a better solution is to work with an accounting professional, or to use a more sophisitcated payroll system, but there are people who just aren’t ready for that. Intuit is trying to fill that gap.
Does this do it? I am starting to wonder. Will it look at the annual caps on some deductions? How can I determine what the EMPLOYER amounts should be?
As far as concerns about it being abandoned in the future – certainly that is always a concern with Intuit. But, this product is a stop gap while you get your feet under you, while you get your business set up. If they discontinue it, you still have all of your data (if you export the CSV’s), you can easily move to a more sophisticated product. While I don’t like how Intuit throws out test runs and sometimes pulls them back, I don’t think that I’m just going to ignore what they offer.
As far as charging a fee in the future – I wouldn’t bet on that. I think that they look at this (I’m guessing here, I don’t have inside info) as a source for advertising to customers (down the line, there isn’t a lot of that there now), AND as a mechanism for doing market research. Keep in mind, they see your utilization statistics when you use this. That is valuable to them.
I agree with Murp, I have real concerns for the folks who start using this “free approach” to payroll….
And maybe it’s just me, but personally, I don’t think that I’d want to do payroll on either an iPhone or an iPad – call me silly but the screen is just too small which equals even easier to make mistakes.
Nancy, I would love it if you would take a look at this, since you are the payroll expert, and let us know. Does it in fact provide the minimum that you would need for a very small payroll? I agree with you, small screens are not great, which is why I would like a better iPad implementation.
I don’t necessarily agree with the issues of it being “free”. Look at mint.com – that is free, lots of people use it and like it (I’ll admit that I don’t care for that product myself).
Charlie, unfortunately I don’t have an iPad and cell phone service where I live is pretty useless – so no iPhone either – otherwise I’d be happy to take a look.
As I gather more information on this, I get more confused.
The program does NOT calculate the employer taxes. Intuit’s representative says that based on their research, they find that employers with basic payroll needs “often work with an accountant to calculate employer taxes”.
So, this seems to be an app that would only be used when someone is in a hurry to set up a new business and has to get that first check or two out, but then would be moving on to something more formal (a subscription, or having the accountant do it). At least that is my read.
If that is the case, then it is odd that they don’t have a way to move this information into an Intuit payroll service, moving forward.
I share a concern that people could get in over their heads with this, while at the same time appreciate Intuit’s efforts to accommodate mobile device users. There are people who wish to abandon their laptops altogether.
Unfortunately, I don’t think it is quite full-service enough. I would feel frustrated as a consumer if I tried to use this and got to the part about filing forms and making payments without the automation of these services available!
I get the concept that it is for people who are currently using spreadsheets, but then why a mobile app? Mobile apps to me are to provide a service, not cause me more work on the back end.
I prefer to be positive about new developments, but I am not a fan of this so far.
Why mobile? Penny, a lot of new startup businesses, particularly with younger people, don’t have a laptop or desktop computer. They try to do everything with their iPad or smartphone.
Besides, Intuit has a focus on mobile apps these days, and a lot of people trying to figure out how to make it work, so this is probably a test app…