Quick Books® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Paying Employees

In This Chapter

• Setting up do-it-yourself or Basic Payroll

• Paying employees

• Editing and voiding checks

• Paying payroll liabilities

QuickBooks provides three options for paying employees: do-it-yourself Basic Payroll, do-it-yourself Enhanced Payroll, and don't-you-worry-Intuit-does-everything Assisted Payroll. This chapter describes the Basic Payroll option. With the Basic Payroll option, you do most of the work yourself, but you don't pay very much for your payroll processing.

As noted, QuickBooks also supplies an Enhanced Payroll option and an Assisted Payroll option. With Enhanced Payroll, Intuit (the maker of QuickBooks) prepares your payroll tax forms and helps you file them. The Assisted Payroll option is Intuit's alternative to outside payroll services, such as ADP or Paychex. I don't talk about the Enhanced Payroll option or the Assisted Payroll option in this chapter for a simple reason: If you use either of these options, the QuickBooks folks help you through the setup process and the payroll processing. You don't need my help. You'll get their help.

Tip

Would you be terribly offended if I offered you a bit of friendly advice? If you're not an accountant, spend the money on Intuit's Assisted Payroll service or on one of the equivalent full-service payroll providers such as ADP or Paychex. Having Intuit or ADP or Paychex do your payroll greatly simplifies your payroll accounting work and — in my experience — saves you money over time.

If you go with a payroll ...