QuickBooks 2024 – Enhanced Payroll Features

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Editor's Note: Intuit recently released QuickBooks Desktop 2024, including QuickBooks Enterprise (v24.0). Murph has evaluated pre-release versions of these products for months and spent hours communicating with Intuit personnel so we can help you learn about the new products. This is one in a series of individual product articles intended to provide additional content to what's included in Murph's QuickBooks 2024 Product Summary.

About QuickBooks 2024 Enhanced Payroll Features

Two enhancements have been made to QuickBooks 2024 related to the Enhanced Payroll offering. These include improvements to the Employee Center and Human Capital Management (HCM) capabilities expanding the offering of Guideline 401(k)s.

Employee Center Improvements

QuickBooks 2024 provides an improved user experience within the Employee Center, making it easier to complete required information for employees. 

The redesigned experience includes a new Required Info tab that keeps an employee's required information on a single tab. Information previously recorded on the Personal and Address & Contact tabs has been relocated to this new tab. 

The new Required Info tab conveniently holds all of an employee's required information, including name, address and date of birth, portions of which were previously on multiple tabs (shown in the prior illustration).

Because QuickBooks users sometimes rush to add an employee at the last minute to process their first payroll, the enhanced experience now incorporates new visual cues (shown below) into the improved Employee Center, making it easier to distinguish incomplete employee profiles. 

Even though QuickBooks 2024 with Enhanced Payroll will allow users with proper payroll permissions to process payroll even when an employee's required information is incomplete. In addition, new advisory pop-up messaging (shown below) has been incorporated into the Employee Center to inform Payroll Processors of the need and benefits of having complete employee profile information.

This feature is available for all QuickBooks 2024 (Plus, Enterprise, Accountant and Enterprise Accountant) versions within the US when subscribed to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll1.

Improved Human Capital Management features for Enhanced Payroll Customers

QuickBooks 2024 expands the capability for fully integrated 401(k) retirement plans as part of improved HCM (Human Capital Management) features. These retirement plans are made available through Guideline2.

More businesses are offering 401(k) retirement plans for their employee's well-being and to aid in retaining talented individuals. By incorporating Guideline into the available offerings and payroll functionality, QuickBooks 2024 users with Enhanced Payroll1 now can offer their personnel a variety of 401(k) retirement plans.

It is true that a similar feature was outlined in our reporting for QuickBooks 2023, but that Guideline 401(k) offering was limited to users with QuickBooks Assisted Payroll. QuickBooks 2024 expands the offering to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll subscribers.

Businesses with QuickBooks 2024 and an Enhanced Payroll subscription can quickly sign up for a fully integrated and affordable Guideline 401(k). This new offering makes it easy and affordable for your business to offer employees a 401(k) through QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll1.

To sign up for Guideline:

  1. Sign into your QuickBooks company file as the Admin user.
  2. Select Employees, then Payroll Center.
  3. Select the Employee Benefits tab (shown below).
  4. From the 401(k) plan card, select Learn More. You may need to sign into your Intuit account to view the plans. 
  5. Select the Build your plan button.
  6. When the Guideline website opens, enter your business information.
  7. Choose the 401(k) plan that works best for you and your team. If you have questions about 401(k) plans, call a Guideline plan specialist at 888-228-3491.
  8. Follow the on-screen instructions to set up your plan. Some forms will be pre-filled with your information from QuickBooks. If any of this information is incorrect or missing, close the website and fix it in QuickBooks.

Guideline makes it easy for employers to choose from a list of plan options suiting their needs and the needs of their employees. Users can choose from a list of plan options that best suit your business's and your employee's needs.

Before you select a 401(k) plan, make sure the following business information is up to date in your QuickBooks company file:

  • Business legal name and address
  • Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN)
  • Entity type (Corporation, Sole Proprietor, etc.)
  • Principal officer's first and last name and email address
  • Business bank account username and password or routing and account numbers 
  • Number of pay schedules you use to pay your employees
  • Number of active employees on payroll

QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll makes setting up the 401(k) plan contributions and deductions easy. When setting up your employees, you will need to verify the following information is contained in each employee's profile within QuickBooks:

  • First and last name
  • Social Security Number
  • Hire date
  • Birth date
  • Employment status 
  • Pay rate/Salary
  • Email address

Because of the depth of integration, it is easy to configure the deductions and contributions within Enhanced Payroll to maintain all the record-keeping and simplify benefits administration fully.

Once your participating employees are set up, and you run Enhanced Payroll with their new contributions, the info and contributions are sent automatically to Guideline. There are no extra steps. All contributions will be debited from the Bank Account you set up.

Guideline administers the plan and does all the reporting, compliance and retirement plan maintenance for you.

When subscribed to QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll1, this feature is available to all QuickBooks 2024 users (Plus, Enterprise, Accountant and Enterprise Accountant) within the US.

Concluding Remarks

Remember to read Insightful Accountant daily for another article in our 2024 QuickBooks Desktop series.

Also, please attend our September "QB Talks" webinar, scheduled for 2 p.m. (EST) on Oct. 4, 2023 (the rescheduled date/time). Murph will bring you "A First Look at QuickBooks Desktop 2024." Murph will give you the Intuit hype regarding the new features and enhancements and his earnest opinion based on his testing experiences. You can REGISTER HERE for the webinar.

If you miss our webinar, you will find a recording on the Insightful Accountant Home Page.

Acknowledgments

I want to thank the product managers, team leaders, developers, and Alpha/Beta test team members working behind the scenes, striving to deliver a new and better QuickBooks Desktop every year. It's far too easy to forget to thank these folks who "make QuickBooks a reality."

I especially appreciate Nipun Bhatia, Ninad Marathe, and Shobhit Sharma of the QuickBooks Desktop and Enterprise teams in India for assistance in affirming features and feature-related issues presented in this article. 

My special thanks goes out to Intuit's Kim Amsbaugh, who always keeps me "in the loop."

Finally, to everyone involved at Intuit and the various QuickBooks teams, "Thank you."

 Nomenclature used herein:

QuickBooks 2024 refers to all versions of QuickBooks Desktop 2024 and QuickBooks Enterprise (v24). [This designation may also appear as QB24.]

QuickBooks Desktop 2024 refers to all versions of QuickBooks Desktop Plus and QuickBooks Desktop Accountant for 2024. [This designation may also appear as QBD24.]

QuickBooks Enterprise 2024 refers to all versions of QuickBooks Enterprise v24 and QuickBooks Enterprise Accountant for 2024. [This designation may also appear as QBES24.]

Otherwise, products are referenced explicitly by individual product names.

Footnotes:

1 - QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll subscriptions are in addition to any other QuickBooks subscription unless they are part of a combination package. The payroll subscription may require a unique setup; contact your QuickBooks Desktop Enhanced Payroll support specialist for more information.

2 - Guideline 401(k) offerings are provided and administered by Guideline, an independent third party, and not offered by Intuit. Intuit is not a 401(k) plan administrator, fiduciary, or provider. Requires acceptance of Guideline's Client Relationship Summary and Privacy Policy. Additional 401(k) plan fees will apply. Employees may manage their contributions directly with Guideline. Admin and payroll access are required to sign up for a 401(k) plan with Guideline.

Disclosures:

Materials within this feature, including graphic illustrations, were developed from various pre-release versions of QuickBooks 2024.  As such, the final product version you acquire may appear, act, or be somewhat different from that described or illustrated herein.

Portions of this feature have been adapted from Intuit QuickBooks Desktop 2024-related content, including in-product help resources. All such source materials were adapted by Insightful Accountant solely for educational purposes.

As used herein, QuickBooks, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, QuickBooks Desktop Plus, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise (all versions), and QuickBooks Desktop Accountant refer to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit Inc., a NASDAQ "INTU" publicly traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California (USA).

Other trade names used herein, including any other vendor (app/software) products discussed, may be registered, trademarked, or otherwise held by their respective owners and are now acknowledged accordingly. They have been referenced for informational and educational purposes only.

This is an editorial feature, not sponsored content. No vendors within this article have paid Insightful Accountant or the Author any remuneration to be included within this feature. This article is provided solely for informational and educational purposes.

The publication of this article does not represent any form of endorsement by either the Author or Insightful Accountant.

Note: Registered Trademark ® and Copyright © symbols have been eliminated from the articles within this publication for brevity due to the frequency or abundance with which they might otherwise appear or be repeated. We attempt to credit such trademarked products or copyrighted materials within our respective article footnotes and disclosures.

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