QuickBooks Pro with QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll 2013

• Organize your business finances and payroll all in one place
• QuickBooks Pro with Enhanced Payroll can help you save time and focus on your business
• Know where your business stands
• Easily manage your business finances and payroll
• Everyday tasks just got more efficient

I have been using QuickBooks since 2008 and overall have had mixed feelings about the experience since then. While I love that overall this is a functional piece of software that lets me manage my employees and payroll as well as do normal business functions like invoicing and taxes, I hate how bloated the organization is. The help manual is decidedly unhelpful and ignores a number of simple questions. Then, when you call support, it takes forever and the representatives are generally rude and don't speak English very well. Worse, their company policies are unfriendly and it's like they know they have a monopoly on the market as most tax pros use QuickBooks, so small businesses like mine are forced into it unless we want to go it alone.

I upgraded to QuickBooks 2013 because Amazon provided a free copy as part of their Vine program to top reviewers. QuickBooks has a forced obsolescence and so since I was running 2011, I knew that I would be forced to upgrade by 2014 or else not be allowed to continue running the payroll software. This is why I had upgraded from 2008 to 2011 though 2008 had been working perfectly well. While the upgrade from 2008 to 2011 went surprisingly smoothly, importing all of my settings and preferences with no drama, this latest upgrade from 2011 to 2013 was a mess.

While it imported all of my company information and many of my settings such as the logo that goes on my invoices, 2013 changed the look of the user interface to make it much, much harder to read and impossible to personalize.

I am 34 years old with reasonably good vision, and after five hours of using QuickBooks yesterday, I retired for a nap with a headache and eyestrain. The new interface has a monochrome gray on gray look which makes it exceptionally hard to read the text. A lot of the text is a light gray on a charcoal gray background, which is notoriously hard for people to read. In addition, the font size looks much smaller than on previous versions. Looking through the help section, I found many complaints in their online forum about this new look, and found that unlike in previous versions where you can customize the look, in this new version QuickBooks has decided that we are not allowed to make any changes in how it looks. In fact, if I want to enlarge the text, I need to change the screen resolution on my monitor. I don't need to change the screen resolution on my monitor as everything else is just the right size, it's QuickBooks that is the problem!

Then, the software seems less stable than 2011. I've had it running for only a few days and it has already crashed! I don't think 2011 crashed on me more than once or twice over a course of years, so the fact that this new version has crashed in the first few days is very alarming.

Lastly, I haven't yet figured out if I can input the new payroll code without invalidating my previous payroll subscription. The last time I purchased the enhanced payroll in July of 2012, I had to call support to have them input the code, and they said that as soon as the new code was input, the previous code would be invalidated. That means since I called in two weeks prior to my previous subscription ending, I essentially lost two weeks of payroll subscription that I had paid for. The customer service rep I spoke to at that time said that there was nothing he could do besides advise me to call back the day before expiration to have them input the code, but given that I had been on the phone for 45 minutes already, most of that waiting for a rep, I wasn't keen to waste another 45 minutes to save a few bucks.

The problem here is that this software bundle that comes with QuickBooks enhanced payroll says that you must begin your payroll registration within three months of installing QuickBooks 2013. Does that mean that the payroll subscription I purchased back in July will be invalidated as soon as I enter in the new code? I'm planning on calling QuickBooks shortly to find out for sure, and I will update this review as soon as I learn more.

I am extremely unhappy with the new QuickBooks and would advise that if you possibly can, don't upgrade to 2013. Perhaps by 2014 they will have sorted out these issues and this will be a workable piece of software again. Until then, I'm undecided as to whether I'm going back to 2011 or not. I guess I will see if the eyestrain subsides.

Buy QuickBooks Pro with QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll 2013 Now

UPDATE: I've used this software for two pay periods, and it has locked up in very strange ways. Last week (I pay employees on a weekly basis) it would NOT take out any federal or state taxes, no matter what I tried. I finally just wrote out checks to my anxious employees, closed down the system, and fired up the program again. This week it subtracted the taxes (I need to get with my accountant to figure out what to do with last week's issue).

This week a second glitch occurred. I needed to do my state sales tax and when I tried to select last month's transactions and isolate them to see what my sales were the program would only show the entire year. No matter which option I selected from the menu (there are tons of options, this month, last month, first quarter, et cetera) it would only give me the year. When I used the calendar to create a custom report it would show the month of October on the calender as being selected, but then still give all the data for 2012.

As I stated below, I've been using this program since 2007 and I've never had software issues like this. I'm working up my nerve to do the nasty (that means to get on the phone and go through the horror of a support call to QB, something you don't want to do if you've ever done it before).

UPDATE 12-7-12

After calling QB, being on the phone with support for almost 2 hours, allowing the support staff to access my computer, they STILL couldn't fix any of the problems. The tech guy said it was normal to have font running off of buttons (like the continue button reading "conti" and having multiple clickable buttons superimposed on each other.

This is an absolute nightmare as I've already entered much of this quarter in the new 2013, and it won't allow me to open my recent work in 2011. Don't do it. DON'T DO IT.

Read Best Reviews of QuickBooks Pro with QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll 2013 Here

The payroll only limit to 3 employees, I had to pay $150 extra to Quickbooks to change to unlimited employees

Want QuickBooks Pro with QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll 2013 Discount?

I have been using Quickbooks since 2002

Overall the program is just OK

It starts up slow and closes slow.

My primary beef with Quickbooks-Intuit, is that they DO NOT even try to hold the price down, whether Its the program or the yearly tax subscription. Intuit is extremely money hungry.

Even their tax forms cost more

Intuit raises their prices substancially each year, never holding their price down.

I am actually looking forward to when i retire, that i wont have to buy their products anymore.

Save 49% off

Intuit has released its annual upgrade to the QuickBooks line with the charmingly named QuickBooks Pro with QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll 2013. (Only accountants and bookkeepers could love a name like that.) This year's bundled release provides incremental benefits for current users, including the annual "improved Quickbooks user interface" which is a change some people will love just for the sake of change and others who are used to doing things a certain way will probably not like. But isn't it always like that with UI enhancements? There's also a very handy new customizable toolbar where you can park your favorite shortcuts, an array of simplified forms (hurray for simplicity!), increased flexibility in terms of how customer, vendor, and employee data gets entered and managed, and an app center where you can wait for it buy more stuff from Intuit.

As a standalone program, there's nothing better than QuickBooks for managing the grinding business of making a business run. (Can you tell I'm not an accountant by trade?) But as an upgrade, the theme this year seems to be fixing previously weak interface elements, and I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I'm not very excited about making an annual spend on these "new features" that are often just a new coat of paint covering what had been less-than-stellar UI design in the first place.

Regardless, the bottom line is that if you're a first-time Quickbooks user, then by all means make the investment and start using this platform. It will simplify your life. But if you're on an upgrade path, the buying decision comes down to the value you place on what appears to be a pretty modest set of new features.

Five starts for QuickBooks.

One star for the value of this latest revision.