intuit | Jason Palmer, CPA, CITP

When Quickbooks Payroll by Intuit partnered up with The Hartford to offer “Pay- as-you-Go” Workers Compensation Policies, I decided to investigate.

If you use Quickbooks Full Service Payroll, which is a comprehensive service that includes direct deposit of employee paychecks, automatic preparation of payroll tax forms and payment of taxes, with The Hartford, you can pay your Workers Compensation with each pay period.

If you use Basic (Paycheck Calculations Only) or Enhanced Payroll (Paychecks and Tax Form Preparation) you can still use The Hartford, but you have to make the periodic Workers Compensation payment directly through The Hartford web site. It is not an automatic deduction. This is still a better option than having to make one big Workers Compensation payment each year on the anniversary date of your policy. (As of this writing, Disability Policies at The Hartford are not available on the “Pay-as-you-Go” billing platform and must be paid in full annually.)

I contacted The Hartford and was able to obtain quotes almost immediately. For Workers Compensation, the annual premium was a significant savings. For Disability, the annual premium was higher but the combination of the two policies was still a savings. When I asked my commercial insurance broker his opinion of The Hartford, he had only good things to say. Specifically he mentioned that their customer service is very responsive and that they pay their claims in a timely manner.

True to form, I had a number of questions for The Hartford about the quotes presented and they were extremely responsive. This included their ability to put the new policies in place almost immediately should I decide to proceed. However, if you read my last post, “Leaving NYSIF – New York State Insurance Fund – Not So Easy”, it was all for naught as I was unable to exit my NYSIF policies. [I will be looking at The Hartford again and perhaps some other Carriers as my NYSIF renewal date approaches.]

Important Safety Tip: Absolutely check with your current Workers Compensation and Disability Insurance Carriers to determine your ability to cancel your policy and leave prior to term BEFORE you obtain quotes or complete any applications. It will just save you a great deal of time and aggravation. Penalties for early departure can be severe.

NOTE: The degree to which you can actually “Pay-as-you-Go” with The Hartford will vary with the specific Quickbooks Payroll Service you have selected and the amount of your policy premiums. In the case of some Policies, the Premium may be so small that it makes more sense, or the only option may be, to pay annually.

More Information on The Hartford at:
http://www.thehartford.com/worker-compensation

More Information on Intuit Payroll at:
http://payroll.intuit.com

Disclaimer: The information presented above is my personal experience and current as of the date of this article posting as it applied to my specific situation. I am a licensed Certified Financial Planner and Certified Public Accountant (licensed in the State of New York.) I am not licensed to sell or represent any insurance product in any State. Insurance Carrier rules and regulations vary by State and change frequently. You must check with your own Agent, Broker, or Insurance Carrier directly to verify the information as it may apply to your specific situation.

The first rule of computing is to never do anything by computer that you can do faster by hand.

Frequently, when discussing the cost of Software Licenses, business owners grumble at the prices charged per copy by the usual suspects such as Microsoft, Intuit, Salesforce, or Sage ( – to name a few.) They proclaim that it is like pouring money in to a hole and that they don’t understand why they need to have the latest versions nor do they understand why they would want to make sure that every employee has a copy of the Software.

I ask why they feel that there is no value or not as much value as the developer of the software assigns to the per copy license. In some cases I get a legitimate complaint that not every employee fully utilizes the software, but in most cases the business owner just has an arbitrary value assigned to the software based on their own perception of what they think it is worth or should cost.

Let us use a copy of the Quickbooks Premier Small Business Accounting Software with a single seat/copy price of approximately $400 as an example. First, I ask the business owner what is he paying is bookkeeper – the person using the Quickbooks software? For simplicity we will use $45,000 (which is the average salary for a bookkeeper in New York City.)

I ask the business owner what did his bookkeeper use before Quickbooks? The answer, as one would expect, Green Ledger Pads and a large number of mechanical pencils with gum erasers and a Check Register provided by the Bank. I then go on to ask how were financial reports such as daily cash receipts, cash flow, sales, interim income statements, accounts receivable, and accounts payable produced. The obvious answer of course – all by hand – and it took a tremendous amount of time. I would be remiss if I did not ask if there were ever any math errors in the ledgers and reports – again – of course a few would crop up here and there.

Now, for the small sum of approximately $400 all of the reports mentioned above are available at the click of a mouse in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days. Assuming the original transactions are entered correctly, the math errors have been virtually eliminated. Now, your bookkeeper can process more transactions in less time because recurring transactions can be memorized and re-entered as needed within seconds. Reports can be memorized as well and refreshed quickly with current data at will.

In short, the bookkeeper is saving dozens of hours per month by automating tedious data entry and reporting tasks. In keeping with our example, if $45,000 translates in to approximately $22.50/hour based on a 2,000 hour work year then in less than 18 hours, the Quickbooks Software has paid for itself in increased productivity, all within one month of purchase.

To validated this savings, Intuit, the makers of Quickbooks did a survey and found that in the most conservative responses, 25% stated that they saved up to five hours per week by using Quickbooks.

My point is that any software product that makes you or your staff more productive, allowing greater efficiency and the ability to generate higher output which translates in to revenue for your company is usually well worth the nominal per user/copy/seat charge.

Software licenses do not cost, they pay.

Quickbooks & The Hartford Pay-as-you-Go Workers Compensation

Software Licensing Cost – Understanding the Value