Success Story
QuickBooks Online Payroll Helps Web Agency Save Time and Money
Tabitha McMillan admits she was worried about doing the company payroll.
Her firm, Mobile Penguins, is a busy Web marketing agency with two offices on the West Coast and clients around the world. The company's HR policies and procedures were originally set up by an outside firm, which was also doing the payroll.
But that service was costing a couple thousand dollars a month. Bringing HR and payroll back in-house could save the company a bundle...if they could find a way to do it. Tabitha was already handling the company finances, so she seemed like the natural person to look after all the HR paperwork and payroll as well.
A New Feature in QuickBooks Online
"Back in college I worked part-time for an accountant," she says. "But it was five years since I'd touched something like that. I was really nervous to do the payroll on my own."
An experienced user of QuickBooks, she switched to QuickBooks Online in the spring of 2005. A few months later, she heard that QuickBooks Online would be adding a new payroll function. Moving to it seemed like a better idea than starting all over again with another outside payroll service.
"It was perfect timing for us. I already knew how to use QuickBooks, so rather than finding a new payroll company, I was willing to give it a try," she says. "But we have a combination of salary, hourly and commission employees, and I was worried about setting it up properly, with all the state and federal calculations."
No Need to Worry
From the initial setup to printing out pay checks, she found the online payroll system easy to learn and use. "The setup was very step-by-step, so I couldn't miss a step going through it. It's so easy to learn and self-explanatory, you can't mess it up. And it does all the calculations for you."
In fact, the transition was so smooth that none of the 20 employees even noticed when she switched to the new system in July. "We had all the right year-to-dates in there. It was a real easy cutover with no problems at all."
Today the process of running a payroll takes Tabitha about the same time she used to spend filling out the payroll sheets for their outsourced service. The other HR matters are going smoothly, and her company is saving an estimated $2,000 a month.
"The payroll is so easy to do every other week, it's great! There are plenty of reports to make sure that I enter things correctly. And because I already have all the information in the system, we can get all the forms out for the quarterly filing."
Anywhere, Anytime Accounting
Mobile Penguins was founded in 2000 in southern California, and opened a second office in Seattle in the fall of 2004 to house its growing team of sales and marketing people. Ever since, Tabitha has been shuttling between the two offices, plus stopping off to visit family in northern California.
"QuickBooks Online is great for me, since I travel so much," she says. "I bounce around between the three places a lot. Being able to use it from wherever I'm at makes a lot less stress for me. The biggest thing is being able to access it from anywhere, so if I have to work at home or from the other office, I have all my information right there."
The Convenience is Ideal for Her
For Tabitha, working this way beats the alternative: either carrying the company books on a laptop-which could get broken or stolen-or putting all the company data on a CD, which could get scratched or lost. Instead, Tabitha can see into the company's books from anywhere she has Web access. "If anyone has questions while I'm out of town, I can just log in and pull things up and see what's going on," she says. "It's made things a lot easier."
It's a natural way for a Web development agency to work. After all, Mobile Penguins is used to showing off their portfolio and doing work for clients halfway around the world, in places like New Zealand or the U.K.
Everything Is Together in One Place
Tabitha likes how QuickBooks Online is an all-in-one package that keeps all her financial information together. "I've worked in other places where we had multiple programs: one for invoicing, another for the books, and a different program for payroll," she says. "Having everything tied in together in QuickBooks Online has been really helpful. I don't have to keep jumping around from one place to the other."
She uses the program for "just about everything" including invoicing, tracking sales and profits, and now the payroll and quarterly payroll tax filings. "It's been a big stress-reliever, knowing that everything is going to be done correctly, and that it's not going to take a lot of time to do it, " says Tabitha. "QuickBooks Online has been a godsend that saved us both time and money."
