Review by Stephanie Sullivan

The 2014 QuickBooks Pro with Enhanced payroll is not a major upgrade from 2013. There are 3 main feature additions:nn1) Enhanced email templates that are more customizable with client information and multiple attachments for QuickBooks generated emails.n2) Income tracker which makes it easier to track business income and overdue invoices.n3) Tracking bounced checks and more pre-defined one-click shortcuts for common tasks.

All three of these are nice. In my consulting business the Income Tracker is most immediately helpful. I expect the email customization enhancements will get me using direct QuickBooks email for my invoicing.

The included enhanced payroll is for one employee only. I was expecting what had once been up to 3 employees, so this is a disappointment. Unless you are a one person business, expect to spend more for more employees’ payroll! The enhanced payroll is very nice as it will electronically submit federal forms for you. For me this is time and postage saver and is very easy to do. The payroll service includes updates when rules change for state or federal regulations. These updates include rule changes for how the program processes payroll and very clear explanations and directions for the person handling payroll if any manual action is needed. If you want to keep payroll in-house Quickbooks Payroll is a good option.

The program installed without issues on Windows 7 Pro 64bit. The biggest issue is remembering my intuit login which is required for registration. It should be noted that updating QuickBooks should be one of the first steps with installation. This can take several minutes. It’s only November 2013 and we are already up to the R3 update. I like that QuickBooks aggressively updates the product to keep it up to date.

If you are a user of 2013 expect pretty much an evolution of the program with a few new features to make life a little simpler for the small business accounting. If you are upgrading from Quickbooks 2010 or 2011, then a lot more has changed and it may take a little time to get used to the interface changes and explore new features.

I’ve had it installed for about a 2 months so far and I’ll update this review as I learn and use more of the new features.

Hope this helps someone!