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April 5, 2010 3:10 PM   Subscribe

New S-Corp! Fav online payroll and accounting programs, please! Also any fun small business online forums, resources, message boards, etc.?

Just started an S-Corp with partner, on advice of lawyer, for a side venture that has started to be profitable, yay!

Looking for your favorite small business resources - chat rooms, message boards, blogs, etc. - a community like here would be great!

But especially seeking payroll and accounting programs that don't cost an arm and a leg like the ones our lawyer suggested!

Online preferred. Payroll is for two people, to be paid every four months (so 3 paychecks for 2 people, or 6 paychecks). We'd love a program where we pay for the times we actually use the service, and not that flat monthly rate regardless of usage.

We'd like to spend close $100/year total for payroll and accounting, but are willing to spend more if needed!
posted by curiositykilledthelemur to Work & Money (5 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I can't help you with online business resources, although I'd be interested if anyone else has some for you. However, I can offer some assistance on the accounting software: I've been very happy with QuickBooks, which I've used for the past 15 years or so. While it's outside of your stated price range, it plays very nicely with TurboTax for Business (which I always buy at a discount on eBay) so that my corporate taxes are a breeze. This means that it costs me around $100 to do my federal taxes for the S-corp, rather than the $300+ my accountant used to charge me.
posted by DrGail at 4:20 PM on April 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


About a year ago, we switched to Intuit online payroll, but purchased it through Costco. Nothing to install or update as it's all via the browser. We have 20-some employees and I think it costs about $7/month total (not per employee) if purchased via Costco on an "Executive" level membership. It easily handles 401(k), overtime, bonuses, etc... Payroll is one of those things where the cost to have someone else do is a bargain compared to trying to do it right yourself, keep everything up to date, do the withholdings, reporting, etc...

For accounting I'd recommend AccountEdge (used to be MYOB), available in both Mac and Windows flavors. Intuit is turning into an annual upgrade racket, IMHO.
posted by webhund at 6:04 PM on April 5, 2010 [1 favorite]


Ask your local accountant... He or she should be seeing what works best in the area...
posted by Ding! at 4:24 PM on April 6, 2010


I haven't used any of these yet so this is a link dump, but maybe they'll help you or maybe someone else can comment on the services:

Xero
"Accounting for your small business"

Outright
"Free online bookkeeping; contractor tax burdens, gone, with 1099 e-filing; your Estimated Taxes and Schedule C, done; and support with deductions, the IRS, and successful self employment."

Paycycle aka Intuit Online Payroll
"We provide online payroll services to make your small business payroll easy."
posted by sharkfu at 6:14 PM on April 9, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks for trying, sharkfu, but Intuit for my needs is $50/month, which is 5x more expensive than what I'm looking at, and Outright seems awesome but is for LLCs and sole proprietorships.
posted by curiositykilledthelemur at 7:48 AM on April 12, 2010


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