Today I contacted Quickbooks to solve two problems, one in my Quickbooks Payroll account and one in my Quickbooks Online account. At the end of two hours neither problem was solved and no one at Quickbooks is pursuing resolution of either of these issues offline.
The problem in the Payroll account is a direct result of the supposed upgrade Quickbooks made in September, much to the detriment of my checking account, which was reconciled and in balance at the time. 41 transactions that had been reconciled in 2023 and 2024 mysteriously reappeared in my checking account, throwing it of out of balance and preventing me from reconciling 2025 sooner than solving all 41 problems.
It took 4 hours of my time to research and fix 35 of those transactions, leaving 6 transactions that would require Quickbooks' assistance to repair. All six of those transactions were in the Payroll account--problems that were caused by Quickbooks Payroll and can only be fixed by Quickbooks Payroll... maybe. As a small business owner, my time is better spent in forward-looking activities--not repairing problems that a lame service provider like Quickbooks creates.
Quickbooks Payroll had somehow managed to place two different versions of the same transaction in two different checking accounts, NOT good accounting practice from the people who think they know it all--and never do. The withdrawal from the correct account was improperly categorized as an expense; the withdrawal from the wrong account was properly categorized as a tax payment, but had no EDIT or DELETE button, something only Quickbooks can do, and hasn't.
The woman in Payroll that I first spoke with put me on hold, telling me periodically that she was waiting for the fixes to be processed. As it turns out, she could not solve these problems on her own and was also holding for someone elsewhere in Quickbooks Payroll to do this for her, while she kept me holding for her.
This is one of the most insulting features of Quickbooks Not-Customer-Service, if you don't stay on the phone, they will not resolve your issue offline and you will have to start all over again with someone else, from scratch. More wasted time, for which Quickbooks is completely unapologetic and never offers to compensate you for your wasted time, their never-ending mistakes, their untrained personnel and the unnecessary complications of them jumping on the AI bandwagon sooner than they'd vetted it in actual practice.
At an hour and 33 minutes, during which time my business had closed and I missed dinner with my family, this woman finally came back to me to say she would be transferring me to someone else who would take care of my issue. I was shocked, she should have never kept me on the phone so long for this outcome--any reputable company would have told you that straight up and not wasted your time--but not Quickbooks.
At 16 minutes into the second conversation, the man I was speaking with told me that he could not fix either transaction (which may be true for him, but is not true in reality) and that the best I could hope for is a journal entry to cancel the effect of the right transaction in the wrong account and that I would have to live with the wrong transaction in the right account forever.
Well, guess what, my Payroll accounts will be wrong forever, thanks to Quickbooks not correcting the wrong transaction in the right account. No Payroll report that I will ever pull from now on will be correct because this transaction is miscategorized, making my Payroll and my books useless as a management tool. My opinion of Quickbooks Payroll, which was already low, is now colored by how unforgivable their arrogance and stupidity are.
That was Problem #1; Problem #2 is that I can't reconcile my checking account because a transaction that was missing and then uploaded to Banking Transactions for reconciliation in the account register is not showing up on the Reconciliation screen three days after it was reconciled. The first woman I spoke with agreed, the transaction was correct and the Reconciliation screen was not, but she could do nothing about it. That's another phone call and more wasted time.
So, two strikes against her and Quickbooks--but I am the big loser, I can't reconcile my checking account and have to go through another round of these miserable conversations with people who don't know what they're doing before I get down to the real business of reconciling my checking account.
If you were thinking of using Quickbooks or Quickbooks Payroll, my advice is "DON'T." I've lost 6 HOURS of my valuable time trying to get 41 problems that Quickbooks caused fixed and Quickbooks has been no help at all, which sadly is standard operating procedure at Quickbooks.
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