New Payroll Option for Shepherd's Staff 2010

[CTS Support Tech]

As you may know, Intuit recently sent out an e-mail stating that support for Quick Payroll will end on December 31, 2009. They will no longer update tax tables or tax forms for the product. Users will still be able to process payroll and produce year end forms through the end of 2009.

It has also come to our attention that Intuit is eliminating their current version of Intuit Online Payroll (IOP) and replacing it with a new version of IOP. The new IOP is a completely different product from the original IOP we tested and recommended to our customers a few months ago. The new IOP does not include the same Export to Excel feature as the old IOP. This export option was needed to be able to import payroll into Shepherd’s Staff.

Intuit's decision to go in a different direction on a couple of fronts has prompted us to add support for Payroll Mate. A trial version of Payroll Mate can be downloaded from www.payrollmate.com. This desktop-based payroll software, which has to be installed on your computer, can be evaluated for 30 days. After evaluation, you will then have the option to purchase the product for $99.99 a year.

Shepherd’s Staff users who want to import payroll from Payroll Mate into the Finance module will need to download and install Service Pack 1 for Shepherd’s Staff 2010 (7.7). The service pack includes the new payroll import option and a few software patches. It can be downloaded by clicking here.

Payroll Mate interfaces with Shepherd's Staff the same way that Quick Payroll does. Click here to download step-by-step instructions for importing an Excel file from Payroll Mate into the Finance module of Shepherd’s Staff. Please contact us at 1-800-346-6120 or support@cts.cph.org if you have any questions about this update for Shepherd’s Staff.

[GLC]

I made the decision to go with Intuit's QuickBooks Pro 2010. Maybe a bit more expensive but well worth it. One concern I had was whether I would lose the history from QuickPayroll. As it turns out I was able to restore from my QuickPayroll backup by renaming the file to a QBB file extension from the QPB file extension. This restore process created a QuickBooks company file virtually identical to that of QuickPayroll. The export/import schema used with QuickPayroll is completely replicable by QuickBooks. Functionality of QuickBooks is greatly enhanced from that of QuickPayroll but with virtually complete compatibility; to the point all of my Payroll Items were restored from the backup. As well, the memorized reports were also restored as they were in QuickPayroll.
The first payroll accomplished with QuickBooks was a snap; the only issues centered around figuring out the new tabs, pulldown menus to be used.
The bottom line is that the learning curve was very minimal.
Anyone interested in my experiences can contact me at 661-943-4304 (home phone). Dennis Klein/Grace Lutheran Church,Lancaster,CA.

[Tech Mike]

Hi, glad you got this to work. This is something we may look at in the future, but at this time, Pay Roll Mate and Pay Windows are the two supported options. If you have further questions, please contact Concordia Technology Solutions at 800-346-6120.

[GLC]

I truly hope that you are not considering removing the QUICKPAYROLL support as that is avenue I am using to import the QUICKBOOKS exported
information.

[Tech Mike]

Hi, we have no plans to remove this from the program, so you should be fine. If you have further questions, please contact us at 800-346-6120.

[bschottmi]

I'm helping a congregation get started with Shep Staff and they do their own payroll (my church uses a service). I'm going to recommend they look into this option. But my core question is "Do you have a sample chart of accounts that matches this software package?"