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If you’re running a small business, payroll is one of those tedious tasks you can’t skip. Getting the tax side of it wrong can cost you dearly, too. Right now, QuickBooks is taking 50% off the monthly price on all three of its QuickBooks Workforce payroll plans for your first three months, through Sept. 30. That brings the entry-level Workforce Payroll plan down to $25 per month, from $50, and you’ll pay the usual $7 per employee per month on top of that.
QuickBooks Workforce gets a mention on our list of the best payroll services as the natural pick if you already keep your books in QuickBooks.
Also: The best payroll services of 2026: Expert tested
QuickBooks Workforce Payroll for $25/month (save 50% for 3 months)
You get the same 50% off on all three plans, so you can pick based on what you need rather than which one has the better deal. With this deal, Workforce Premium is down to $44 per month, from $88 (plus $13 per employee), while Workforce Elite is down to $67 per month, from $134 (plus $17 per employee).
With the Payroll plan, you get full-service payroll, which means QuickBooks will calculate your federal and state payroll taxes, file the forms, and make the payments from your account. Intuit says it’ll pay the resulting penalties and interest if it gets any of that wrong, as long as the information you gave it was correct and on time and the money was in your account.
You’ll also get next-day direct deposit, 1099 e-filing for any contractors you pay, and an employee portal so your team can check their own pay details instead of asking you. QuickBooks won’t handle local payroll taxes on this plan, though, so if your city or county levies one, you’ll have to print those forms yourself and upload them to the local tax site.
Workforce Premium is the plan QuickBooks says is the favorite, and time tracking is the main thing you get on top of Payroll. You’ll also get same-day direct deposit if you run payroll before 7 a.m. PT, along with hiring, onboarding, and time-off tools. You can also have one of QuickBooks’ experts go over your payroll setup on this plan before your first run, which you don’t get on the Payroll plan.
Also: Xero vs. QuickBooks: Which accounting platform is better?
You should consider Workforce Elite if you’d rather not set any of this up yourself, since QuickBooks will do the setup for you and give you a personal HR advisor from Mineral, a third-party HR compliance company. The big addition is tax penalty protection, which you’ll only get once one of QuickBooks’ experts has reviewed your setup and you’ve enrolled in electronic tax filing. After that, if you get a payroll tax notice and send it to QuickBooks within 15 days, it’ll help you sort things out with the tax agency and cover the penalty and interest, up to $25,000 a year.
To get the deal, you’ll have to go through the QuickBooks Workforce site and select your plan. You’ll see the option to add a QuickBooks Online accounting plan on the next step, which is also 50% off for three months. You can click “Continue without accounting” there if you just want to get Payroll. You don’t need to enter a code – you should see the discounted price and a line like “You’re saving $75” in the checkout summary before you create your Intuit account and pay.
Note: The offer is only for new QuickBooks Workforce payroll customers, and you can’t combine it with QuickBooks’ 30-day free trial. The discounted rate will cover your first three months, after which QuickBooks will bill you at the regular monthly price, plus sales tax, unless you cancel.
Looking for the next best product? Get expert reviews and editor favorites with ZDNET Recommends.
How I rated this deal
I keep an eye on business software pricing, and a half-off introductory offer is pretty standard for this category. On paper, 50% off puts this deal in our 5/5 bracket. However, QuickBooks only takes it off the base fee for three months, while you’ll still pay the full per-employee fees the whole time. On the entry plan, that works out to $75 in savings across the three months. QuickBooks has kept this 50%-for-three-months offer running for most of the year and has offered more than half off during past holiday sales, so you’ll likely see this price again. That said, QuickBooks is about as recognizable as small business software gets, and you can get the discount on every plan, not just the cheapest one. That’s why I gave this deal a 3/5 Editor’s deal rating.
When will this deal expire?
QuickBooks is running this offer through Sept. 30, 2026, so you have until the end of the month to get in on it. Deals can change or expire without much warning, though our team keeps tabs on every offer we share and pulls or updates the ones that stop working. If you’ve missed this one, there will be plenty of other ways to save at ZDNET.com.
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