Today Intuit announced its attention to acquire PayCycle, a competitor well ahead of its own business, Intuit Online Payroll. Intuit will pay $170M to acquire PayCycle.
What does this mean to you as a small business professional?
- In the short run, not much. The deal has been announced, but is not expected to close until sometime in the third quarter of this year (which, admittedly, is not far off). A deal is never done until it’s done, so until the acquisition closes, expect both companies’ payroll businesses to operate as usual.
- If you are considering signing up for PayCycle or Intuit Online Payroll, don’t be deterred by the pending acquisition. Given the challenge of migrating customer data, and the disparate features/functionality, I would expect that both Intuit Online Payroll and PayCycle will likely continue to exist independently for some time (well beyond the deal closing). Having said that, it’s not inconceivable that customers will ultimately be asked to migrate to one platform or the other, or to some future merged Intuit/PayCycle service. Given that PayCycle is a more mature product that is ahead on features and functionality, if only one service ultimately survives the merger, my money is on PayCycle.
- If you really hate uncertainty but still want to sign up for a web-based payroll service, consider another vendor such as SurePayroll.
- If you are already a customer of either PayCycle or Intuit Online Payroll, don’t even think about switching due to the planned acquisition. Changing a payroll system that is already humming along smoothly is asking for a big headache. If you are required later by Intuit to switch between PayCycle and Intuit Online Payroll, you can bet that the transition will be made easier (perhaps even completely seamless) than if you try to switch away to a competitor today. Of course, if your quality of service degrades, then a change may be necessary, but as I said I do not expect that will happen.
We will continue to monitor the situation, and make sure that BizSnap readers are kept informed of any details which might affect an online payroll decision.
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Thanks for this post — we are a PayCycle customer and heard nothing about this from the company, but saw something in the news and were wondering what it is going to mean for us. We are going to sit tight for now and hopefully nothing changes, because we’ve been happy with PayCycle.
Today I received an email from Intuit telling me that they have acquired Paycycle. As a user of Paycycle and a former user of Intuit software, I’d like to post my feedback letter to Paycycle; sent to them today.
Hello, Paycycle.
I really, really like your service. I have found it extremely easy to use and when I needed help the ease of contact and efficiency and demeanor of the staff were a dream. I have recommended you to countless friends.
Now that you are being acquired by Intuit, I’m concerned. My experience with their software is that it is needlessly complicated, not user-friendly and doesn’t INTUIT the kinds of things I need to do. Today I clicked the link in the notification email they sent me to try to send this directly to them. After ten frustrating minutes I still had not been able to make contact. The “feedback” links are broken; the customer support links force you to choose an Intuit software (which I don’t use) in order to submit a request for support, and there is no other contact method available. Typical of Intuit.
What a contrast to come to your Paycycle site, click the contact link on the bottom of the home page and immediately get easy to use choices of contact, like the email form I am using right now. So, please send this email to your new overlords at Intuit. Tell them I am concerned. I want Paycycle to stay the same. If anything, Intuit should learn from a company that’s doing it right, not impose its own flawed methods on Paycycle.
I am beginning research on other payroll services NOW, so that the minute Paycycle becomes Intuit-like, I will be able to change immediately.
Thank you for your previous FANTASTIC service. It is greatly appreciated. If the creators of Paycycle come up with something else, let me know.
Frances Limoncelli
If you hate Intuit like I do, or if you love Paycycle, speak out and tell them to keep it the same!
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