Many firms struggle with the decision to offer payroll services to their clients. The crux of the problem is profitability. Can payroll services really provide a healthy ROI? The key to maximizing profits is simple: minimize your costs through standardization and automation, while still providing superior customer value and experience.

How can a firm solve for the disparity of processes across their client base when every client has slightly different needs? This is a real challenge for most firms because each client may have a slightly different chart of accounts, compensation structure, benefits and reporting requirements. RUN Powered by ADP and Accountant Connect solve these issues by offering flexible integration options through the ADP RUN General Ledger tool.

The General Ledger tool is easy to use and enables seamless integration between your clients’ ADP RUN and QuickBooks® Online accounts. What’s more, Accountant Connect gives accounting professionals access to all their clients’ ADP RUN accounts in a single dashboard and the ability to map each clients’ account to meet their specific needs.

Let’s take a peek at just how easy it is to set up and use.

Make the connection

The first step is to connect your client’s ADP RUN account to QuickBooks. Once your client has signed up for the General Ledger feature, select the General Ledger drop-down from the menu at the top to begin the connection process. Then, select QuickBooks as your accounting software and click Connect to QuickBooks.

Once you’ve authorized the connection to QuickBooks, ADP RUN will automatically pull in the chart of accounts. Then, you’re ready to map the payroll to the chart of accounts. This is where the magic happens.

Map each payroll expense item in ADP RUN to an account on your QuickBooks Chart of Accounts. ADP RUN General Ledger also lets you choose whether you want to export payroll entries as a single entry for all employees, or as individual entries for each employee. If you select the latter, you can customize the mapping for each individual employee to different accounts. This is super helpful for clients with more complex reporting needs.

The General Ledger home screen is where you can view and modify the company or employee mapping, create General Ledger files to import into QuickBooks, and view your General Ledger export history.

You export the files to QuickBooks from the create General Ledger file screen. Here, you can select the settings based on your clients’ specific workflows. Decide the name format you prefer, if you want to summarize by employee or company, and whether you want to include the check register data. Finally, select create file and the file is automatically sent to QuickBooks and recorded properly every time, using the mappings and settings you choose.

Leverage the power of ADP Accountant Connect

Accounting professionals love dashboards that allow us to manage all clients from one place, so ADP created ADP Accountant Connect. Accountant Connect offers cool features such as the ability to create quarterly reports for all your clients in batch, and resources such as free access to the CCH Tax Resources library, free training and CPE credits. And for any information on QuickBooks training and certifications, as well as upcoming trainings to tap into, check out our accountant university page.

Another great benefit are the powerful tools such as payroll calculators and the Annual Compensation Explorer, which provides compensation benchmarking statistics, including average salary by industry, state, company size and other factors.

ADP provides solutions such as RUN Powered by ADP® to help accounting professionals add a payroll revenue stream to their practice. RUN Powered by ADP® offers an easy setup and seamless connection to QuickBooks to help you deliver high quality payroll services efficiently, while saving you time and money.

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