QuickBooks Payroll Elite

Almost everything separating Elite from the Premium plan below it is service rather than software, which is an unusual shape for a software upgrade. Intuit staff perform the initial setup instead of reviewing a setup the firm built, support runs weekdays 5am to 7pm Pacific plus weekend hours, the client gets a named HR advisor rather than a content library, and IRS payroll tax penalties are covered up to $25,000 a year. On the product side Elite swaps Premium's time tracking for Time Elite, which adds geofenced clock-in reminders and project time with labor cost allocation, and unlocks performance management and unlimited HR workflows where Premium caps them at five.

The partner economics are the same three routes across the whole line, and they decide who owns the client. Firm-billed carries the ProAdvisor discount, which Intuit describes as its only ongoing discount, and it holds month to month with one consolidated invoice. Client-billed at the direct discount gives the client 30 percent off for twelve months and then full list, which schedules a price conversation for month thirteen. Revenue share pays the firm 30 percent of base fees and 15 percent of per-employee fees for twelve months, and Intuit is explicit that a revenue share subscription must be client-billed and cannot be paid by the firm. Since July 2024 split billing lets a firm mix these per product, so the ledger can sit on the firm invoice while payroll sits on the client's. A firm-billed subscription can be pushed to client billing at the end of any month, so the firm never loses the file, only the margin.

Worth noticing in the numbers: the ProAdvisor discount is 30 percent on the base fee but only 15 percent on the head fee. Firm-billed Elite lands at $93.80 plus $14.45 per employee against list of $134 plus $17. On a 40-employee client that head fee is most of the bill, so the wholesale margin on Elite is thinner than the headline 30 percent suggests.

The weakness is that Elite's increment is aimed at the business owner, not the firm. A practice that already handles onboarding questions and reviews its own setups is paying roughly $46 a month more in base plus $4 per employee for performance reviews, recruiting workflows and an advisor the client rarely calls. The one durable differentiator is the $25,000 penalty cover, which is insurance against a risk a competent preparer largely controls. Rebranding churn does not help either, with Core, Premium and Elite now also appearing as Workforce Payroll, Premium and Elite across Intuit's own pages.

Against Gusto's top tier the trade is HR depth versus ledger fidelity, and Gusto publishes its prices. ADP Run for partners and Paychex Flex Pro beat Elite on multi-state and garnishment complexity but cost more and pull the client relationship toward the payroll bureau.

The tier moved up from dated. Intuit is shipping, not coasting: a payroll AI that gathers time data and flags inconsistent hours, split billing added in 2024, Checkr background checks and automated I-9 in the current lineup. Elite sits at strong-option rather than top pick because for most firms Premium is the sensible stop.