QuickBooks Payroll vs Workday HCM

Last Updated:

Our analysts compared QuickBooks Payroll vs Workday HCM based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Payroll Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Quickbooks is an Intuit payroll and accounting solution designed to meet the needs of both small and medium-sized, growing businesses. There are a variety of plans, starting with small packages built for independent contractors and self-employed individuals. It handles payment, calculating and filing taxes, benefits management, direct deposits and more.

The variety of products and packages enables users to find a solution that fits a company’s unique needs. Quickbooks offers specialized features for organizations in a variety of fields, including manufacturing and retail. Overall, it serves 1.4 million businesses.
read more...
Workday HCM is a SaaS solution that unifies all aspects of managing the employee lifecycle in a single HRMS. The suite of modules allows organizations to operate globally, run payroll, administer benefits, manage talent and facilitate learning, among other things.

While designed for medium and large enterprises, the platform can support the needs of smaller businesses as well. A business process framework provides control for all internal processes. The software is also equipped with audit tools and built-in security capabilities, and it offers mobile apps for flexible access.
read more...
$37.50 Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
$42/Employee, Monthly
Free Trial is unavailable →
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Save Time: Connects with bank accounts and syncs with various apps to help streamline payroll processing. Saves users more than 40 hours monthly on average and spares them from tedious manual data entry.
  • Save Money: Saves the average users more than $3,500 annually through its assistance with tax filing and other processes.
  • Easy-to-Use: Provides a simple interface so HR managers and others can store and access relevant accounting information easily. Centralizes and organizes data, making it simple to access.
  • Simplified Administration: Manages benefits, payments, time tracking, workers’ compensation, inventory, compliance and other essential business functions from one location. Simplifies processes and handles all of them through one solution.
read more...
  • Deep Data Insights: Equipped with reporting and analytics tools, Workday HCM provides a complete view of critical KPIs to inform better decisions. It allows you to become familiar with your workforce, promote employee growth, foster diversity and prepare for the future. Workday’s Prism Analytics and Data-as-a-Service applications provide graphs, charts, benchmarking reports and more. 
  • Fast, Enhanced Recruiting: You can streamline and speed up the recruiting process with collaboration tools, task reminders and calendar syncing. A referral leaderboard encourages employees to refer other qualified candidates. 
  • Easy Expense Reporting: Mobile receipt scanning and approval workflows simplify the expensing process for employees and managers. You can also set spending controls and give employees the ability to start reports. With data analytics tools, you can spot trends and gain insight into expenses throughout your company. 
  • Efficient Absence Management: This feature uses a smart calendar for managing time off. It also provides tracking for different types of absences and the ability to analyze carryover. 
  • Simplified Time Management: Time tracking and approval is available on any device, and alerts surface items that need attention. The system automates rules and calculations to cut down on manual tasks and the risk of errors. 
  • Improved Hiring Decisions: Dashboards present all your talent acquisition data in one place for easy viewing, and machine learning suggests areas of improvement. You can also compare your company to peers via benchmarking and use compensation comparisons to create effective offers. 
read more...
  • Payroll Processing: Operate 24-hour direct deposit. Pay employees, access integration services for employees, calculate taxes automatically and file taxes directly through the system. Automate payments to save time.
  • Benefits Management: Administrate workers’ compensation, health insurance, retirement plans and more. Covers workers’ compensation through AP Intego. Offers medical, dental and vision insurance through SimplyInsured. Compare different plans to judge the coverage, value and deductibles and make informed decisions. Calculates deductions for health, medical and dental automatically. Deducts and calculates contributions for 401(k)s from each employee paycheck.
  • Mobile Capabilities: Create, track and send invoices via smartphone as well as payment reminders.
  • Workers’ Compensation: Manage workers’ comp, understand state requirements and laws and pick a policy through AP Intego. Provides a free quote and automates premiums.
  • Inventory: Import information from Excel and sync with Amazon, Etsy and other similar websites to track products, cost of goods, create purchase orders and manage vendors.
  • HR Management and Compliance: Provides HR resources and consultation to help with compliance through Mammoth Inc. Creates forms from templates for onboarding checklists, employee handbooks and job descriptions. Aids in creating policies, obeying HR laws, hiring and conflict management.
  • Time Tracking: Track and add billable hours to invoices. Review and put a stamp of approval on employee timesheets. Provides tracking through TSheets. Link hours to specific jobs, save time during payment processing and see real-time insights into employee work hours. Approve and enter employee time cards.
  • Reporting: Run and export a variety of reports. Create customizable reports for balance sheets, expenses and tracking profit and loss. Create, export, print and customize reports to share with accountants or critical stakeholders. Covers deductions, tax liability, contributions, more than one worksite, summary for taxes and wages, vacation, workers’ compensation and sick leave.
  • Taxes: Helps users find tax deductions. Store photos of receipts, share books with accountants and sort business expenses by tax categories to help streamline tax filing.
  • Penalty Payments: Covers payments of up to $25,000 if errors in local, state or federal taxes result in a penalty. Communicates with the IRS. Reviews taxes with experts before sending them to the IRS to cut off issues before they start. Doesn’t cover specific penalties in some situations such as fraud, insufficient funds, healthcare administration, employee classification and several others.
  • Project Tracking: Track project details such as labor costs, expenses and profits.
  • Payroll Plans: Offers three separate plans for payroll needs.
    • Core: Provides core functionality such as payment and calculating payroll taxes.
    • Premium: Covers team management and provides more powerful tools and services for payroll.
    • Elite: Gives access to experts on-demand to answer payroll questions. Gives access to tax penalty protection.
  • Implementation: Aids in transferring current payroll information to the new system. Provides expert support to help users with initial setup and compliance.
read more...
  • Payroll: Workday HCM offers payroll capabilities for the U.S., U.K., France and Canada. All transactions compile in the payroll module. It includes a calculation engine, which enables running reports and calculations for groups and individuals at any time. A compliance dashboard shows information about upcoming changes as well as the areas of greatest impact within your organization. 
  • Benefits Administration: The software supports a variety of plans, such as health, flex, wellness and retirement. Tools such as the ACA dashboard ensure proper coverage as well as aid managing forms and regulatory changes. The system supports integration with hundreds of providers. 
  • Talent Management: This feature includes onboarding and career and development planning components. New hires can access messages, videos and more from a single dashboard, and there’s also support for international and internal transfers. Pulse surveys and a skills cloud provide insight into your workforce. Additionally, you can set goals, perform reviews, manage succession plans, aid employee career development and pinpoint retention risks. 
  • Learning Management System: Equipped with LMS capabilities, this module helps your organization deliver and track a variety of training materials. Elements include scoring, quizzes, learning campaigns, video, learning paths and more. You can also offer courses to external groups. For extended training, the Workday Content Cloud grants access to third-party content directly from Workday HCM. 
  • Compensation Management: With this feature, you can build customized compensation packages for global use by choosing from over a dozen compensation plan types. It supports international currencies and allowance plans based on local limits. The toolset includes a grid worksheet, events coordination for things like new hires and promotions, pay-range segments, tracking of pay equity, configurable statements, and unified data from other Workday HCM modules such as payroll and benefits. 
  • Workforce Planning: The Workday Adaptive Insights Business Planning Cloud provides tools to create models, compare what-if scenarios and build hiring strategies. It also facilitates collaboration along with evaluation of metrics like costs and workforce breakdown. The platform provides review and approval workflows and integrates data from other organizational systems. 
  • Global Compliance: The solution’s flexibility enables you to configure the pre-built frameworks based on your company’s needs. It contains support for 240 countries, 1,500+ reports, 170 absence plans, geographic controls such as privacy preferences and date formats, and over 3,000 localized data fields. You can automatically translate into over 30 languages, receive free legal support across 58 jurisdictions and control all aspects of the setup. 
  • Workday Marketplace: You can extend the capabilities of Workday HCM by connecting it with third-party integrations for case management, hiring, training and other processes. Partner solutions include LinkedIn Learning, Salesforce Worker and Salesforce Chatter, Saba, HireRight Background Check, and Humanity Employee Shift Scheduling. 
read more...

Product Ranking

#47

among all
Payroll Software

#12

among all
Payroll Software

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

84
90
38
88
92
100
74
60
Show More Show More
Mobile Capabilities
Dashboard and Reporting
Payroll and Tax Management
Time and Attendance Management
Dashboard and Reporting
Security and Compliance
Native Integrations and Extensibility
Payroll and Tax Management
Time and Attendance Management

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

QuickBooks Payroll
Workday HCM
+ Add Product + Add Product
Benefits Management Dashboard And Reporting Expense Management Mobile Capabilities Payroll And Tax Management Platform Capabilities Security And Compliance Time And Attendance Management 38 92 74 94 91 75 80 91 88 100 60 72 95 88 100 91 0 25 50 75 100
0%
0%
100%
83%
0%
17%
80%
20%
0%
100%
0%
0%
40%
40%
20%
0%
100%
0%
90%
0%
10%
60%
0%
40%
87%
3%
10%
89%
0%
11%
78%
0%
22%
78%
0%
22%
80%
0%
20%
100%
0%
0%
88%
0%
12%
88%
0%
12%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

64%
0%
36%
93%
0%
7%

User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 626 reviews
Great User Sentiment 3039 reviews
89%
of users recommend this product

QuickBooks Payroll has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 89% when considering 626 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

86%
of users recommend this product

Workday HCM has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 86% when considering 3039 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

4.7 (17)
4.8 (14)
4.0 (25)
4.0 (1144)
4.5 (550)
4.4 (836)
n/a
4.8 (605)
3.5 (34)
4.1 (440)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated QuickBooks Payroll and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Mobile Capabilities.

Mobile Capabilities Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Workday HCM and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall Payroll Software available today and earns best-in-class honors for Native Integrations and Extensibility.

Analysts' Pick Award
Native Integrations and Extensibility Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Excellent Functionality: Over 90% of users that discussed functionality were happy with the features, including the tax filing, automation and employee salaries and hours functions.
Simple to Use: Reviewers that talked about the ease of use felt it had a simple and intuitive interface over 80% of the time.
Manage Salary and Hours: More than 80% who discussed the employee time tracking and salary functions felt it worked well.
Affordable: Just under 70% of users who discussed price felt it was an affordable option.
Show more
Intuitive: 95% of users who mentioned ease of use observed that the software has an intuitive interface, making it easy to navigate and find information, even for novice users.
Multiple Functionality: 90% of users who mentioned functionality state that Workday HCM acts as a one-stop shop for many HR tasks.
Payroll and Benefits: All reviewers who mentioned payroll had a positive experience, with the ability to track hours, collect tax forms, log pay stubs and more.
Show more
Bad for Large Organizations: Over 90% of reviewers that discussed using the system for big organizations felt the system wasn’t complex enough.
Mixed Customer Service: Users were split on customer support quality, with 52% approving and 48% disliking the service.
Issues with Price: While overall, reviewers that discussed price felt it affordable, over 30% were displeased and said they got overcharged or billed after they’d already canceled.
Show more
Slow: Of reviewers who mention user interface, 5% noted some processes are slow, causing the system to show errors.
Requires Training: For first-time users, there’s a bit of a learning curve to get started, requiring training.
Clunky Mobile App: 85% of reviewers who mentioned the app noted that it has issues quite often and doesn’t include schedules, forcing users to use a separate app.
Show more

Quickbooks Payroll is part of the Intuit suite of programs. Commenters felt it was easy to use, train and adopt with a simple interface that worked well. They found it affordable and found the integrations of time tracking with employee salaries made running payroll a quick process. Commenters said it was reasonably priced and the features worked well. The most popular functionality included automation, tax calculations and filing, and its ability to centralize and organize data. The largest complaint by far was that this program isn’t complex enough for larger organizations. Reviewers recommended only using it for small organizations. Reactions to customer service were very mixed. Reviewers who were satisfied said the support workers got back to them quickly, were friendly, helpful and called back promptly. Other users had adverse reactions say the staff was incompetent, complaining that there was only chat support and complained of always getting different answers. While most were pleased with the price, some reported getting overcharged and said it was difficult to cancel with charges showing up well after they’d terminated the service. Quickbooks Payroll is a good choice for small and medium-sized businesses. Be sure to understand what functionality comes with which pricing plan before purchasing.

Show more

Workday HCM is suitable for businesses of all sizes. It is a simple and easy-to-use product with multiple functions that contain all HR data in one place. Payroll and benefits are easy to view and verify. Some improvements are required in the mobile app and system speed. Otherwise, its payroll, timesheet tool, ease of use and unified structure can bring a lot of benefits.

Show more

Screenshots

Top Alternatives in Payroll Software


ADP Workforce Now

APS Payroll

Gusto

Namely

OnPay

Patriot Payroll

Paychex

Paycom

Paycor

Paylocity

Payroll4Free

Rippling

TriNet

Workday HCM

Related Categories

Head-to-Head Comparison

WE DISTILL IT INTO REAL REQUIREMENTS, COMPARISON REPORTS, PRICE GUIDES and more...

Compare products
Comparison Report
Just drag this link to the bookmark bar.
?
Table settings