Intuit adds health insurance benefits to QBO Payroll

Intuit has added medical, dental and vision benefits capabilities to QuickBooks Online Payroll through an integration with SimplyInsured.

SimplyInsured is an online platform that helps small businesses compare and purchase employee medical, dental and vision insurance plans. Users of QuickBooks Online Payroll can now compare plans side by side to find the one that best fits their business and budget. Once a business owner has chosen a plan, he or she can apply through QuickBooks Online Payroll. Employers can also manage relevant business details, including payroll and health insurance benefits, within QuickBooks.

The move is one step closer to making QuickBooks a one-stop shop for small businesses and their accountants. QuickBooks recently conducted a survey of small business owners and HR professionals, and found that 71 percent of small businesses with 1 to 50 employees already offer their employees some kind of health insurance benefits. Two-thirds of the respondents said offering health insurance is very important for attracting employees and 58 percent said it was very important for retaining employees. For the 29 percent of small businesses who don’t currently offer health benefits, more than one-third (36 percent) said they had no idea how much offering health insurance for employees would cost, and nearly half (45 percent) said they did not know what steps to take to get group health insurance for their employees. The majority (56 percent), however, said they would be more inclined to purchase health insurance if it were linked to another product, like payroll. Given these findings, QuickBooks aims to encourage more business owners to offer health insurance for their employees, as it’s now easier to navigate and manage.

Additional features of the integration with SimplyInsured include:

• QuickBooks will automatically calculate employee benefit deductions so business owners don’t have to.
• Business owners will be able to see quotes from SimplyInsured based on zip code, without having to enter any data.
• Full-time customer support is available to help business owners with their insurance questions. Customer support is available Monday through Friday between 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT.

“We know that many small business owners want to do right by their employees and offer health insurance benefits, but many feel it’s too expensive or confusing,” said Olivier Bartholot, director of QuickBooks Payroll, in a statement. “When we focus on helping small business owners with the many aspects of managing their employees, we can turn one person’s dream into a thriving team. By connecting them with affordable medical, dental and vision insurance directly within QuickBooks, we’re making it easy, fast and cost effective for small businesses to offer their employees insurance plans, helping them to attract and retain top talent.”