Confused by the Options in Intuit Merchant Service?

What’s worse, I sometimes think that Intuit is just as confused as I am over this. These products are gathered together in the Intuit Payment Solutions subsidiary, but but you’ll see different names on each web page. Isn’t it Intuit Merchant Services, which is what you’ll see on some Intuit web sites, or is it Intuit Payment Solutions, or what? It’s confusing!

I expressed my lack of understanding to some of my friends at Intuit and I’m glad to say, Intuit recognizes the problem and they are working to make it simpler, so let’s take a look at some of the things that they are trying.

I want to point out that Intuit is still experimenting with how to solve this issue, so some of the things I’m going to show you might not show up in YOUR situation. However, if you are an accounting professional supporting QuickBooks users I think that it is important to understand this, because your clients may come to you asking questions about things that THEY see on THEIR systems that YOU  do NOT see on YOUR system.

Options, Options, Options

According to Intuit there are 15 different “payment processing” options available. Different options will be seen in different situations. Consider this:

• There are four different technologies involved: Online, Desktop, Mobile and Point of Sale.
• There are four different integration options involved: Windows (desktop), Mac, Online and GoPayment.
• There are different national versions of QuickBooks products, with different options available in each.

I’m going to focus on the US versions, with an emphasis on QuickBooks for Windows.

What are some of the products that are available now? Here’s just a few that I know of at this time, with a general idea of the costs. Note that there are variations and these can change at any time (consult the product’s merchant agreement before making decisions). Note that when you work with a payment solution there are generally four components to what it will cost (although some solutions don’t include all four):

• You may have a monthly fixed fee to use the service. In some cases this fee may be waived if you go over a certain volume of sales.
• There usually is a transaction fee – a fixed fee that you pay for each transaction that you process.
• Typically you will have a “discount rate” (or just “rate”) that is a percentage of the transaction amount. This gets a bit crazy, because the discount rate can vary quite a bit even within one payment solution type. You may have one fee for a “swipe” (when you actually run a credit card through a card reader) and a different one for when you just enter the card number. There can be different rates depending on the card type. Rates will vary depending on the type of business you have, the type of sales you make, your monthly volume, and more.
• One of the tricky “fee components” is added charges for different situations – returned checks,denied cards and more. These only come into play when there is some sort of problem, and sometimes these are the hardest fees to pin down when you are comparing services.

Here’s some of the Intuit offerings at this time:

It can be very confusing, because each options seems to have a different rate structure. For example, here are three services that let you accept credit card payments (these numbers are subject to change):

• GoPayment has a $12.95 monthly fee, $0.50 per transaction fee and a swipe rate starting at 1.75%
• Intuit Merchant Services has a $19.59 monthly fee, $0.29 per transaction fee and a swipe rate starting at 1.69%
• Intuit Online Terminal has a $12.95 monthly fee, $0.30 per transaction fee and a swipe rate starting at 1.95%

What We Have Been Seeing Lately

Very often, a QuickBooks user’s first introduction to Intuit Payment Solutions is through their copy of QuickBooks. Let’s take a look at some of the points of contact within QuickBooks 2013.

If you create a new company file, at the end of the process you’ll see the Quick Start Center. In this window you see two options:

• Get paid online on your invoices – which exposes you to Intuit PaymentNetwork
• Accept credit cards in QuickBooks – which exposes you to Intuit Merchant Services (and others)

If you click on the “get paid online” link a browser window opens that shows you information on Intuit PaymentNetwork and allows you to create a new account.

If you click on the “accept credit cards” link a browser window opens and you get information on Intuit Merchant Services. Note that at the bottom of this page there are links to OTHER payment services, such as Intuit PaymentNetwork, Check Solution, Online Terminal and GoPayment.

You don’t have to make your decisions at this time, though. Intuit offers plenty of opportunities with some relatively subtle in-product advertising (and some not as subtle). For instance, there are the colored icons in the “Do More with QuickBooks” widget that shows at the bottom of the Left Icon Bar (or, if you don’t use that, in the Home Page).

Oddly, you get different payment options at different places in the program. In the create invoice window, for example, there is an icon for “Online Pay” that lets you sign up for Intuit PaymentNetwork.

In the receive payments window, another icon lets you sign up for credit card processing via Intuit Merchant Services.

Yet ANOTHER option is found in the Send Invoice window if you are going to send invoices via email, “Intuit Billing Solution for QuickBooks”. This has been around for quite a few years. I thought that this product was being de-emphasized, but it is still there.

There are probably other contact points. It is all very inconsistent – different solutions offered in different locations in the program, each with different merchant agreements, each with very different signup procedures and accounts. Confusing!

How Intuit is Simplifying It All

As I said before, Intuit realizes that this is confusing to the customer (to day nothing of the blog author). To resolve this, Intuit is doing some testing of some ways to simplify the process. You may see some of these changes over the next few months, so don’t be surprised if it comes up. Also, note that they are tweaking this as they go along and get feedback.

ProAdvisor Changes

If you are an accountant or ProAdvisor you can go to the Intuit Payments website where you will see the latest offerings. You will NOT SEE all of the options I list above, because Intuit is trying to streamline the offerings. Currently the list includes (this can change at any time):

• QuickBooks Merchant Services
• Intuit GoPayment
• Intuit Check Solution
• Intuit PaymentNetwork

You don’t see the Online Terminal and Web Payment options, or Billing Solution. Note also that Merchant Service includes the ability to use GoPayment. This still isn’t a one-sign-in option, but they are cutting down on the options that are there, which helps.

New Customer Options

Starting with QuickBooks for Windows 2013 release R3 (or, maybe R4), Intuit introduced some changes that relate to the new customer experience. I missed these changes when they came out, because it is a bit tricky to see. You only see this if you have a new installation of QuickBooks an you create your first company file with the revised version. So, as a ProAdvisor, when I upgraded from R1 to R3, I had already been running the product, so this wasn’t a completely new installation and I wouldn’t see the new feature.

What if I installed a new version on a different computer? Well, if I was installing from a CD, I was installing the R1 update. I would usually create a new company file with that version and THEN I would update the product to the latest release. That bypasses the new feature as well.

The only time that I have been able to see this is if I install from the CD, do NOT run QuickBooks, and then apply the manual update file. Also, I had to create a new “account” with a different email address and phone number, so it thought I was a totally new customer. Another approach I could have used was to download the latest installer from the Intuit web site, which should already include the update (but I still would need to create a new online account).

Why do I feel that it is important to see this? Because if a client comes to me and asks me to explain what they are seeing on their screen (or, if I’m at the client site installing a new program), I want to know what to expect so that I’m not surprised (and, dang it, the Intuit ProAdvisor people never seem to tell me about these kinds of changes).

Here’s a look at the Quick Start Center window. Note that there is one simple link for payments now. Simpler!

Clicking on this opens an enrollment window. This is pretty straight forward, but I highly recommend that you explore the two links on this page before continuing. You need to know what you are signing up for!

Keep in mind that at this time Intuit is still testing this and doing some fine tuning. Hopefully there will be a LOT of changes here, going forward. The top link, with rates and fees, is very nice. It lays out the fees pretty clearly. Note that there is no mention of a monthly fee, that American Express is included (you have to choose some options to see the discount rate for Amex), that there are columns for both “card” and “check” fees, and that the “extra” fees are spelled out (chargeback, etc.).

The other link, terms & conditions – how many people actually read those things? You should at least look, since it is an agreement you are accepting. Note that the agreement here refers to the info you find in the rates and fees link, so make sure you look at both.

WOW – currently the merchant agreement in that link is 63 pages long, almost 35,000 words! I think that you’ll see this get slimmer (I certainly hope so!), at this time this is a conglomeration of text from multiple agreements for the different options that are included, and Intuit hasn’t gotten around to combining it into one well organized agreement.

Once you have set up your account you’ll see a number of new options scattered about. For example, Receive Payments now has icons to swipe a card and to scan checks.

In My Shortcuts in the left icon bar there is a new option “Merchant Service Center”, which lets you easily log into your Intuit Payment Solutions account.

Are There Other Options?

Most definitely yes. I’m not going to go through ALL of the options that you have, but keep in mind that there are many options that work well with QuickBooks if you don’t want to deal with Intuit Payment Solutions.

I use some of these services (GoPayment on occasion, Intuit PaymentNetwork), and I’ve never run into problems with them. I don’t run a high volume of transactions through this, though, so I’m not the perfect test case. I know businesses that are very happy with this, but I also read about problems that people have had. Are they any worse than any other merchant account provider? I can’t say.

There are options if you don’t want to deal with Intuit. It will be hard for these other companies to integrate with the Intuit user interface to the same degree, but that might not be an issue. For example, NELiX TransaX QB is a product that lets accept payments via credit cards or ACH, and it integrates with QuickBooks for Windows. According to Matt Schwartz of Nelix:

“NELIX TRANSAX offers TRANSAX QB – a plug in that integrates directly in QuickBooks.  TRANSAX QB allows merchants to process credit card transactions (both keyed and swiped), process ACH transactions (both keyed and scanned), process many transactions in a single batch, sync QuickBooks with transactions processed elsewhere, and pay vendors via ACH.   TRANSAX QuickBooks is easy to install and use, and is a fully integrated solution.  NELIX TRANSAX provides exceptional customer service and competitive rates.”

Here is a screen shot of the batch form.

Another great option is Bill.com, which provides not only merchant services but a great online management system to deal with your receivables. As a part of this service you get an online customer portal that your customers can use to make payments (amongst other features). We have some video blog articles that talk about getting started with Bill.com, and how to manage your accounts receivable with Bill.com. The following screen shot is an example of a customer payment portal from Bill.com.

What Do I Think?

Intuit certainly is heading the right direction with this. They are trying to simplify the options, and they are integrating them with QuickBooks for Windows very well. Their aim is to give you one place where you can access all of the features that you might want to use, to not have to deal with an overwhelming set of options. Heck, I just want to collect my payments from my customers with a minimum of hassle and cost.

There are some rough edges to work out (please, fix that merchant agreement ASAP!), but it is understandable because they are trying this out. I’m not entirely thrilled with them experimenting with the product this way, but I can see why they are. I’m definitely not thrilled that they are changing how the product works without giving ProAdvisors at least a heads-up that there are going to be changes. I really hate it when I go to a client and say “this is how it will work”, and the client says “that is not what I’m seeing here”.

I do hope that they can find a way to integrate Intuit PaymentNetwork into this so that I don’t have a separate account for that. I like IPN for some cases (heck, a flat $0.50 per transaction, you can’t beat that!), I would like to see it included here.