Review (3/5): Combo pack, QB Pro 2019 and Payroll Enhanced
If you have used QuickBooks before, you already know what you are getting. The product works, it doesn't change much year to year, but I will say it has been more stable than in the past, with less crashing and weird issues. Desktop Pro 2019 has a few new features like invoice tracking, and checking for unpaid vendor bills but if you have 2017 or 2018 you don't really need to upgrade to be honest.
However, if you do want to upgrade and you are also looking to use QuickBooks for payroll, this is a decent option because it includes one year of Payroll Enhanced. The service itself is easy to use and ties in to QuickBooks directly, which is the main reason to use it in my opinion. The service has to be activated but once you do it, you are good for a year. Even a novice can start paying employees, and I found the payroll software to be easy to use once I got it all set up and running.
I'm giving this software 3 stars because although it works, Intuit always seems to do the bare minimum it can get away with and still call it a new release. It's been like this for years and although the software is solid, the company and philosophy behind the way they market and sell their products is average at best. They keep trying to push people to QB Online, which is terribly unprofessional and doesn't work with a lot of commercial banking options. Quickbooks Desktop Pro is still the best and easiest option for a small to medium sized company, and anyone can use it with just a little training. Payroll Enhanced ties in to QB and is easy to use once you get through the setup process, which can take up to an hour. If you have more than 15-20 employees, I'd recommend going to an outside service for payroll although you can certainly use payroll enhanced, but it will cost you per employee to use and at some point it's less expensive to use a company like ADP to process payroll. I use QB every day and I've learned to tolerate its quirks. QB Desktop Pro 2019 is an improvement over 2017 and 2018, although it's a small one and only recommended if you are really looking for the few new features it adds.