QB rep who can actually do something about Online Payroll Account on Hold

I recognize how important it is for your client to run their payroll on time and efficiently, Stephanie.

Please know this isn’t the kind of service I want you and your client to experience. Rest assured, I’ll take note of this feedback and raise this concern to our management team. Your voice is important to us to ensure we give our users the quality service they deserve.

With regards to your client payroll account being hold, there’s a possibility that the account has insufficient funds. Thus, causing the account to be held. Moving forward, you’ll want to ensure the account use in your client's payroll has sufficient funds to avoid any delays in the future. For more details about this, you can refer to this article: Resolve a non-sufficient funds (NSF) hold on your payroll service.

Moreover, I also recommend contacting our Support team. I understand you’ve already contacted them, however, it would be best to reach out to them again. They have the proper tools to check your client accountant and look deeper into the reason for the hold.

Once everything is in place, you can provide this link to your client for their reference: QuickBooks Online Payroll Hub. This resource can help them set up and process payroll seamlessly in the future.

Keep in touch with me if you have any other concerns or questions about payroll or with your account. I’m always around ready to back you up. Keep safe and stay well!

I have been trying for a week to upgrade my QuickBooks Enterprise ONLINE and the chat group keeps sending me to the site to upgrade my QuickBooks Desktop.  I have both Online and Desktop for different entities.  I have now lost payroll ability and have spent over 5 hours in total trying again and again to get someone to help me get the updated ONLINE so that I can do payroll tomorrow.  My online is supported by Right Networks.

Any ideas?

I have had essentially the exact same experience as the original poster here. I have been performing a transition of all of my accounting, payroll and banking for my s-corp over to quickbooks from waveapps. I thought the program was fantastic and the transition was long overdue.

On 09/24 I created an account for my corporation and began doing basic tasks to connect my accounts, began invoicing, and moved over my historical data. On 09/27 I activated payroll services, started using quickbooks cash (the checking account integrated with quickbooks through greendot bank)  and planned my first round of payroll for that Friday. and then on 09/28 I received an email from emspayrollfraud that my payroll was on hold and that additional documentation was urgently needed to resolve this issue.

Specifically they requested:

• a copy of an ID for myself
• a copy of my business license
• 6 months of bank statements

I immediately called support to try to get a bit of clarification. For example, the bank account setup with quickbooks was my quickbooks cash account...which was just created. How can I provide 6 months of statements for an account I just made? My previous business checking account with chase was also already connected to quickbooks, but, as this was a new s corp, that business checking account only had 2 months of statements available. Additionally, what do they want when they ask for a "business license": My incorporation documents? My EIN letter? My Delaware SOS filling? My illinois SoS filing for foreign corporations to transact business? My IDOR corporate withholding filings? 

I was repeatedly shuffled between agents, all of whom said they weren't the right person to assist me with this issue until I finally ended up talking to a level 1 tech with general payroll, Angela, who was FANTASTIC. She wasn't able to help me herself much, but she stayed with me for the next 2.5 hours on the phone trying to ensure I wouldn't just get transferred again and lose all of the prior information. About 30 minutes into my conversation with her (45 minutes after receiving the hold notice) all access to my account was SHUT OFF, any attempts to login said the account didn't exist or was deactivated, and, even more infuriatingly, every single agent that we spoke to for payroll or merchant or general account services said they saw the account as fine and active. 

At this point I was entirely distressed. I have no access to an account that has ACTIVE INVOICES sent out to customers and no way to access them. If the customers paid would that mean that the money would now be in my quickbooks cash account which I have NO access too? Would that money just be in the void? Would it even be possible to refund that sale if I had to have them redo the payment through a separate service. Every agent we spoke to simply said "everything looks fine and active to us".

I eventually got into a text chat with someone with risk and they simply said "we've seen that your account has been cancelled but you will need to speak to fraud as we can't discuss anymore than that". So risk says my account is cancelled, payroll, and merchant says its still active and in good standing (and to this day I continue to get emails about my account reminding me my withholding has to be deposited soon). 

2 hours in we finally get someone from level 2 support who essentially shrugs and says that's odd but that they can't do anything and they all just direct me to send everything I can think of to fraud to get it cleared up.

To be clear, this is a delaware c corp, filing as an s corp, incorporated this year, I live in Illinois and I am the sole shareholder, director and employee of the company. I am the only authorized user on any business checking accounts for the corporation and all payroll pays out to my personal checking accounts. Where can fraud even enter any of this situation?! How could I possibly be defrauding myself by paying payroll to myself in my personal checking account with my quickbooks account from my corporate checking account (which I have 100% ownership and control of and is a quickbooks cash account) there is not a single chain in this system that quickbooks does not have 100% visibility of and I am not 100% the owner of.

So after 2.5 hours of trying we just decide that the only path forward is to send everything I can think of to this emspayrollfraud email. I send every single document I can think of, all of my previous statements, invoices and payouts from waveapps, statements from all of the bank accounts that existed, multiple state IDs, my social security card, my birth certificate, all of the filing documents as pdfs and numbers assigned, EVERYTHING, almost 20 documents in total, just to try to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that I am who I say I am, my business is what it says it is, and it is all backed by every piece of evidence I have.

I sent these documents in segments over about 4 days, and then sent follow up emails every single day until yesterday (friday 10/8). I have not received a single reply. Not a confirmation of reciept, not a request for more information, not even a clarification or notice that it is being processed. Total silence. I still can't login to my account (but still receive emails about it regularly, which, annoyingly, provide links to take actions on an account that if clicked say the account doesn't exist). It has now been 12 DAYS! I was told to expect 1 to 2 business days. I am unable to run payroll, I have to do my monthly deposits in 6 days or I start getting fines, and ALL of my bookkeeping was transferred over to an account that I cant even log into! I can't even call someone to ask for information because, to them, everything looks fine and they say to email fraud, as if my 7th email over 13 days will somehow yield better results.

This has been one of the absolute worst experiences I've had, especially as someone who was trying to become a new customer. I can't even make this very post I'm writing right now on my account because it wont allow me to log in. I had to do it from my self-employment account. I'm scared to death about getting late penalties with my taxes and feel like I simply have no options at all, it's like yelling into the void. Even my quickbooks cash debit card says it can't be activated because the account is invalid. I'm exasperated and despondent . I see no clear path to resolution in a situation where I'm literally willing and able to provide anything necessary to see it concluded. I don't know who contacted the original poster on this thread but PLEASE, if you are able to get visibility on what is going on, contact me, anytime through any method. 

If ANYONE is able to help, I would greatly appreciate it, because right now I'm just looking for any glimpse of hope to get this finished. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your concern in such great detail, @fryjustinc.

I understand that your concern needed and deserved a timely response. I also appreciate you for sending all the necessary documents to the team in concern. Rest assured that they review all of them and taking all the necessary steps to resolve this issue.

I also recommend reaching out to our Customer Care Support team. They can take a closer look at your account and review your case. You can contact them using our QuickBooks Online testdrive.

Here's how:

1. Click this link: QuickBooks Online Test Drive.
2. Click the (?) Help icon in the upper right-hand corner of the Dashboard.
3. Select Talk to a Human.
4. Enter a short description of your concern and press Enter.
5. Click I still need a human.
6. Select Contact Us to connect with our live support.
7. Choose Get a callback.

You can review our support hours to ensure they can assist you on time. 

I suggest visiting the All Online Payroll - NSF Holds article for more insights about the variety of hold types. It also contains some FAQs, such as why your payroll account is on hold.

Keep me posted for more clarifications or questions about QuickBooks. Take care and more power to your business.

Well, at least,  I am not the only one. Up to this point I have loved QB. Last week I set up direct deposit and went through all the steps. I even had one payroll ran via direct deposit and then all of a sudden I am flagged for fraud. F This service is absolutely horrible. I have spent a whole week trying to sort this situation out and all I get access to is emails. For a department that has no other form of communication but v email is ridiculous and not geared to serve their clients. This has been the most stressful situation I have dealt with and no one in support can offer help. No ONE! It is Christmas and I need to pay my employees and I am the only one that does this. We are a small business and I am leaving the country in 2 days. It has been a week since I have tried to rectify this and I am still stuck. For the amount of clients Quicbooks serves, they should be able to have a hands on team that can provide service urgently and promptly so business can run efficiently and not wait on emails. Very disappointed.

I honestly thought I was the only one going through this and come to find out some many people are experience POOR Customer Service from QB. I have been experiencing this issue since May 2021, with multiple calls, emails, submitted every document you can think off. I've asked to speak to a supervisor/ have it escalated with no follow-up from this Fraud department. How is possible that you provide a service with something that is such a important part but there is not actual human contact for an explanation. 

How is possible to that I've sent the exact documents request plus more and still my account is on hold?  I've been charge for the services and now it tax time I am unable to get my 1099-nec and the only response the support can give is that its only hold and "did you get the email about your account status"  How many times do you think customers should send documents over before we get a response? There must be magical number. smh

Your team needs to take a look at this process because it definitely is not working. 

I honestly thought I was the only one going through this and come to find out some many people are experience POOR Customer Service from QB. I have been experiencing this issue since May 2021, with multiple calls, emails, submitted every document you can think off. I've asked to speak to a supervisor/ have it escalated with no follow-up from this Fraud department. How is possible that you provide a service with something that is such a important part but there is not actual human contact for an explanation. 

How is possible to that I've sent the exact documents request plus more and still my account is on hold?  I've been charge for the services and now it tax time I am unable to get my 1099-nec and the only response the support can give is that its only hold and "did you get the email about your account status"  How many times do you think customers should send documents over before we get a response? There must be magical number. smh

Your team needs to take a look at this process because it definitely is not working. 

Why is my account on hold

I can understand the frustration. I've had to change my bank, called in because received error message, processed payroll and then had to delete, then had to fill out paperwork since there was an UEXP error in QB. Then was charged a fee for QB trying to run payroll through wrong bank. Called in and was told account was activated so I then reprocessed payroll on correct bank then today, 5 days later I found out account is on hold and call Rick Management but at 8:50 EST they are closed. Already 3 calls into QB and receiving differing information and the last CSR spoke very accented English so could barely understand. So, employees don't get payroll and QB is okay with this!

Doesn't seem like any sense of responsibility for conflicting information.

I too have been having the same issue. I was able to subscribe to the payroll system using the online function. The system showed my linked bank accounts and I selected the Checking Account. All was well until I went to run my first payroll. I only processed one employee as a test run. The following Monday I received an NSF email and a request to wire the money plus an addition $100.00 NSF fee. I called quickbooks to inquire why. The agent shared my screen and saw I had funds in the bank. She asked that I call my bank. She also said they would put in a request to waive the NSF fee.

When I called my bank they advised me that they leave a digit off the online system for security reasons and quickbooks would have downloaded the wrong number. I would have never known this. I called quickbooks back and they walked me through manually connecting the account number. I went through the verification process and saw they could deposit and withdraw from the account. Why was this verification not done on the automatically connected accounts? While on the phone I asked if the NSF had been waived and told it was processed.

Since it was after 3pm I processed a wire for the payroll in an attempt to unlock my account and I needed to process my taxes and run payroll in 2 days. I received a notice that afternoon that I was short $50.00. Apparently Quickbooks only waived half the NSF but never let me know. Some correspondence stating what was approved would have greatly helped. I called quickbooks back and asked to speak to a manager. A gentleman on the phone told me I was at fault because I should have sent the full amount and waited for a credit. He also stated this was not a Quickbooks issue. It absolutely is a Quickbooks issue that they do not verify linked accounts as they do manually input accounts.

I sent another wire for $50.00 just to get my account unlocked. It is now payroll day and my taxes are past due. I called and was told that wires are not reviewed until 1-4PST. I am in eastern time. This is problematic. Shortly after 3 I received an email stating a partial payment was made and I needed to immediately pay the amount $0.00. The next day (Friday, payday) I received an email stating that my account was paid in full and would be reinstated. I checked and it was still on hold. I called again. I was told that risk could sometimes take 24-48 hours to remove the hold. I explained the situation and stated I still had not spoken to a manager after almost 5 days of dealing with this issue.

It is now Tuesday and a full 7 days after being notified of the first NSF issue, of which there should have never an issue if Quickbooks put in the proper verification processes. I received an email stating I was on high risk and fax number (who still uses faxes?) or a chat with risk to upload a letter from my bank stating that there was no NSF but a safety feature which caused an incorrect account to be downloaded by quickbooks. That is how I was brought here. I still cannot access my payroll, my taxes are still late, and messing up my projects that I paid an extra upgrade for the functionality to track my labor expenses.

In all I have 4 days of 2 hours or more on the phone with quickbooks to resolve this issue, still have not spoken with a manager, and cannot seem to get anyone to give me a consistent timeline of when a resolution will be. When it is simple issue or you have a clarifying question Quickbooks customer service is quick and helpful. But when the mistake is on their end, they lack accountability and show no expediency in getting the issue resolved. I only want to be able to use the services I am paying for.