Intuit's QuickBooks Workforce (announced 6 May 2026) packages an AI payroll agent for small teams at $50/month plus $6.50 per employee on the entry tier ($88 plus $10 Premium, $134 plus $12 Elite), with new pricing effective 1 Jul 2026 for new customers, and the operating rule that protects a small owner is the bookkeeping split applied to its sharpest case: let the agent do the reversible preparation (gather time data, flag inconsistencies, draft the run) while a human approves every execution, because payroll is irreversible money out plus filings to authorities and the owner remains responsible regardless of which tool prepared it.

Anchored on Intuit's investor-relations press release 'Intuit Unveils QuickBooks Workforce' (6 May 2026, investors.intuit.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1310/ — URL verified via fetch): tiers $50+$6.50 / $88+$10 / $134+$12 per employee per month; new pricing effective 1 Jul 2026 for new customers; agent gathers time data, flags inconsistencies, runs payroll prep; ~4 hours/week admin saving (FRAMED as Intuit's estimate to test, not a guarantee); David Hahn (EVP, GM, Services Group) quote verbatim. Corroborated: CPA Practice Advisor 8 May 2026, PYMNTS May 2026. The 10-person-team column ($115/$188/$254) is arithmetic on the published rates, labeled as such in the table caption. Differentiation from OPS-089 (bookkeeping agents) is explicit: same automate-reversible / human-gate-irreversible principle, applied to payroll (money out + filings) as its sharpest case — payroll approval stays human permanently. Operator-register advisory; the claim is the split + evaluate-in-June-at-known-terms stance, NOT an endorsement of QuickBooks over alternatives. 30-day cadence, set to land just after the 1 Jul pricing change. Triggers: (1) Intuit alters tiers or per-employee rates at/after 1 Jul; (2) the agent's autonomy boundaries change (what it can execute without approval); (3) early operator evidence that time-gathering/flagging does not hold on real small-team payroll. Siblings: OPS-089 (bookkeeping agents — the parent rule), OPS-093 (Copilot price-lock — deadline-shaped decision), the bootstrapped-SaaS cost-discipline read.