How to provide access to Gusto

MT. Customers on the Premium plan get access to priority support, meaning they can skip the queue when they call, but there is no 24/7 phone support available. From the employee side, it’s very easy to initiate an expense reimbursement request. Employees can upload a receipt and add a memo, so it’s clear what the payment is for.

While the initial setup can be time-intensive, depending on the number of employees, once all the information is recorded, the software’s automations take over and help streamline the process. After that point, you’ll simply need to input employee hours weekly or biweekly and Gusto will run payroll. You can give access to your company’s Gusto administration to an employee within your company or someone outside your company.

Which payroll software is best?

However, the downside we noticed is that payroll and adding new team members, in particular, require a lot of manual data entry upfront. In addition, customization of reporting, templates and dashboard is limited. We tested Gusto’s Simple plan features using the Google Chrome browser on a Windows laptop and the Gusto Wallet app on an Android mobile device. Our ability to test the features was limited, as they required entering real bank account information and signing into external accounts.

Features including background checks and benefit enrollment are paired with cloud-based services such as e-signatures and state tax registration to create a streamlined onboarding experience. Gusto takes care of calculating and filing payroll taxes for you and your employees, and it keeps a record of pay stubs accessible to employees through their online profiles. Employees also get an email each payday letting them know their money’s coming in. Gusto offers a good mix of features and has built a strong, positive reputation amongst HR professionals across industries. Gusto allows you to easily enroll in workers’ compensation insurance through its platform through an integration with NEXT Insurance. For more options, browse our roundup of best workers’ compensation insurance providers.

1. Gusto’s payroll has the flexibility to support the various pay rates and schedules for different types of workers in your organization.
2. Gusto offers a good mix of features and has built a strong, positive reputation amongst HR professionals across industries.
3. Gusto is a full-service payroll and HR platform designed to grow with U.S.-based startups and small businesses.

Benefits Administration

It costs $10 per month for up to five employees, plus $1 per additional employee per month. When a new employee signs their offer letter, Gusto facilitates the rest of the onboarding process to ensure they get properly set up for their new job even before day one. It even provides the option to send a digital welcome card to help the new employee feel welcomed. In the employee profile section, we could easily change personal information, but only the admin can change things such as job title and compensation. In the pay tab, we didn’t see a financial goals tool, and when trying to set up the paycheck splitter, the “add bank account” button wasn’t responsive.

Financial Wellness With Gusto Wallet App

Gusto’s tech teams regularly test its software to prevent problems and outages and it has an on-site security team ready to take action in case any issues arise. Gusto uses industry-standard encryption to keep data secure, plus it monitors your account and will alert you when it suspects any fraudulent activity has taken place. Admin can also make use of Gusto’s default expense categories or create their own.

Domestic and International Contractor Payments

Gusto facilitates payroll for employees and contractors, plus employee benefits, such as health, retirement and more. The platform even includes extras, such as automated charitable donations and a wallet that helps employees have more control over how and when to use their money. Forbes Advisor evaluated Gusto’s platform to help you decide if it’s right for your business. ADP’s small business solution, RUN, caters to companies with fewer than 50 employees. Plans can be customized to fit your needs and come with features such as automatic tax filing and reports, easy employee payroll and available add-ons for marketing and legal assistance. ADP’s pricing structure is more complex than Gusto, and the additional costs can increase quickly, with extra fees for benefits administration and time tracking.

You simply choose a schedule—Gusto automatically suggests one for you—and confirm state tax details based on where employees are located. With the rise of the gig economy, companies often hire full-time W-2 employees as well as independent contractors both domestically and internationally. Gusto’s payroll has the flexibility to support the various pay rates and schedules for different types of workers in your organization.

Does Gusto offer workers’ compensation?

Gusto is a great choice for startups and small businesses that want to focus on automated, compliant payroll and build out from there to include solutions for benefits, time tracking and more. However, we weren’t able to see the time off requests on the admin side. The main dashboard displayed pending time off requests for review but clicking on that to-do item brought us to the main time off page in the platform. Time off management features might work better in the Plus or Premium plans. It was very easy xcritical to create an offer letter template that you can reuse to save time.

However, under the paycheck splitter setting, we were able to see the option of depositing a dollar amount or percentage of a paycheck into any given account. Gusto has at least two standout features from its competitors, xcritical namely, the ability to pay a variety of employee types as well as tools to support their financial goals. Gusto is the brand name for the platform operated by the company ZenPayroll, Inc.

Gusto offers three plans for companies looking to manage payroll for both full-time employees and contractors. Gusto includes a reports library for the categories of time tracking, contractors, payroll and more. Otherwise, it’s easy to create your own report related to either employee information or payroll by selecting what variables to include. To begin using the Gusto platform, you start by entering all the relevant company data, including tax information, benefits, bank account details and any third-party apps you want to integrate into the software. It was easy to manually add an employee or independent contractor by entering their name, email address and other crucial information. The platform offers a checkbox option to invite the added employee or contractor to fill out the rest of the information themselves.

From the employee perspective, we were able to view accrued and used time off in the web browser version of Gusto. It was easier to request time off in the Gusto Wallet app, as we didn’t have to choose the time-off type first. We tried adding a gym wellness benefit, and it was simple to set up in Gusto. We just had to give the benefit a name, enter how much the employee should contribute from each paycheck and how much you as the employer contribute to the benefit for each pay period. When adding employees to the benefit, though, we had to enter the deduction amounts each time, making it potentially time-consuming. Employees can use Gusto Wallet to manage their profiles, view pay information and insights and access Gusto’s other financial tools.

Gusto is not a health insurance company but can help you manage your employee health insurance benefits. You can offer the same health insurance you offer now xcritical cheating with Gusto, or Gusto can act as your broker to find you new options. Gusto is a payroll and HR platform suited for startups and small businesses that employ a mix of employees and contractors and want to automate HR tasks as much as possible.

Gusto is designed with dynamic startups and growing small businesses in mind. It was born out of a need in the market for payroll solutions that included businesses with heavy contractor-based workforces, and it’s still one of the best solutions around for that type of business. Based on what we were able to play with in the platform, Gusto guides you through payroll and benefits management in a way that makes these processes less overwhelming. You can be sure you’re doing things in the right order without missing a step.

Though this process was straightforward, entering several people manually could get tedious for companies with high hiring volume. The next step prompts you to enter any paid time off that employees took during the pay period. From there, Gusto lets you preview the payroll run in the third step before submitting payroll. Upon submitting, Gusto confirms that you’ve successfully submitted payroll. On those plans, both hourly and salaried nonexempt employees can track their hours.

Gusto helps you stay compliant with local labor laws with its labor law poster store. You can print labor law posters to post for on-site employees or send e-notices to remote employees. The service keeps you updated and automatically alerts employees of any changes to the law to keep you compliant.