I’m an employment lawyer and I consistently recommend Gusto to my clients

Customer support is great. This is a good company. They aren’t the cheapest. And they aren’t the most expensive. I think the extra cost is worth it to ensure compliance.

Pros

Gusto is easy and straightforward to use. But it doesn’t sacrifice accuracy for ease. What I like most about Gusto is that it makes it easy for small businesses to be legally compliant with complicated wage laws across jurisdictions. I haven’t found a legal error yet — and I can’t say that about any other payroll software or service I’ve worked with over the last 15 years.

Cons

I wish the price didn’t jump up so much for time clock feature. Getting clients to use the integrated time clock can be a challenge, and it creates unnecessary problems. It should be included in the base fee.

Best platform for payroll, benefits & more

Overall it has been great to have everything in one place. Before we used Zenefits and Gusto and moved everything to Gusto. Its been a good move.

Pros

It simple to use and does everything we need to run the primary administrative tasks for our business.

Cons

The HSA feature did not move over seamlessly from Zenefits and is more expensive for a small team to have and the 401k option has been a bit of work to get moved over.

Not so excited about Gusto

Okay for a Trial period, but did not like to learn to regularly use

Pros

Could record time & pay without error, producing paycheck with accuracy, including payroll taxes due and when, and could set-up for quarterly filing.

Cons

Not real easy to learn or set-up for the initial time-period, couldn't set-up certain parts, so not really as usable as desired.

Cannot enter data to meet filing deadline in 4 days, Software lacking, and IRS says not receiving

For light weight use, it is pleasant. For anything cookie cutter, can be severely lacking. I do not have experience with Quicken payroll so not sure if any better given Quickbooks also seems to soft serve accounting now and buries T-accounts and registers, which should be at the top. That being said, at least one can still get to the register and make entries when soft serve ice cream is not appropriate, if you get my meaning.

Pros

It's pretty, modern GUI, and marketing and PR are nice. Lots of VC cash spent on social media and GUI to promote it. Phone support folks are pleasant but limited in what they can help with.

Cons

If problem, then your fault as they say software is designed to be self-serving and thus everything is your fault if does not work. But, if you want to grant restricted stock to people and generate 1099s and edited W-2s , then sorry, there software and support team could not help and there are no fields for me to "self-service" this data into their software. I've been in contact with Gusto since December and trying to get some 1099s and W-2s created and that are due by Jan. 31st. I finally spoke with someone today who said I could email them directions on where and how to enter into W-2s and 1099s, but I was then told that if a person's name was not in their software by Dec. 31st then software cannot create forms, even though there is time to still file. At the same time, I am receiving notices from IRS that 941s were not received, but Gusto software states filed.

Great Payroll Processing Platform for Small Businesses

Overall Gusto has been great for our company. We save time and money handling payroll in-house, as opposed to paying an outside service to do it for us. And we have peace of mind that Gusto is there to support us when/if we need it.

Pros

Gusto has been a great resource for us to handle our own payroll processing & HR management in-house. It is super easy to set up and manage and has a really intuitive user interface. Onboarding new employees is a snap, time-tracking is simple to manage for both employees and managers, and running payroll only takes us a few minutes twice a month. Having employees able to manage their own banking info and paycheck splits and W4s has saved our HR dept a ton of time and headaches. And we love having an online library of company forms and documents we can distribute to employees quickly and easily. Also, their customer support is amazing. We are signed up for the Conceriege level service and have a dedicated team of customer service people who are knowledgable and friendly and responsive and have helped us out with innumerable questions.

Cons

Moving from our previous payroll processor (ADP) to Gusto was easy, because we decided to do it at the beginning of a new fiscal year. The one issue we did experience was in setting up our company's Federal and State tax filing details. Gusto does not assist you with this, so we had to track down all of our company's employer account #s and UI tax rates and filing frequencies for the 3 different states where we have employees and manually enter it into Gusto. We ended up making a mistake on one state's filing frequency, which ended up costing us a bit of $$ in penalties. It would have been nice if Gusto had been able to assist us with this as part of the switch over from ADP. Also, Gusto does not offer benefits administration in our state (yet). Hopefully that will be coming soon, as it would be nice to handle payroll and benefits through one platform. And they could cut down on the number of "recommended" services from affiliated companies that pop up on the admin dashboard these days.