Gusto

Gusto’s payroll, HR and benefits services paired with its easy-to-use interface makes it the perfect program for small business owners looking to improve efficiencies for their business.

Automating administrative work is a great way to increase your business’s productivity and ease the stress on your business.

With Gusto small business services, you can easily manage your payroll and other important accounting tasks with ease. Their out-of-the-box payroll software helps you automate your payroll and goes above and beyond the call of duty.

Gusto’s promise of a beginner-friendly system is validated by the thousands of reviews from their happy customers.

Let’s see what all the buzz is about.

Gusto: What You Need to Know

Gusto is known for its simple interface. Unlike many other payroll services, it was built for those who are not familiar with processing payroll. People with all levels of experience will find Gusto easy to use.

In addition to its user-friendly qualities, Gusto has many other phenomenal selling points, including:

• Easy-to-use web interface
• Three tiers of payroll services
• Upgrades with HR services & advanced employee portals
• Unlimited payrolls included in monthly packages
• Pay per employee (plus small monthly base fee)
• Available across the United States

Gusto provides everything you need to keep your payroll running smoothly. Not only does the portal allow you to automate your payroll, it gives your employees the ability to track their time, request time off, access their benefits, and more.

Why Gusto Payroll Services?

Payroll can be a struggle if you’re not well-versed in the ins and outs of payroll systems or accounting. Calculating hours, factoring in benefits, taking out taxes, and all of the manual steps that come with payroll can be time-consuming and confusing.

With Gusto, you can automate your payroll processes with their small business payroll software. And they offer a variety of packages depending on your budget and the size of your business.

Automating payroll and related tasks buys back your time and helps avoid costly mistakes that could build up to a disaster over time, since a system is less likely to make mistakes than a human is.

In addition to payroll services, Gusto has HR services, time tools, employee benefit functions and more.

On top of all of their great features, Gusto is known for their excellent user reviews. Just about everybody who uses Gusto is blown away by their features. Many even say that they prefer them to their previous payroll service.

How Does Gusto Payroll Work?

Gusto payroll is pretty straight forward. After you enter all of your business’s information and select the Gusto package that works best for your business, you’ll add employees to your account.

Your employee profiles will include relevant contact information, tax information and salary or hourly pay rate. There is also the option to indicate what additional earnings that should be included in each paycheck (e.g. bonuses, commission, etc.)

Once you’ve created the employee profile, you can indicate when you’d like to pay your employees and how many hours each worked. You have the option to automate it so each person is paid for the same amount of hours each pay period. If hours vary, you can also edit as you need to.

Another great thing is that Gusto calculates employee taxes and company taxes. Gusto sends your tax payments straight to the IRS so you don’t have to worry about having the wrong payment amounts or missing any tax deadlines.

The premium packages offer a wider variety of services that enhance your HR processes and more.

What Services Does Gusto Offer?

The main service that Gusto offers is small business payroll, but they have a few other related services. There are services for teams, employee benefits, human resources and time tracking.

Let’s see what Gusto has to offer!

Small Business Payroll

Payroll is one of the most fundamental operations of a business with a team of employees. After all, most people show up to work because they want to get paid.

Although it may seem simple—paying people for their time—there is a bit more that goes into payroll, even if you have a few employees. Taxes throw a wrench in things.

The US government requires that employees pay taxes on the money that they make. Unless the worker is an independent contractor, the employer is responsible for a portion of the taxes.

One of the greatest perks of Gusto’s payroll services is that all taxes are calculated, taken out and automatically sent to the IRS. This gives you one less thing to worry about come tax time.

You don’t even have to figure out which forms to fill out and send since Gusto does it all for you!

Get Started with Gusto Today!

Team Services

Maintaining a team that operates like a well oiled machine is essential to success and productivity in the workplace. In order to keep it running well, there is quite of bit of work that has to be done in the background.

Gusto’s team services include organization systems, offer letters, employee surveys and tools to help streamline the new employee onboarding process.

The team services are definitely among Gusto’s most beneficial.

Benefits

The benefits services are pretty straight forward. They are meant for facilitating processes related to employee benefits, such as insurance and retirement programs.

Insurance and retirement both come with a ton of guidelines and limitations that the average person may not be familiar with. That’s why outsourcing these processes to a provider that works with them on a regular basis is a wise move.

HR Services

The HR services are really great. They give you the ability to outsource HR responsibilities to remote HR experts.

One of the benefits of outsourcing HR services is that it helps avoid uncomfortable situations that could arise when your HR staff works alongside your other employees, so naturally friendships could form. This can make things uncomfortable when it comes to firing or carrying out other disciplinary action.

Time Tracking

One of the most useful services that Gusto provides is time tracking tools. These tools allow employees to clock in and out and request time off right in Gusto.

Time tracking tools record your employees’ attendance. For hourly employees, this is required in order to get paid. If you already have a time tracking tool that you like to use, Gusto can integrate with it.

Gusto’s Payroll Packages

Gusto has three different payroll packages: Core, Complete and Concierge. These three packages are designed to give business owners the ability to choose the coverage that works best for their needs and their budget.

Check out these great bundles!

Gusto Core

Gusto’s Core package is the most basic one, and it’s best suited for smaller businesses. It includes payroll services, a portal for your employees, administrative services for healthcare and workers’ comp and customer support.

Gusto Complete

The Complete packages offers everything that the Core package does, plus a little more. It has features related to new employee on-boarding, time off request portal, simple time tracking tools and employee directories.

Gusto’s complete package is great for small business owners who want to automate more of their HR- related tasks.

Gusto Concierge

Gusto Concierge is the most inclusive package. It includes everything that the Complete and Core packages include, plus an easy to use human resources portal and dedicated customer support.

This package is best for businesses who are looking for payroll and certified HR support to protect their business and team..

How Much Does Gusto Cost?

Gusto’s pricing varies per package. The most affordable package is $6 per employee with a $39 monthly base fee. The highest tier costs $12 per employee with a $149 monthly fee.

Check out all of the Gusto plans for additional features and pricing.

Pros and Cons of Gusto Payroll Services

While we think Gusto’s payroll services are the best thing since sliced bread, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons before subscribing to any sort of service for your business.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Time effective
• Price per employee remains the same no matter what wages you’re paying
• User friendly employee portal
• Easy to transition to from other payroll services
• Built-in time tracking tools (Complete and Concierge packages)

Cons

• Not offered outside of the United States
• Only three packages to choose from
• No a la carte services
• Limited 401k and retirement services

Gusto Customer Reviews

Gusto seems phenomenal, so we decided to look into what their customers are saying, and boy, were we blown away.

Over 1,100 customers left reviews for Gusto on TrustPilot. A whopping 94% of those reviews were 5 stars.

One Business owner that uses Gusto was very pleased with his experience:

“Great onboarding features! Gusto handles all the major paperwork needed to set up companies and employees on payroll. The interface is very modern and intuitive to use. It's much easier than QuickBooks Payroll and streamlines payroll compliance on all fronts.”

Here are some other great things that reviewers had to say about using Gusto’s payroll services:

“I logged in from a new location and was notified of a possible security problem within minutes. It is good to know that my account information is being monitored closely.” - Eric Mast

“Gusto has been exceptionally great. So glad I moved our small business payroll to them. It was easy to setup myself and the couple times I have needed help, they always have a person I can talk to who actually can solve problems.” - Philip O'Hara

How to Get Started with Gusto

To get started with Gusto, you’ll start by filling out a brief form about your business, including the state you’re located in, how many employees and contact information.

From there, you’ll be prompted through the steps to choose your plan and set everything up.

There is some information that you’ll have to have on hand. You should have your business’s tax information and all employees’ contact information.

You’ll enter information about how much each employee makes per hour or indicate if they are salaried workers, what sort of benefits each person gets and what sort of schedule you’d like to pay on.

When you sign up, you get the first month free. You’ll have to add your payment information after your free trial ends.

How to Contact Gusto

Address: San Francisco Office 525 20th Street San Francisco, CA 94107 Customer Service: (877) 880-1236 Sales: (844) 897-8646 Website: gusto.com Email Support: [email protected] Instagram: @gustohq Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GustoHQ Twitter: @gustohq

Does Gusto Offer Other Services for Small Businesses?

In addition to its paid payroll services, the Gusto website has a few other free tools that are helpful for small business owners.

The most popular one is the accountant matching service. Gusto partners with accountants around the United States to provide their users with contacts to the best accountants in their area.

You can enter your location to view profiles of accountants in your area. The profiles include a summary of the business, contact information and what sizes of businesses that they can handle bookkeeping for. This will help you determine which accountants are worth contacting.

Gusto also has eight other free tools and calculators to help with payroll and HR related processes.

These tools include:

• Salary Paycheck Calculator
• Payroll and HR Resources
• Hourly Paycheck Calculator
• Employer Tax Calculator
• Payroll Tax Calculator
• New Hire Checklist
• Burn Rate Calculator
• Salary Comparison Tool

Gusto’s free tools are great complements to their paid services. Many users remark that they are so valuable that they wish they were built into the packages so that they’d sync the data.

Gusto Review Summary

Gusto is very well liked by its users. Having a 5 star average with over 1100 reviews is pretty impressive. Nothing speaks louder about a business than testimonials from their past customers.

Everybody gushes about how easy Gusto is to use. Whether they are new to payroll or are switching from another payroll service, most people have commented on the user-friendly interface.

With the three different service package tiers, you’re likely to find a package that works with business’s needs and budget.

Here at The Credit Review, we believe Gusto is the way to go if you’re looking for anything from a basic payroll program to something a little more powerful with HR services.

The value of automating payroll and other related admin tasks is undeniable. We encourage you to at least take advantage of 30 day risk-free trial period of Gusto to see if it works well for you.