Gusto Review

Gusto Review
4.3
4.3 of 5 stars 1 review
  • Pricing
    (4.5)
  • Features
    (4.5)
  • Support
    (4)
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Pros

  • App is easy to set up, and the service is helpful.
  • Price options vary, which means it fits a wide range of businesses.
  • Your employees and contractors can handle their finances, taxes, hours, and time-off requests. Therefore, all the tax documents are sent automatically instead of the HR emailing it over.
  • An employee can make their own financial decisions for their future.
  • Integration with major accounting products. You can download the files for the other products and import them into Gusto rather than work on the platform directly.

Cons

  • Payroll excludes the legal aspects of the business except for compliance.
  • Might spend time looking for documentation if you have not linked them to the notifications.
  • May face challenges when you have a global business.
  • The platform does not yet support payroll for other countries.

ABOUT

The secret to a successful business lies in the talent – in your team. However, running a business necessarily means that often you are unable to devote time to optimizing its operations. At the same time, the importance of caring for your employees cannot be overstated. Gusto solves each of these problems and helps you onboard, pay, insure, and support your team, which can transform your business and foster productivity.

What is Gusto?

In 2012, ZenPayroll began to serve customers nationwide by processing payroll and employee benefits. ZenPayroll eventually evolved into Gusto and now focuses on automating some of the key employee-related processes – payroll, human resources (HR), and benefits.

Gusto works for both businesses and accountants. For businesses, it is a complete, multi-purpose solution that helps you grow your team. You can manage:

  • Full-service payroll
  • Medical, dental and vision
  • HR with certified experts
  • Employee time
  • Business compliance
  • Employee finance tools

Your employees deserve to enjoy the benefits of their hard work. Payroll and taxes, time tracking, new hire, and benefit plans, which are all part of this automated platform, are geared towards this end. Not only does the solution process payrolls, but it can also help your employees make sound financial investments like 401k, 529 college savings, and save with commuter benefits. Further, Gusto also helps you find health, dental, and vision plans for your employees within your budget.

For accountants, Gusto provides a way to expand your practice. Your clients can trust you with this integrated payroll and benefits platform. You can rely on the dedicated experts and increase your revenue through accounting.

PRICING

Each business is unique, and you should get a solution that suits your business. You can choose from a variety of plans available for small, medium, and growing enterprises.

Below is a quick table to show you the features of each plan and the prices.

Plans

Features

Concierge

Complete

Core

Price

$12/mo/person + $149/mo base price

$12/mo/person + $39/mo base price

$6/mo/person + $39/mo base price

Full-Service Payroll

🗹

🗹

🗹

Health Benefits Administration

🗹

🗹

🗹

Workers Comp Admin

🗹

🗹

🗹

Best-in-class support

Dedicated

🗹

🗹

PTO policies & Requests

🗹

🗹

🗹

Employee Offer & Onboarding

🗹

🗹

Time tracking

🗹

🗹

Employee directory

🗹

🗹

Certified HR Pros

🗹

HR Resource Center

🗹

Gusto Cashout

🗹

🗹

🗹

The Concierge plan comes with certified HR Pros that give you the resources and assistance you need so that you are not alone. Second, the Complete plan helps you create a productive workplace. Finally, if you want to go back to focusing on what is needed, you can use the Core plan. The paid options include:

  • Full-Service payroll
  • Employee benefits
  • Employee profiles
  • Health benefits administration
  • Workers comp admin
  • Best-in-class support
  • Permissions
  • Employee offer letters and onboarding
  • Time management
  • Employee directory and surveys
  • Certified HR experts
  • HR resource center
  • Dedicated support

If you are a business owner with 1099 contractors, you can use a plan to help pay them. This subscription comes with unlimited contractor payments, contractor self-service, and form 1099 creation and filings.

FEATURES​

Gusto comes with features that are designed to automate the tasks in HR-related functions like employee payroll, benefits, and financial investments. Currently, more than 100,000 businesses use this platform to take care of their operations.

Payroll

Payroll can turn into a nightmare if you are not on top of it. When running a business, you often think of vendors and customers, but it is vital that you do not forget your all-important employees. With this platform, payroll is simple and easy. In essence, it helps you automatically file your payroll taxes, employees can quickly access their money between paydays, and both of you can track time better.

The benefits are also laid out right beside time trackers. The pricing structure is clear, so you know what you are signing up for. In fact, all the information on your account is laid out in a visual dashboard for your convenience. Payroll is also integrated with health insurance, 401(k), workers’ comp, time off requests and policies, Gusto® cashout, and more.

Another essential item on every business owner’s mind is compliance, such as getting signatures on all the forms and ensuring that the important ones are complete and accurate. Gusto keeps up to date on all tax laws and performs the calculations for you, and it stores employee I-9s, W-2s, and contractor 1099s online.

Payroll is made more accessible with an additional feature that allows employees to set up their accounts online, which they can access any time they need and from anywhere.

Benefits

Gusto enables all employees to track their health benefits, and it is easy to set up and start using. If you are with another platform, you can switch easily to this without interruption to your coverage. Your employees receive free medical, dental, and vision administration, and you can choose from more than 3,500 health insurance plans. Expert licensed advisors will help find the right coverage for your team within your budget.

Apart from health, you can also offer financial planning benefits to your team. Your employees have multiple options to save, spend, and borrow. 401(k) retirement options, 529 savings, life and disability, commuter benefits, workers compensation, health savings, and flexible spending account are only some of the options available. Gusto® cashout is another free solution for employees to cover any unexpected expenses they encounter.

Keeping up with government mandates and regulations might be overwhelming for a business owner. Gusto helps you stay on top of these compliance requirements. The solution is HIPAA, ERISA, and ACA compliance. New hire reporting and federal forms are automatically distributed and stored after completion.

Team Management

Hiring new employees and onboarding them are tasks you can automate with this product. You can send offer letters customized to your business. The new hires can sign forms and contracts, and enroll in payroll and benefits online. The documents are secure with a 256-bit SSL encryption. Moreover, once they are on the team and working, you can use the platform to get feedback and recommendations to build a better workplace. With its modern approach to HR that goes beyond spreadsheets and tables, Gusto keeps all of your employee information updated and synched.

Other features that are useful in team management are:

  • Simple time tracking
  • Managing time-off requests
  • Visual org chart
  • Templates for employee handbooks
  • Employee surveys
  • On-demand HR advice
  • Compliance and security
  • Workers comp insurance

Time Tools

Tracking employee hours is the most important step that starts their payroll. You need an accurate system that will work well with your HR platform. With Gusto, your employee’s hours, time off, and holidays are automatically calculated into payroll.

You can manage both hourly and non-exempt salaried employees on this platform. They enter the time, and the manager can approve the time with a single click. If you need a slightly advanced time tracking solution, you can simply choose from various integrations on the platform and use it to calculate pay.

Gusto allows you to customize your ‘paid time-off’ policies to fit your team’s needs and your budget. After you have employee times and hours, you can run reports at the team, department, individual employee level, or even based on location. The PTO liabilities are automatically calculated, meaning your accounting department does not have to worry about them.

Your employees are definitely going to want to use their paid time off wisely. This solution helps them track their accrued time and can find out their PTO balance with a single click. You can also build your calendar, selecting from federal holidays and by creating custom holidays which can be integrated into payroll as default paid time-off. There are also reminders available for critical dates and tasks in combination with Google or Outlook.

HR Experts

Navigating the nuances in HR is tedious as is, and if you have a business to run, you may want to concentrate on it and leave HR to the experts. With the Concierge plan, you can get personal support from certified HR experts. When used in combination with easy-to-use HR and payroll tools, your business gets a facelift in the HR department.

So, what do Gusto HR plans do for you?

  • Compliance with HR laws and regulations
  • Personal advice from HR experts
  • A dedicated team which understands your business

Government regulations are always changing. You do not want to make a mistake in compliance and face lawsuits or fines. Gusto steps in to help out with unlimited expert advice from SHRM and HRCI certified experts.

Some of the other tasks that you can get help with are:

  • Hiring and onboarding best practices
  • Performance evaluations and appraisals
  • Job descriptions and custom offer letters
  • Termination criteria
  • Labor law policies and government regulation updates
  • Employee handbook template
  • Sensitivity and harassment prevention training

Gusto® Cashout

We all plan for our finances ahead of time, but sometimes there are expenses that we do not foresee. The cashout is a free financial benefit for your employees to cover unexpected expenses between paydays. It is based on the estimated earnings of an employee and is automatically repaid from their paycheck, with no fees or interest.

The cashout is free for the employees and the business owner. Further, there are smart limits to protect your employees from overdrawing. Last but not least, the cashout does not affect your books or your payroll. Accessing the cashout is as simple as 1-2-3 for an employee. They simply have to enter an amount and confirm the cashout, to get the cash in their bank the next business day. This feature provides peace of mind to both the business owner and employee.

INTEGRATIONS

Given how varied every business is, Gusto works with other software to increase the efficiency of your business. Some applications that will help you in all departments are:

  • Accounting
  • Time tracking
  • Point of sale
  • Business operations
  • Expense management

Accounting

You can sync your payroll to your accounting to save costs and time, and increase efficiency:

  • Freshbooks – No need for manual record entries
  • Xero – Cloud-based accounting app for a small business
  • Quickbooks and Quickbooks Online – Small business accounting platform
  • Aplos – Accounting software for non-profit organizations, churches, and schools
  • Zipbooks – Modern bookkeeping, invoicing and time tracking for small businesses and accountants
  • Autobooks – Sync your account receivables directly with your savings account to track revenue.

Tracking Time

Integrate employee time into your payroll with the following applications:

  • Homebase – Free scheduling and time tracking
  • TSheets – Popular employee time tracking solution automatically syncs with payroll
  • When I Work – Communicate, collaborate and schedule your hourly employees
  • Deputy – Download your employee records and sync approved hours every pay period
  • Ximble – Staff scheduling, time and attendance solution
  • Boomr – GPS-powered mobile app and web dashboard across multiple pay rates and states
  • Time tracker – eBillity’s time and tracking comes with free mobile apps and a 14-day trial

Point of Sale

Point of sale apps integrate all information on employee hours and tips:

  • Clover – Custom point of sales app for employee management
  • SpotOn – Payments, POS, custom websites, appointments, marketing, analytics, and dashboard
  • Upserve – Cloud restaurant point-of-sale, detailed analytics, informative dashboard, and mobile restaurant management

Business Operations

If you have a unique operations software tailored to your business, Gusto works well with your third party app to automate HR and payroll, such as:

  • Kinderlime – For childcare solutions, student and staff time card, online billing and registrations
  • Trainual – Streamlined employee hiring, onboarding, training, and management
  • Veryfi – For the construction industry; location accurate employee time
  • Accelo – Automate your operations and sync Gusto, Xero and Expensify
  • ClienTrak! – For the salon and spa industry; mobile booking, scheduling, reminders and POS and commission
  • Hubstaff – Dynamic app for automated time tracking with geofencing and mobile reports
  • Vagaro – Salon, spa and fitness appointment scheduling, which can integrate with your social media to process payment and send reminders

Expense management

Process expenses and integrate employee information from your third party app into Gusto.

  • Expensify – Sync your employee expenses
  • Receipt Bank – Approve employee reimbursements to issue payments through payroll

More About Gusto

PROS AND CONS

PROS

  • App is easy to set up, and the service is helpful.
  • Price options vary, which means it fits a wide range of businesses.
  • Your employees and contractors can handle their finances, taxes, hours, and time-off requests. Therefore, all the tax documents are sent automatically instead of the HR emailing it over.
  • An employee can make their own financial decisions for their future.
  • Integration with major accounting products. You can download the files for the other products and import them into Gusto rather than work on the platform directly.

CONS

  • Payroll excludes the legal aspects of the business except for compliance.
  • Might spend time looking for documentation if you have not linked them to the notifications.
  • May face challenges when you have a global business.
  • The platform does not yet support payroll for other countries.

CONCLUSION

To summarize, Gusto makes your payroll operations very easy and fully automated. It is flexible, and you can customize a plan for your team based on your budget. The variety of support features provide varying levels of ease. From onboarding to new hire benefits, from 401(k) planning to cash out options, Gusto allows an employee to plan for their financial future and immediate unforeseen expenses as well. In addition to all these, you can choose great medical, dental, and vision plans for your employees and their families. The different paid plans come with best-in-class support and expert HR advice.

The platform also comes with an employer tax calculator, burn rate calculator, salary comparison tool, and a new hire checklist. All these help you figure out a business’s financial and human resource needs at the start, and as your business grows, you can make decisions based on the results from the calculations.

In conclusion, you can optimize and automate your payroll to a greater extent with Gusto. You can send and receive documents and store your employee’s tax forms online for easy access and download. The integrations available for the business operations, accounting, expense management, time tracking, and point of sale apps make this versatile across different industries.

Check out our list of the best Payroll Software companies

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