Gusto Payroll is the most modern, automated payroll company available today. By utilizing Gusto in your business, you will eliminate a lot of wasted time and paperwork associated with hiring and managing your employees. View our video Gusto Payroll review below:
When you are small, and trying to save money, manually performing payroll yourself may seem like a good cost-effective option. The long and the short is yes, you will save money doing it yourself. But, is it worth it? I would say, no. If you miss any payments (which is easy to do if you are running a business), you will get hit with late fees and headaches. Plus, it’s just more things to worry about- you will have to manually cut your employees’ checks, as well as file your monthly state tax forms and payments, federal quarterly forms and payments, and annual forms.
Assisted payroll is a bit better, in that the payroll service company will prepare your forms for you. But, you may still need to remember to e-file them or mail them in quarterly with a check, in which they will tell you the amount and where to send it to. This is nice, but eventually you will probably decide just to move to a full payroll service.
With full payroll, everything is pretty much done for you. You submit your hours, and they submit the forms. However, you will still need to chase-down hired employees for their hiring paperwork and add them into the system. This is the part I was looking to eliminate. Chasing down anyone for anything- money, paperwork, scheduling an estimate- well, how can I put it- sucks!
I had already eliminated chasing down customers for payments by automatically charging customers credit cards each week with Service Autopilot, so I wanted to eliminate chasing down employees for their W-4’s and I-9s, direct deposit information, then having to manually submit this information to the payroll company each time. The solution that I found was Gusto payroll service, and I have not looked back. Little did I know, Gusto is more than the payroll service I was looking for, but is an entire HR solution! Continue on to read our Gusto Payroll review.
Gusto has been great since it not only eliminates the need to chase-down paperwork, but it also integrates other features not found in Service Autopilot. They continue to upgrade and add more capabilities, which increases the value they provide without increasing their cost, such as:
Now, to add an employee, all we have to do is fill-out the information below. The rest is handled by Gusto- including chasing down the employee for their W-4 (repetitive emails), direct deposit information, and more!
Once you or your office administrator adds a new employee to Gusto, they will get an email with instructions to input all the rest of their information. Gusto will continue to remind them until they submit all the information required to have them as a legal employee.
Once on-boarded, the employee will conveniently receive an email with each payroll letting them know they got paid, the breakdown of their pay, a link to view their paystub, and some other helpful/fun information.
If your employee’s information ever expires, or direct deposit payments don’t go through, Gusto will remind the employee and advise them to login and fix it themselves- no more headaches or paperwork for you!
As part of the on-boarding process through Gusto, the employee will create their own portal in which they can access all their payroll and contact information, so there is no more asking you for a copy of their pay stub or how many hours they worked last week. Additionally, from within the Gusto employee portal, employees are able to update their contact information, view pay stubs, view other employees at the company, view documents, and request time off.
Just like the employee portal, Gusto also has an admin portal where managers or admin can obviously run payroll, but also view reports, documents, all employees information, and more. On this home page, reminders will be displayed for anything that needs to get done, or any digital paperwork that is being waited on.
So again, THE reason I signed up for Gusto Payroll was for the employee self on-boarding benefit which was great. However, as I kept using the service I started taking advantage of other features they provide as well, and they have continued to add more valuable features since I have been a member. On top of the great user interface and employee access to their own portal, Gusto also offers a time-off service, which I have included in this Gusto Payroll review.
The way the time-off process works, is first an employee requests time off from within their Gusto portal, then Gusto will send out an email and put a notification in the Admin’s Gusto profile, letting the company know that an employee is requesting time off:
At the end of the season, typically W-2s must be sent out to employees. With Gusto, although they won’t physically mail a copy, they will email your employees letting them know that their W-2s are available from within their portal, as well as recommends them to easily file their taxes online. They will even ask the employees to make sure their contact information is correct, so if you do have to mail their W-2, it doesn’t get sent to the wrong address and you don’t have your employees asking where it is!
Another feature I discovered, which is an awesome plus, is the built-in surveys features. Gusto sends out a monthly survey (which is customizable), that surveys your employees on topics such as management, growth, teamwork, and recognition. It has a nice interface where you can see the results, which is a great management tool.
Another nice included HR feature is the birthday card feature. If approved, Gusto will send out an email to all employees before an employees birthday, where each recipient has the opportunity to write a short message to their co-worker. On their birthday, the e-card is then emailed to the employee on their birth date!
Everything on Gusto is digital. Another added benefit of this, is that they offer digital documents to send to your employees (pre-built and customizable). One letter is an offer letter, which can be emailed to your employees from within Gusto and required to be digitally signed prior to employment. You can also upload other documents that require a signature, such as an employee handbook.
Overall, Gusto is a very powerful HR system and does much more than just offer the best automated payroll service. Gusto provides a powerful admin portal, employee portal, days off requests, on-boarding contracts, survey systems, birthdays, and is still growing and adding more features!
Gusto’s price is $39/month plus $6/mo, per employee. For us, it was about 15% more than our old-school full payroll service, but so worth it for the employee self on-boarding alone! There are no setup fees, no contracts, and is super easy to get started.
By signing up for Gusto through our link you will not only get 30 days free, but you will also get an Amazon gift card for a minimum of a $100!
For more information, please see our Gusto Payroll review on YouTube:
