FunctionFox provides TimeFox which is a timesheet and project management solution for small creative companies. The vendor says TimeFox is currently used by over 100,000 creative professionals in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
$5
per user
Gusto
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Gusto offers payroll, benefits and compliance capabilities. Gusto is scaled for small to mid-sized businesses, and emphasizes an easy to use interface.
$49
per month
Pricing
FunctionFox
Gusto
Editions & Modules
FunctionFox Classic
$5
per user
FunctionFox Premier
$10
per user
FunctionFox In-House
$20
per user
Simple: A streamlined set of automatic payroll features and benefits integrations
$49/month + $6/mo per person
per month
Plus: Comprehensive payroll, benefits, and HR tools for employers building a great place to work
$80/month + $12/mo per person
per month
Premium: Scalable payroll and benefits, expert HR, and dedicated support for the complex needs of growing teams
$180/month + $22/mo per person
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FunctionFox
Gusto
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
No hidden fees. All customer support, and regular upgrades are included free of charge.
Gusto offers three pricing plans for payroll, benefits, and HR.
If you are trying to track time across teams or functions, that is really what FunctionFox is designed for. I think this would work better for individual, smaller teams with similar tasks and activities, instead of for larger companies with more complex organizational operations. If you are just getting started with time tracking, this could be a good place to start.
Gusto is a great fit for small teams and startups that want a simple, reliable way to run payroll, manage tax filings, and give CPAs access without constant micromanagement. It’s especially useful for founders who need something that “just works.” The human support has been excellent—especially when forwarding confusing IRS mail. That said, it’s a bit less intuitive when it comes to benefits and compliance for fully remote companies. For example, labor law poster distribution isn’t streamlined for digital teams, and setting up benefits felt more complex than it needed to be. Still, I’d recommend Gusto to any startup looking to get payroll right from day one.
With only a couple clicks I can still easily pull reports by employee on a weekly basis which provide the information I need to run payroll.
I pull reports by client each month for our monthly client billings, which we have broken down by project so I can easily see how our time was spent on their account.
We set a budget for the approved number of hours we can apply to any one project for the month, and the system provides the project manager with a warning as the limit comes near. That function has been fantastic!
FunctionFox's Help Desk personnel are wonderful, providing an exceptionally personalized experience. They take their time, and will even schedule a call to go into greater depth, such as an entire account review just to ensure you're able to use all the product features to your company's best advantage. Our entire team jumped on a half hour call a couple months ago, and she answered ALL of our questions, including providing us with info on some features we hadn't realized even existed.
Gusto really kills it on the simplicity. The app and website are very clear and straightforward.
Gusto also does a great job at being easy to navigate, visually pleasing, and logically posed.
Gusto communicates very clearly and provides just the right amount of communication.
Gusto makes the onboarding process very easy. I recently started at a new company and the process of filling out the necessary documents, filling out forms, and getting my benefit information input was soooooo easy!
The function of the site is not as user-friendly as others, it's sometimes hard to find certain projects and organize data in order to track effectively. I would often need to download/export reports.
Sometimes a project would accidentally be created twice and hours billed to two separate projects for the same thing. Which made tracking and billing increasingly difficult.
Little to no organization of projects for billing and finance purposes, which makes it hard when we conduct billing as there is not a clear way to know if a project is complete, ongoing, rejected etc.
Adding in previous time manually could be more accessible.
Notifications for when employees manually change hours.
We should allow 1099 users to use the mobile app instead of restricting them to the website, especially since they can just log into the full website on their mobile device.
All of my employees are used to it and introducing a new software to them requires them to get trained again increasing the costs. TimeFox is an easy to use and understand software. Another advantage of TimeFox is that is an online software and I can access it whenever I want to.
Unless they break it, I'm never leaving. It's just too easy. Gusto is also really affordable, and for what I pay, it's worth having the historical record within the system. I like that I can go back and pull up W2's for year's past. This sort of easy access reporting, has been helpful especially when getting reports for PPP loans.
It's a good tool for tracking hours and overall budget. It does not give you insight into why there are those hours, or what part of the project has over burned. The tool is also tough to export reports and find the correct information throughout. Not only this, but I also have a hard time changing project details - there's no real easy way to and there's a larger room for error
The overall platform and its speed of response are amazing. I would recommend this to any other business owner for ease of use and reliability. Email reminders are great if I’m super busy and have forgotten a few tasks. The price point compared to local payroll service is hands down a huge win.
I haven't used FunctionFox for a lot of support requests. On the times that i've been having issues I've had the issue resolved within a day, most questions I have had i've been able to source answers online or from a colleague. From what I have experienced the support team seems great.
Gusto's customer service has really deteriorated lately and they seem to have really changed their focus. It used to be when you called you were routed to an individual who knew about payroll, benefits, reporting, etc. but now you get someone who seems to have not received the correct training. My last call about a dismissal payroll took me over an hour of my time and the person still could not help me and finally transferred me to someone else.
Unsure on implementation of FunctionFox - was before my time at the company. Everyone at the company had a good understanding of the product and how to use it by the time I joined. My understanding is we implemented ourselves with a few training sessions for the creative team and adding hours as well as training for the account team to add projects
Reach out to support immediately if you are having trouble setting up Gusto. Rather than being confused and trying to figure it out yourself, it's much better to talk to someone who knows what they are doing. Save yourself time and frustration and reach out to support
When we were looking for software we tested several, and FunctionFox was hands down the best value. While there are other options, and each company is different, nothing could come close to filling our needs the way FunctionFox has. The money we spend has been returned several times over.
It's been a while since I used QuickBooks for payroll, but it doesn't even come close to it. Gusto is infinitely easier, allowing for employee time tracking, handling calculations and payments of payroll and payroll taxes, managing regulatory compliance in the background, and more. I had a lot of moments using QuickBooks Payroll where I thought, "Am I even doing this right?" — it felt like you had to have additional knowledge of HR regulations in your state to do everything correctly. Gusto has it ALL handled so you can focus your time on higher-impact tasks in your business.
FunctionFox pays for itself just about every month in terms of how much more I am able to bill than before I started using the software, and how much less time I need to spend on non-billable admin tasks. I used to create invoices based mostly on what sounded fair, rather than on accurate time & cost records. I'm sure my clients loved it, but it wasn't healthy for my business. Now I base invoices on actual time and expense records, and end up with more money in my pocket.
It's not tangible, but FunctionFox has improved my ability to communicate with clients, and with freelance partners when I'm involved in a collaborative project. I can anticipate and discuss potential budget or delivery deadline overruns before they occur. The goodwill this builds has had a tremendously positive impact on client and partnership relations.
I fell into freelancing without a lot of experience running a business. FunctionFox has been a great teacher, helping me think through many issues that I wouldn't have even recognized as important. It is simple to use, with a UI that is neither intimidating nor overwhelming, and it has been super flexible in terms of molding it to suit the way I work.
For me, it is hard to quantify payroll software as having an ROI. It does save quite a bit of time per pay period, so perhaps we could assign a theoretical number to an employee taking that time. I'd say, at the least, it saves 30-60 minutes a pay period compared to a more difficult-to-use payroll software.
