Gusto vs. Intuit Online Payroll (discontinued)

I would love to use Gusto for companies of all staff sizes but I understand that larger businesses will opt for a PEO and willingly give up flexibility and features to do that. However, I love that Gusto can be customized on so many levels – offer letter, adding documents for new hires, document verification, deploying documents to existing staff, tracking who has signed, helping staff select health benefits (love that this is an entirely paperless process!), screen share support (love this!), a host of integrations with other apps are easy to link up. The interface is delightful (love the piglet!), HR support for Master Admins is very professional. There are templates, forms, rules and updates provided for all States. And the reports are so easy to read, customize and understand. Amazing!

Incentivized

I believe the ideal scenario is when you are already using the Intuit family of products and the payroll bolts on to your existing QuickBooks infrastructure. Payroll software products have been around a long time, and this is a very competitive niche. Most of the companies do a good job of filing taxes promptly, reporting W-2 items properly, providing good reports, etc. Where you might really get some extra efficiency and benefit is the fact that the payroll is woven into the accounting system, creating one seamless enterprise solution. Also, where it might be less appropriate is in a really simple use case such as a one person company where there aren't complex fringe benefits to deal with. In that scenario, you can set up the ACH debits directly with the state agency and the IRS and possibly file your own 941, 940, W-2/W-3 and state equivalent forms. Of course, if you're willing to do this and are good with details, you can save yourself some money.

Incentivized

• The self-service aspect of the software is very nice. We rarely need to get customer service involved.
• For the first 2 years of our subscription to Gusto, customer service has been good when we needed it.
• We have also had good experience with third parties recommended by Gusto including a 401(k) administrator, R&D tax credit analyst, and background check software.

Incentivized

• Integration with QuickBooks Desktop. This is the key strength of IP... it is a complete, native integration and let's you maintain all employee records and time keeping in QuickBooks
• Job Costing. Another key differentiation -- some payroll outsources say they do true job costing (by work or item code). Don't believe them. If its' not integrated with your accounting system, you will not get "TRUE" job costing. You can get costs ASSIGNED to jobs (which may be fine), but you won't get item level detail in QuickBooks from anyone but Intuit.
• Variety of Payment options. Use Direct Deposit or manual checks... or whatever you want. Since its in QB, you can make payments any way you want.
• Cash Flow. This is both good and bad, but IP will not take taxes out of your bank account until they are due. That's different than some other providers that want assurance that you have the tax payments available at the moment you push "SUBMIT."

Incentivized

• The support isn't very impressive, although it's rare that we even need their help.
• I would like to see a better scheduling tool for the staff. Currently I have to use Homebase for this feature alone because Gusto's offering is lacking in this area.

• My biggest issue is that they do continue to raise their prices on a regular basis and it makes people feel stuck when there are so many clients already using the system.
• They do not support roaming employees, so employees that cross over into various tax jurisdictions in one pay period pose a challenge for calculating taxes and pay.
• The setup can be a bit daunting still if you are not familiar with the system or the various taxes and requirements for reporting.

Incentivized

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.

Works perfectly as advertised. Our simple needs are well taken care of.

Incentivized

The UI is clean and simple. It's incredibly easy to find what you need to find, and if you can't, a quick search of their help files will direct you where you need to go about 90% of the time. For that last 10%, a support e-mail will result in a quick answer. Almost any time I try to do something new I haven't done before with Gusto, I can do it in a few minutes.

Incentivized

I would rate it a 0. It gets worse and worse all the time. It seems like every time I go into IOP to run a payroll for one of my clients, I have one more problem.

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.

Incentivized

The customer support personnel have always walked me through the steps they need to take to assist me. Never rushed through anything. Always exceptionally thorough, answering all my questions and even sharing my screen visually (I have control, not them). It actually helps me to resolve future issues and questions, if they should arise.

Incentivized

Super easy to implement and use!

Incentivized

Gusto was the only payroll provider we used for our business. Before Gusto we were running payroll manually, which was cumbersome and didn’t account for our tax liability. Gusto is heads and shoulders above running payroll manually. It takes the load of payroll management off your shoulders and gives employees and easy to use portal to manage their personal payroll information.

Incentivized

It's a payroll software with decent customer support readily available and direct integration with my accounting tools. This made it a prime fit for me, and made payment and tax reporting relatively simple, and errors readily correctable. It does not have time tracking, and I still believe that this software is overpriced, but it's the best fit for me right now.

Incentivized

• Saves me time and time is money so I've definitely saved money using Gusto over other payroll providers
• 401k integration was not a good fit for my size company unfortunately, which I was disappointed about initially, but if you are a larger company it could be an excellent asset to your benefits structure for your team
• Has increased employee retention because of its ease of use

Incentivized

• Positive: Less of a learning curve to train payroll accountants, as they are already familiar with using Intuit. Also, in general there are a larger pool of candidates who know this system than many of the other "niche" lesser known payroll products.
• Positive: More options to choose from depending on the level of service needed. For example, there is a Full Service offering if needed. This might apply to an organization that doesn't have the resources available or an internal person who has the time/bandwidth to handle the entire company's payroll. Thus, it is possible to cherry pick the level of service needed depending on the type of company/situation.
• Positive: Good audit trail. This can be extremely important and cost efficient when a business is going through an external audit by an outside CPA firm and the payroll accounting function is undergoing testing (ie. less time required by the external auditor would likely lower their bill for their services).

Incentivized