Gusto vs. Square Payroll vs. TIS (Treasury Intelligence Solutions)

Gusto is well-suited for small businesses looking for a one-stop platform for payroll, tax-related tasks, and onboarding. It has many automated features that make tasks related to running a business/running an S-Corp simpler. I have not tried any other similar platforms, so I am unsure how it compares, but the pricing Gusto offers feels reasonable compared to other providers.

Incentivized

Square is an amazing platform to have total control over the payroll of all the employees of a company or a specific sector. This platform has a very good functionality to collect exact information on how long each employee works, that is one of its most outstanding characteristics, because it monitors work schedules and overtime and generates detailed reports on the work time of each employee. Square does not allow to schedule payments, that is one of the main problems, however, I consider that it is a very good option for small and medium-sized companies that are looking for a way to have more exact administrative control over the working hours of all their employees. It is a software that works in the cloud, so all the work information that is collected will remain safe without any risk of loss.

Incentivized

TIS [Treasury Intelligence Solutions] is well suited for a company with multiple banking relationships in multiple countries. This can allow a treasury function to have better visibility and control over its daily cash management operations. It has very good report writing capabilities and dashboard functionality to customize a report for the end user.

Incentivized

• New employee/contractor onboarding - all the documents are stored and easily accessible (the same goes for off-boarding).
• A one-click option for syncing hours worked with payroll.
• The option to run payroll on auto-pilot.
• Ensuring I'm tax compliant with the states we have employees in.
• Always having digital records of payroll runs.

Incentivized

• 1099 contractor payments are easy, and they provide you with the IRS filing as part of the service.
• Direct deposit/debit from your already connected account to the employee.
• Reporting and management features are simple yet inclusive.
• Low cost compared to alternative solutions.

Incentivized

• BTM MONITOR & Payment Monitor: we have a good view of the companies' bank statements & payments current status. Error tracking and issue logs can be found easily. In case of an error the error message describes it well so that we can act alone and solve the issues in most cases without further help. Speed is particularly important at month-end closes, you cannot be without a solution.
• Payment files PAIN mapping. The Know-How of TIS and its expertise to PAIN file integration and possible options. We have not seen a case where our TIS Project Manager did not know the answer to an issue. Often it comes instantly. Sometimes they would of course investigate, but the root cause review of a technical issue is key to success here. These guys really know what they are doing.
• Support Team of TIS. They have a very fast response time. I would point it out as being the key strength of the TIS package. You will never have critical items not addressed in due time. The speed and quality of their responses to issues is how it should be. From a financial operational point of view: It's important to ensure business continuity, which they do.

Incentivized

• Digital compliance tools for remote teams
• Gusto upsold us labor law posters, but I later found them available for free online. Since we’re a fully remote team, I had to manually download and distribute them digitally. It would be much more efficient if Gusto offered free, auto-distributed digital posters tailored to remote compliance.
• Benefits setup is unintuitive for startups
• While our rep was helpful, navigating the benefits system felt complex and not tailored to early-stage companies. More guided flows or simplified options for small, remote startups would be a big help.
• Limited dashboard customization for remote workflows
• As a fully online company, we’d benefit from dashboard options that highlight relevant tools for remote operations—like compliance tracking, digital communications, or onboarding checklists.

Incentivized

• It's a bit pricey for larger companies at $5 per person paid per month.
• Has a bit of a learning curve that seems steeper than necessary
• reports can be confusing at first

Incentivized

• Improved VaR risk module to apply to cash balances exposure
• Currency risk controls - volatility forecast
• Trading platforms connectivity - hedging capabilities for SWAPtions
• Probable ripple integration to make settlemets faster versus t+2
• Compliance: not only track sanctions, payment details but get Credit Score of counterparty
• Chinease counterparties details (state banks do not share) - fraud risk depreciation
• Loans offering page
• Direct banks chats - push to send message to operator

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.

Depends on stage of the project if it will be postponed in 2023. Se la vie. Will be happy to go on.

Wonderful overall usability – especially for the new business owner. The user interface is clean and intuitive, so it's easy to find what you're looking for. They also have great explanation pages ingrained into the process, so if you get stuck knowing what to do next, there's a link right there to walk you through the process!

Incentivized

It could use a mobile-friendly interface. Other than that it's a simple layout and non-cluttered which allows you to get done what you need to get done. No unnecessary dodads or distractions.

Incentivized

The main feature of usability is the outcome you get upon actions done. TIS is not complecated solution - it is rational and has most needed capabilites for cash management via multiple accounts in different jurisdictions. It works well for this task and evolutioning to the field of risk management to get all treasury job done well.

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

I think they have quick and helpful customer service reps, however, I give them a 9 because I have had to wait on hold for long periods of time before.

Offered support information in the portal (knowledge base articles) as well members of the support provides a very good service level.

Incentivized

The training addressed our needs.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

The cloud connection meant less work for IT. The setup of the first 1000 accounts was very quick, so we went live after only 4 months.

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.

Incentivized

I liked patriot, but I found it to be more confusing than Square and took me too much time to setup. I setup Square Payroll in about an hour. I would also say the Square interface made more sense to me. I also like how Square offers more things like benefits, etc. that can be added on.

Incentivized

We have used bank applications and another large TMS provider based in the US. Our prior TMS was a full-scale system which was very robust and extremely complex. We were not using 3/4 of the functionality and we decided it made more sense to select a simpler system that met our core requirements which are connectivity and transaction & information support. TIS does this very well at a lower price point. In the end, TIS better suited our needs and was much simpler and more affordable.

• I am not involved enough to know well, but I would say that Gusto has saved me about 1-2 hours in my onboarding process with my new company compared to my past experiences trying to onboard with ADP. I have also finished the process and am not frustrated like usual.

Incentivized

• Square Payroll has dramatically reduced the time it takes to process payroll.
• We could have a faster payroll with the Square POS integration for commission, but that is not something we've implemented yet.

Incentivized

In terms of risk mitigation of course we can reduce the number of people having access to banking if not needed. With dedicated teams and less people with access to individual Bank portals. Before access to bank portals were necessary for all sorts of manual payments and exceptions if we really implement the 100% of functions and dont leave exceptions that risk mitigation can be achieved and efficiency at automated payment runs.

• At a large corporation with more than 60 entities and 400+ bank accounts, the savings and improvements are massive considering how time-consuming the manual work would be. I don't have any numbers to quote, unfortunately.
• We are now massively expanding our TIS with the full integration of automated payment runs. This has larger operational impacts, like the possible consolidation of banking and dedicated payment teams.

Incentivized