Gusto

Great Online HR platform

Comments: Utilized a 3P administrator to establish & set-up a structure for our org. Need a long learning curve to understand.

Pros:

Online all the time when you need it…easy to search & reference simple items & documents used regularly.

Cons:

Wish there was more intuitive interface on tax compliance & other non regular tasks.

Gusto-Review

Comments: Overall, I have had a positive experience using Gusto. It has really simplified a lot of the HR elements for me and has allowed us to remain organized throughout. All in all, I like the product.

Pros:

As a startup business executive, Gusto has been excellent in simplifying the payroll and HR processes. It has made payroll effortless, handling taxes, benefits, and employee payments in a way that's easy to manage. I also want to share another highlight of Gusto, and that is its onboarding experience. New hires can enter their information and sign documents digitally, which saves time and keeps everything organized from day one.

Cons:

Perhaps one of the bigger challenges with Gusto is its limited customization options. While it does cover the basics well, if your organization has unique payroll or benefit requirements, it can be difficult to tailor the platform to meet those needs.

A word of warning: Easy to get going, but customer support is non-existent and errors are made

Pros:

Easy to onboard - you can get going right away. This is typically a starter company software, but they seem to be inable to handle any sory of maturity.

Cons:

Customer support is inconcistent and poor. Everything is shipped overseas to a team that is not sufficiently trained. Errors are made and they take NO responsibility. When offboarding, they stand behind policies that don't make sense to squeeze the last bit of money out of you. They will also change pricing tiers with no notice so features are now excluded from your plan. You can't even get a dedicated support rep to help with anything. We switched off Gusto and the way they handled themselves at the end will make me never go back to them at future companies.

Gusto: a solid hub for small business employee management

Comments: My company uses Gusto to track hours and keep certain documents (tax, onboarding, signable forms from Jotform, etc). Its greatest asset lies in its integration of time clock and payroll services.

Pros:

Gusto is impressively versatile — it can be used as a hub for both documents and hours tracking!

Cons:

The only things I don't like: 1. How quickly access would time out, and how long the app often takes to load a new screen (~15+ seconds at times). 2. Some quirks affecting ease of entry for tracking hours (e.g. not being able to adjust the clock-out time to a future time, the requirement to enter a note before you can save a shift). Some companies it might make sense to have those requirements in place, but that could be better customizable.

Mucho Gusto con Gusto

Comments: After more than two years of using Gusto as my primary payroll tool, my experience has been quite smooth and efficient, especially when managing my store's employee finances and payments. I've been able to take full advantage of this platform's automated functionalities, such as automatic salary calculation, tax filing and payment, and employee benefits management, which has saved me a lot of time and minimized errors. However, as my business has grown, I've felt that costs have increased since pricing is per employee. Overall, my experience with the software has allowed me to have frictionless payroll management, which has been key to business growth, although I might be evaluating options to better manage costs in the long run.

Pros:

What I like most about Gusto is its comprehensive approach, as it can combine ease of use with automated payroll and tax management. The platform automatically calculates and processes wages, files and pays payroll taxes, and manages benefits such as insurance and retirement plans. All of this happens in an intuitive and user-friendly interface, meaning that users can manage these processes without needing to be experts in payroll or accounting. It is very useful for small and medium-sized businesses that do not have so many departments.

Cons:

What I don't like about Gusto is that it can get a bit pricey as your business grows or if you need additional features. While it's affordable for small businesses, the pricing model includes a base fee plus a cost per employee, which can quickly add up if you have a growing workforce or decide to use more advanced features like benefits administration and additional HR tools.

It may work if your workweek starts on a Monday

Comments: AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE! They are now advertising everywhere, trying to get more customers. But once you sign up with them, they really don't care about you at all. They will even report wrong information to the tax agencies, and will not try to fix the problem at all!!!

Pros:

It seemed easy to set up. I like that it has integration with other apps, such as timekeeping and scheduling.

Cons:

Even though it asked the right questions about when our work week starts (on a Saturday), and when our payroll day is, it wrongly generated our payroll periods to start from Monday through Sunday. This is despite the fact that I was on the phone with them for hours explaining that our work week starts on Saturdays, and th payroll period has to match that. First, they claimed they fixed the issue. Then, when I found out they had not fixed the issue, they tried to tell me that the workweek does not have to match the payroll period. (!!!!) That is absolute BS. Then, they told me they would bring it to a higher-level support. They never called me after that. In the meantime, they have wrongly reported two payrolls to the tax agencies. and made us look like we did not pay our employees for two days.

Gusto is Becoming Popular, and Should Be

Comments: I have utilized Gusto for 4+ years within two different organizations, and have appreciated the versatility that it offers, and that both the large and small organizations that I have worked with have used it, so transferring and/or signing up under the new company is simple.

Pros:

As a place to track my pay, I appreciate the user-friendly interface making it simple to explore tools within the platform, and find all information that I need at any point.

Cons:

I have found it difficult to change my contact information permanently. For example, I got married one year, and now have a different email than the one that Gusto uses for login, and I cannot figure out how to change the actual login email which is frustrating because I no longer use it.

Easy To Use Payroll System

Comments: It an easy platform to use and one that has many features.

Pros:

Gusto has offered us an amazing payroll system which is easy to use. It has simplified the process of paying our employees.

Cons:

I have nothing to dislike with this platform.

Streamlining Payroll with Ease and Efficiency

Comments: Gusto provides a positive experience, particularly valued for its intuitive interface that simplifies payroll and HR management for small to medium-sized businesses. The software excels in automating payroll processes, significantly reducing manual errors and saving time. It also offers robust integrations with various applications, enhancing functionality and streamlining business operations

Pros:

The most appreciated aspects of Gusto are its ease of use, with a user-friendly interface that simplifies payroll and HR management for users of all skill levels, and its robust integration capabilities with over 100 applications like QuickBooks and Asana, enhancing its functionality. Additionally, its automated payroll features reduce errors and save time, and although its health benefits management is available in limited states, it's comprehensive and straightforward to use​

Cons:

While Gusto doesn't include time tracking and next-day direct deposit in its most basic plan, this is balanced by the option to integrate with third-party time management apps, providing flexibility for businesses to tailor the service according to their specific needs.

A Simplified HR Solution

Comments: An excellent tool for managing the HR side of things.

Pros:

Gusto makes managing payroll and benefits easy for employed graphic designers, with a user-friendly interface that streamlines pay stubs, tax forms, and health benefits in one platform, saving time on administrative tasks. It also offers features like PTO tracking and direct deposit, which makes handling work-life balance more straightforward.

Cons:

Doesn't offer design-specific features or integrations that could enhance a creative team's workflow.

A must have tool for the HR manager!

Comments: Completely satisfied with the platform. The Customer Service team is accessible and responsive with any issues. A pleasure to continue using their services.

Pros:

The general ease and flow of the platform, allows the user to complete payroll in under 2 minutes. The new spreadsheet feature enables accurate time tracking. Great integration with Quickbooks!

Cons:

From an aesthetics perspective, the font is stale and the colors are boring. There should be more flashy indicators for the next step/

Gusto is a great product for starting early payroll but pricing and support don't scale well

Comments: overall, it was a great product to get started with, but as we scaled, the price increase became unfeasible and the support wasn't sufficient

Pros:

Gusto has a pretty simple and easy UX and is quite easy to navigate around

Cons:

gusto support wasn't great and it was hard to get help with a rep and the price skyrocketed out of nowhere

Great company to work with

Comments: Overall we enjoy working with Gusto and really like their customer service. Moving from a big company to Gusto was a smart choice for us.

Pros:

Wonderful customer service, really responsive and easy to work with.

Cons:

We have struggled adjusting to the change in when direct deposit gets settled. Most payroll companies, the banks will release funds to employee's accounts once it clears the employer's account. But with Gusto the funds don't clear the account until it the day employees are to be paid. So, employees who used to receive their checks early due to who they bank with no longer get that, they now have to wait until pay date later in the afternoon before their check is deposited.

Support Severely Lacking

Comments: If you don't run into any problems, it's fine. However, I'd give their support a failing grade. I'll give them that it's better than Quickbooks Online payroll but that bar is underground it's so low. I was assured by the salesperson that sold me on Gusto that I would speak to a US-based real person if ever I should need support - that was a false assertion. I rarely, if ever, speak to a US-based person. Getting a hold of a person at all is not easy. There's no number to call. I don't have a contact person at the company. There's often no response on support tickets that I submit. It's inexcusable. Payroll affects people's lives and livelihoods. For a payroll company to expect their software to just work bug-free 100% of the time and thus never put resources into customer support is arrogant and short-sighted.

Pros:

In general, the payroll features are easy to set-up and use.

Cons:

I don't like that their payroll journal entries can only map to main accounts and not sub-accounts. I don't like that they don't seem to understand that Group Term Life Insurance premiums paid by the employer are taxable benefits to the employee, but no cash is exchanged between employer and employee. They set up the journal entries to reflect a cash payment to the employee and I haven't found a way to disable that. Finally, I have had repeated support issues, most notably, all of my employees that were employed during 2022 were notified of a "Draft" W-2c for the 2022 tax year uploaded to their employee accounts on 12/4/2023. Those "Draft" W-2cs for the prior year were erroneous. After spending hours upon hours reviewing each employee's payroll totals for the 2022 tax year and ensuring there was no such error that needed correcting, I reached out to Gusto through the only feature possible when you need to provide attachments which is an online form. I submitted one for every, single employee. I received a single reply email saying "not to worry" they would address it. I never received a follow-up until I insisted that they call me back. On follow-up, I was told that it was a "company-wide internal error." Furthermore, they couldn't remove the erroneous "Draft" 2022 W-2cs from my employees' accounts and they couldn't provide any official documentation to provide to my employees that the error was theirs and theirs alone. I demanded some sort of compensation at the very least to which they offered a 25% discount for 2 months which amounts to roughly $130 which barely covers 2 hours of my time spent dealing with the mess that they created. Furthermore, when my January bill came, they had not provided the discount. I'm assured that it will appear on my "next" bill but I'm not holding my breath. They should have reached out to their clients pre-emptively about this problem. They should have been responsive to my 16 support tickets about this problem. They should have offered multiple months of free service to compensate for this problem. They offered nothing voluntarily. Nothing. This is absolutely unacceptable handling of a "company-wide error." Oh, and I ran into a different tax compliance issue with city-wide occupational tax with which they should be intimately familiar since their headquarters are located in an adjacent city with an identical occupational tax and yet their own employees didn't seem to understand the nuance of this tax to which their own employees are subject. What kind of payroll company doesn't understand the payroll taxes in their own jurisdiction?

Gusto- Handle Payroll like a Pro

Comments: Overal, it's a fantastic and easy to use system with great referral opportunities. For a smaller business or start up, it's incredibly simple to get started and they will handle the majority of the concerns around taxes and reporting, which is crucial to ensure is done correctly, as payroll can quickly become your biggest expense AND your biggest headache if you aren't set up for success.

Pros:

Gusto is incredibly easy to utilize as both a user and payroll processor. I can quickly navigate my benefits, paycheck history, edit direct deposit and review my performances and help track my teams expenses for the month and quarter. It's incredibly efficient compared to some of the legacy companies, than can be complex. While we don't have an overly complex payroll, we've found no real issues.

Cons:

Deposit time. Some of our users report not receiving direct deposits until later in that afternoon, vs the day before, or the morning of payday.

Good choice for payroll & benefits for small companies

Comments: We used them as a payroll & benefits provider for a company with about a dozen employees and contractors.

Pros:

It was pretty easy to make payroll adjustments for both W2 employees and contractors. The health benefits offering is very helpful for small companies.

Cons:

When onboarding a new employee, they don't handle any of the paperwork- meaning a lot of manual time has to be spent working on that.

An intuitive tool to manage time and performance

Comments: Relatable performance experience in streamlining HR tasks with access anytime, anywhere.

Pros:

Managing goals, training and objectives has become quite effortless. It is easy to find hire and reward the right talent with Gusto. It is also a wonderful online HR tool which helps us in empowering our employees.

Cons:

Customization is not satisfying for me. It was not easy at all to setup this tool. Until now, some icons remains unchanged due to failures.

Gusto: for the simplest of paychecks and those who don't need support

Comments: Support is terrible. They never seem to have an answer and you can't call them, they have to call you. Miss the call? Submit another request. I've been told 3 times I'd have a supervisor or specialist call me back and never received that call. They are unable to properly calculate payroll taxes, telling me the only way to do it correctly was to change our employees' W4 EVERY MONTH. That was their suggestion. It's so strange to me that they are so popular. If you use Gusto, check the federal withholding and I hope you don't mind that they will calculate your salary employees' hourly rates (based on what you enter as their estimated pay) and print it on each paystub.

Pros:

Not much. The direct deposit did always go in next day, so that was nice.

Cons:

Support was terrible. Chat never worked and if you miss their support call, you put in new request.They are also only able to calculate fed withholding for simple pay plans (straight hourly or salary with no commission). They calculate witholding as if each paycheck is the exact same each month.If you make $10K on your first paycheck of the month and $900 on your 2nd of the month, they will withhold $0 in federal withholding for the second paycheck, leaving you with almost $11,000 in untaxed income. They can't fix this. They also said they HAVE TO print an hourly rate on my salaried employees' paystubs, even though it shows 0 hours and they are paid a salary.

Ok until its not...just say NO

Comments: Their customer service is the absolute worst. Seriously, if you ever need help, it takes days to get a response and then you will get multiple people. If you call in, you will wait, and then the person you get won't know the answer and will pass you to the "correct department" who will then have multiple people "help" you via email. They will say they will call you; they won't. They don't care about their customers. They don't care about loyalty. They don't care if they overdraw your bank account multiple times. Its sad, their interface and feature set are nice, but the problems that come when any little thing goes wrong- its a nightmare- go read through other reviews, those who have had problems have all left their platform. I thought it was just "those people" as I had minimal issues for 2 years. Then I finally had the big issue. Had their customer service been responsive, accepted responsibility, or made any attempt to keep me as a customer, I might have stayed. They didn't.

Pros:

User interface for employees is ok. It looks nice.

Cons:

For those searching if Gusto is a good choice...its not...I thought it was...had a few hiccups, nothing major...and then they overdrew my account, cool fixed it quickly, then I switched our benefits to them. They messed up the withdrawl dates, blamed me and then [sensitive content hidden] clearly stated they made the change), and then took no responsibility for it. Worst than that, then they penalized me bc the change they made overdrew my bank account bc it pulled two months of benefit premiums and then wouldn't change my processing time back. After SEVEN different people "helping" and "responding" to my issue, I switched. While I like their feature set, its not worth the massive headache that comes when any little thing goes wrong- steer clear!!!

Bravo, Gusto!

Comments: Overall our experience with Gusto was positive and I would recommend checking it out.

Pros:

Gusto is perfect for small to medium size firms that want an easy interface for both admins and users.

Cons:

Sometimes Gusto can be too simple and doesn't offer everything competitors did at the time of using it.

Gusto is super great for Small Employers

Comments: Great experience, I would use them again if I go to a super small company and their customer service is great also.

Pros:

Easy to use for administrators and employees.

Cons:

Not user friendly for companies over 50 employees.

Gusto Review

Comments: Overall I would recommend Gusto and say that it works very well.

Pros:

I enjoyed the simple user face of Gusto. It was easy to navigate and find everything that I needed.

Cons:

When I had questions, it often took a while for customer service to get back to me. When they did, they were very helpful, but it often took some time.

Gusto has some nice features but it's unreliable and has terrible customer service

Comments: Overall we're disappointed and it's caused a lot of issues with our business that could have been avoided.

Pros:

There are some nice features and a sleek user interface.

Cons:

It's unreliable with payroll deposits and the customer service is terrible.

Gusto review

Comments: My overall experience has been great so far.

Pros:

The options for different gift cards is what I like best.

Cons:

There was nothing I disliked about using gusto.

Amazing experience

Comments: Value for money ,easy to use,
Good features.

Pros:

Gusto is the best overall payroll, gusto let you run payroll in minutes, with automatic state.

Cons:

Unlimited payroll runs, transparent pricing .