Gusto Reviews

Gusto's self-onboarding and employee communication is leaps and bounds ahead of their competition, as is their clean, user-friendly interface.

Customer service has been struggling recently. There should be a way to have a salary that doesn't change when the hours are changed. The other downside is that if there is an error, you have to void the entire payroll. An option to void a single check would be a great improvement.

We are finally done with Intuit Payroll. So difficult to actually talk to a live person when you need help. I did a little research and found that Gusto does payroll for small companies so I decided to give them a try. My thought was that it certainly can't be any worse than Intuit. And WOW - did they ever Overdeliver! The absolute best thing about Gusto is that you don't have to go through a bazillion menus on the phone trying to figure out which number to press so that your call gets routed to the right person. You actually get to talk to a live person when you call their company. Setting up all of the employees has been very easy, nothing difficult to figure out, the flow from one screen to the next is not complicated at all. So far - we love Gusto!

The only thing that I think they could improve on would be integrating your existing numbers into their system. In order to be able to print accurate W-2's at the end of the year, I have to enter my employee paystubs from January 1 through today (May) into their system. It makes sense, I know it has to be done. It is just a tedious job and I'd rather not do it. Although I must say, that the 3 times I ran into a snag while entering the information, I called them and the issue was fixed instantly. Their customer service ROCKS!

Auto-sync and tax payments are the best features of the product that go above other products. Gusto will file the taxes for you, will send corrections if need be, and keeps track of all of that for your ease of mind. Their customer service team is above reproach, always willing to look into a problem and resolve it as soon as possible.

This is nitpicky, but the layout of the website often changes slightly. It would be nice if there was more consistency in the format. But the tool itself is above reproach.

Gusto allows you to run payroll, effectively, upon sign-up. The system has numerous features that help to ensure that you are reminded when payroll is supposed to be run (as an administrator its something that is frequently forgotten when extremely busy), automatically tabulates and prepares tax documents for employees and contractors and even assisted with the preparation of forms for SBA Loans during the COVID-19 pandemic. The software is straightforward and is fairly self explanatory. Gusto is also a great onboarding tool that allows you to collect a significant portion of information needed to effectively onboard an employee and comply with state and federal requirements (E-verify, etc.) Overall, the software is excellent for its price point and well worth the money.

The only con associated with Gusto is the lack of customizable report options. Obviously, this con is more of a company or need specific issue. We found that utilizing Gusto for certain reporting needs for data generation was cumbersome or not really possible. However, I must also say that there have only been two instances over the last 1-2 years that we have encountered this problem and were able to successfully obtain this information from other resources.

I really like utilizing Gusto for payroll, onboarding, and tax management. The system is really easy to use and it streamlines processes very well. The payroll calculation is so easy and it only takes about 5 minutes to run payroll which is great.

A few things I do not like about Gusto is the glitches, accountability, and response time from their support team. The system seems to glitch quite frequently which needs to be rebooted. We have had some issues with Gusto completing our taxes incorrectly or late which caused us to pay late fees and it was quite frustrating. Their response time on support tickets can be multiple days which is frustrating when it comes to urgent notices.

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

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?

Overall, it's a nice piece of ux design. The reality is that the criterion for usability for most goods in this space is simply that they work. With enough enthusiasm, most tasks become not only feasible but also simple. It's as simple as a few natural mouse clicks.

When I try to build a report that fits my exact specifications, I'm often forced to generate more data than necessary just to get to the data I want. It would be more convenient if you provided a part where I could pick and choose the data points that would go into my report.

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

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

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

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.

Easy on boarding and constantly communicating with our management staff has kept Gusto in its place of being our payroll management system for our employees.

It’s a little pricey, especially since we don’t use all of the available features but it’s a good system overall.

Onboarding employees and contractors is incredibly intuitive and simple through Gusto. Along with extending a position offer, I'd submit basic information about the new hire to Gusto and they would take care of collecting their direct deposit info and getting W4s, I9s, and other onboarding documents completed.

Payroll processing was a breeze through the system, allowing quick approvals of hours for non FTE and summary totals of total payroll and total benefits before running. You can't miss payroll without trying, either- there are timely reminders of when approvals are due, including when payroll dates were off the regular schedule because of holidays, etc. During tax time, Gusto generated W2s and 1099s that we could review quickly and send out.

Gusto especially shined during Covid-19 when SBA loans were being issued. They created a feature that would walk you, the business owner, through the process and help you apply for loan forgiveness with all backing data.

Finally, customer service and access to information is a top feature. As someone without an HR background and on a small team, our Gusto rep became my go-to source.

I was extremely happy with Gusto and didn't experience any pain points.