Gusto’s core features include payroll, benefits administration, time tracking, tax compliance, onboarding, analytics and reporting and employee self-service.
Payroll
Running employee payroll through Gusto is simple and flexible to your company’s needs. You can set a salary or hourly wage in an employee’s profile and set up payroll on autopilot to let Gusto run payroll for you automatically on the schedule you set.
We found the process of setting up a payroll schedule pretty easy. You simply choose a schedule—Gusto automatically suggests one for you—and confirm state tax details based on where employees are located.
When running payroll manually, Gusto takes you through three steps. First, you check hours and earnings for all employees. The next step prompts you to enter any paid time off that employees took during the pay period. This is also where you can approve or deny pending time-off requests. From there, Gusto lets you preview the payroll run in the third step before submitting payroll. Upon submitting, Gusto confirms that you’ve successfully submitted payroll.
For contractor payments, whether domestic or international, the pay rates and pay amounts don’t automatically populate as they do with W-2 workers, so it’s a bit more time-consuming, as you have to enter this information manually. Otherwise, it’s quite simple. Just click “submit,” and that’s it.
If you pay anyone by check, you have to manually print checks Gusto generates. It doesn’t have an option to automatically print and mail physical paychecks.
Tax Filing
Gusto takes care of calculating and filing payroll taxes for you and your employees, and it keeps a record of pay stubs accessible to employees through their online profiles. Employees also get an email each payday letting them know their money’s coming in.
Gusto files employee W-4s and contractor W-9s as part of their profile setup, and it creates and distributes W-2 and 1099 forms each January for tax returns. You can also elect to have Gusto automatically file a new hire report in an employee’s state when you hire them.
Recruiting and Onboarding
Gusto has its own native applicant tracking tool available to Gusto Plus and Premium customers, but if you choose the Simple plan, you can integrate an external ATS, such as JazzHR or Greenhouse.
Gusto helps get new employees onboarded quickly, whether they are working in person or remotely. Features including background checks and benefit enrollment are paired with cloud-based services such as e-signatures and state tax registration to create a streamlined onboarding experience.
It was easy to manually add an employee or independent contractor by entering their name, email address and other crucial information. The platform offers a checkbox option to invite the added employee or contractor to fill out the rest of the information themselves. Though this process was straightforward, entering several people manually could get tedious for companies with high hiring volume.
Gusto software incorporates plenty of personalization components as well, helping to acclimate new hires and integrate them into the team. From sending digital offer letters to setting birthday reminders, the platform allows you to connect with employees even from a distance.
It was very easy to create an offer letter template that you can reuse to save time. First, you give your template a name. We named our template after a specific title a company might hire for, such as “Sales Development Manager.” In the next step, you customize the offer letter with built-in fields that change according to the new employee’s name, compensation and other variables. Finally, you add the company signature to make it official.
When a new employee signs their offer letter, Gusto facilitates the rest of the onboarding process to ensure they get properly set up for their new job even before day one. It even provides the option to send a digital welcome card to help the new employee feel welcomed.
Benefits Administration
When navigating to the benefits part of Gusto’s platform, we like that it recommends benefits such as health, commuter, life insurance and retirement plans:
- Health benefits: Purchase group health, dental and vision insurance plans through Gusto, and administer benefits on the platform. Employees will be able to opt in or out of benefits through the platform, as well. You can also administer flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts.
- Wellness benefits: You have the option of adding custom benefits, such as housing or wellness stipends to your employees’ paychecks, and Gusto will automatically track and tax them accordingly.
- Commuter: Manage a commuter stipend or company car perks.
- Life insurance: Purchase employee life insurance plans through Gusto and administer benefits on the platform. Employees can opt in or out of the benefit through the platform.
- Retirement: Administer a variety of retirement plans, such as Traditional and Roth 401(k).
Gusto goes beyond the standard benefits that HR platforms offer with its college savings, financial wellness and charity matching benefits:
- College savings: Gusto partners with Gradvisor to administer a 529 college savings plan in which employees make post-tax contributions to build up savings for college tuition.
- Financial wellness: The Gusto Wallet app provides more than just a self-service portal for employees to view their pay stubs. Employees can also split up their paychecks into different accounts or cash cards and see how they spend each paycheck. Employees also have access to high-interest-yielding savings accounts.
- Charitable giving: Gusto helps employees automate charitable giving by deducting donations directly from their paychecks and donating to a chosen charity. Employers can choose to match any percentage of employee donations to make their contributions go further, and you can set per-employee match limits.
We tried adding a gym wellness benefit, and it was simple to set up in Gusto. We just had to give the benefit a name, enter how much the employee should contribute from each paycheck and how much you as the employer contribute to the benefit for each pay period. When adding employees to the benefit, though, we had to enter the deduction amounts each time, making it potentially time-consuming.
As the admin, you can see an overview of any active benefits your company offers. This overview shows the benefit’s terms and details as well as the number of eligible and enrolled employees.
However, we noticed when navigating to the benefits section of an employee’s profile or generating a benefits enrollment report, their benefits didn’t show up, but they do show up from the employee’s point of view when navigating to their profile.
Time Tools
The time tools module within Gusto contains time off management and time-tracking tools. In the time management section, Gusto suggests common time off policies including paid time off, sick leave and holiday paid leave. Otherwise, you can create your own time off policy. Whether you choose an existing policy or create a new one, Gusto guides you through the same step-by-step process that entails:
- Choosing the type of policy it is—paid time off, sick leave or holiday paid leave
- Giving the policy a name
- Selecting which employees the new policy should apply to
Your new policy then appears in the time off dashboard. We found time off policies easy to set up, and we like that Gusto suggests time off policies to include.
From the employee perspective, we were able to view accrued and used time off in the web browser version of Gusto. To initiate a time off request in the browser, you have to choose from 12 different time-off types, such as bereavement, sick leave, parental leave and other types before entering the dates requested and an optional memo. It was easier to request time off in the Gusto Wallet app, as we didn’t have to choose the time-off type first.
However, we weren’t able to see the time off requests on the admin side. The main dashboard displayed pending time off requests for review but clicking on that to-do item brought us to the main time off page in the platform. Time off management features might work better in the Plus or Premium plans.
Gusto’s Plus and Premium plans come with time tracking tools for payroll or project tracking, so employees and contractors can track their hours using the Gusto Wallet app. Their hours then sync up with payroll, making it easy to run payroll tied to an hourly rate. Though these features are available to Gusto Plus or Premium customers only, customers opting for Simple can integrate with several external time tracking tools such as Deputy, Homebase and QuickBooks Time.
Reporting
Gusto includes a reports library for the categories of time tracking, contractors, payroll and more. Otherwise, it’s easy to create your own report related to either employee information or payroll by selecting what variables to include.
Employee Self-Service
Gusto allows employees to access and manage their own information by offering individual profile accounts. Users can download the Gusto mobile app, or sign in from the web, to view payday data, edit tax details, see available PTO and even clock in and out right on their phone. In addition, the platform shares income insights and personal tax documents such as W-2s.
Testing Gusto out from the employee’s point of view, we were able to easily update our personal details, view and enroll in benefits and more.
Compliance
Gusto helps you stay compliant with local labor laws with its labor law poster store. You can print labor law posters to post for on-site employees or send e-notices to remote employees. The service keeps you updated and automatically alerts employees of any changes to the law to keep you compliant. It costs $10 per month for up to five employees, plus $1 per additional employee per month.
Gusto also has built-in ACA, COBRA, HIPAA and ERISA compliance for benefits administration.
