Gusto Reviews

Pros

Gusto is a one-stop solution for human resource and payroll management. It has a very easy-to-use user interface, with employee management, payroll tracking, employee hiring features as well. Also, customer support is quick and effective.

Cons

The product is a bit on the costlier side, which makes it difficult for small startups to adopt to such useful software.

Pros

Gusto is very user friendly. I used Gusto when I started my consulting business and the time to set up was less than 10 minutes. Time saved when operating a business is crucial.

Cons

For my business needs, there was nothing I disliked

Pros

It had a modern user interface. It was easy to access

Cons

Absolutely no support. Failed to file and pay taxes withheld

Pros

I like the quirky personality and fun images. Finance and Payroll is a very serious area of business. It is refreshing to have a program like Gusto add a little spice to things. They have a decorated, prancing pig as a logo. :)

Cons

I came very close to damaging my vocal cords at the end of our first year. The State of Wisconsin sent me a letter directly saying that we owed $16,000 in back payroll taxes plus over a thousand dollars in interest and penalites. I called Wisconsin myself and quickly determined what the problem was. It was a simple error Gusto made when filling out our annual gross pay and withholding report. The first 3 months were compliled by me. We started with Gusto in November. The 4th quarter number Gusto sent to the State was a total of all 3 of my quarters PLUS the total for the 4th quarter. We had approx. $4,000 in taxes due to the State each quarter. All money was paid, by myself for 3 quarters and Gusto for the 4th quarter. However, the man who signed the form at Gusto entered $20,000 for the 4th quarter and $32,000 (3 qtrs X $4,000 plus $20,000) for the annual total. We had paid $16,000. This created a shortage of $16,000 according to the automated computer at the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. Hence, the letter filled with interest and penalties.

The lady Wisconsin DOR was very helpful and much to my surprise, I was able to correct the annual filing myself online with her help on the phone. The $16,000 was no longer due. However, everyone in the entire State of Wisconsin system was powerless to eliminate the interest and penalties.

I had to make well over 10 phone calls and emails just to talk to someone at Gusto who could help me. I explained that the immediate problem was cleared up by me. However, Gusto was responsible, per how ALL payroll companies sell their services, for the interest and penalties since Gusto was entirely to blame.

It was SO FRUSTRATING that the first people answering the phone acted as though they had NO IDEA that Gusto even processed government payroll reports. Once, while ON HOLD, and intermittently talking to a live person for 45 minutes, I asked this entry level phone answerer which office they were in: east coast or west coast? They said that they COULDN'T ANSWER!!! We went round and round with excuse after excuse why he couldn't answer. Starting with "I don't know" and ending up with "I'm afraid that you may buy an airplane ticket to my city, hunt me down and violently attack me." I was livid. But that wasn't why I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Finally, after 10 contacts and many failed promises to have a manager contact me, a top woman manager in the appropriate department came to the phone after another half-hour plus wait. We reviewed the situation. Again, this was a VERY SIMPLE SITUATION. An honest mistake that anyone who has ever filled out a government form, or a middle school math test, could easily have done and in hindsight would be able to see their error and admit that they made a mistake.

The Gusto manager said several times, which I remember like it happened yesterday: "I will get back to you after reviewing this situation, and IF Gusto made an error, we will remedy the situation." IF IF? IF GUSTO MADE AN ERROR?!?!?!?!?! IF I lost my cool demeanor. I am mild mannered and like to laugh and joke. Be a nice guy. Hence, wondering what the weather was like and which sports teams the man on hold would like to talk about. Except that he thought that I could possibly be a violent threat even though, east coast or west coast I was a long airplane flight away!! This manager said "IF" one too many times. I SCREAMED THE OBVIOUS! "GUSTO WAS UNDER CONTRACT TO FILE THE PAPERWORK. GUSTO PERSONNEL SIGNED THE PAPERWORK. I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT OTHER THAN I CLEANED UP THE MESS GUSTO CREATED. NOW GUSTO NEEDS TO PUT ON THEIR BIG GIRL PANTS AND TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR ERROR. THERE IS NO IF INVOLVED." {How can I make the word IF twice the size and bold so it stands out more? Standard text doesn't come close to how furious I was. First over 10 contacts I initiated. Then being told...'IF Gusto made a mistake" when the mistake was obvious.

Pros

Very user friendly/easy to learn and utilize even for a non HR/payroll professional.

Cons

Nothing - we have been very happy with using Gusto after having used two different payroll services in the past.

Pros

Gusto is the best interface that I have used. Simple, easy to navigate, I like the payday email reminders and they have fun graphics which is just a bonus.

Cons

They have an app, I never used it, in fact I cannot recall them advertising that it exists. That might be my own negligence.

Pros

Gusto is fantastic! This completely simplifies the entire payroll process. Very easy to set up and easy to enter on a weekly basis. I highly recommend using Gusto!
Added bonus being able to get benefits and work comp. through them also!

Cons

Honestly, I don't really have any cons for this software. We love it! It has saved us a ridiculous amount of money and time compared to other payroll providers.

Pros

Track your hours worked. See all your benefits in one single place.

Cons

This is actually a great application and i have not encountered any problems yet.

Pros

The constant improvement, easy to use and manage.

Cons

How easy I can access to my profile and also connect with other coworkers?

Pros

Gusto allows for individual employee engagement which provides efficiency for the HR team while allowing an autonomous management of personal details such as PTO request, pay stubs, downloading W2, review process, hiring database and onboarding.

Cons

Limited access to individual managers unless an admin.

Alternatives Considered

Paycom

Reasons for Switching to Gusto

Cost effective and ease of use. Reporting was good. Great depository for HR docs to be digitally signed to ensure a signature was obtained.

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

Alternatives Considered

Rippling and Justworks

Reasons for Switching to Gusto

We initially went for Gusto because it seemed like the most cost-effective and was the easiest to get started with as a self-serve product

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.

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?

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.

Pros

What I like most about Gusto is the ability to go in and change a payroll if needed after you submitted it - It is also very easy to use and the support they give if needed it quick.

Cons

They weren't able to add multiple local jurisdictions for one check to break the Gross pay between the days worked. Also the reports are straight forward always compared to other payroll platforms. You had to build reports and the Quarterly reports get released later than normal payroll platforms.

Pros

How easy and straightforward the system is not complicated and identifying errors so that payroll can be completed

Cons

Very simplistic unfortunately it doesn’t have all the data categories. You’re larger more expensive systems will have however, if you have the time that they worked, and you use a application that integrates it the most bang for your buck.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Time

Reasons for Switching to Gusto

Easy to set up and price effective

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.

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.

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.

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!!!

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.

Pros

Easy to use for administrators and employees.

Cons

Not user friendly for companies over 50 employees.

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.

Pros

There are some nice features and a sleek user interface.

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

There was nothing I disliked about using gusto.