Gusto Review 2023: Is It Right for Your Business?

If you employ only contractors, Gusto has a low-cost contractor plan that’s priced at $6 per person. It comes with unlimited pay runs, Form 1099-NECs at year-end, four-day direct deposits, and new hire reporting. What’s great about this option is that Gusto won’t charge you monthly fees in case you don’t have any contractors to pay for the month.

While Gusto can handle international contractor payments across 95 countries, this functionality isn’t included in its contractor-only option as of this writing. You have to subscribe to one of its three plans (Simple, Plus, and Premium) and subscribe to its “international contractors” add-on.

Gusto offers a wide range of add-on solutions that include benefits plans, health insurance broker integration, and international contractor payments.

Gusto payroll for small business owners can handle both single and multiple state pay runs (although, you have to upgrade to at least its Plus plan to get multistate payroll). Gusto also allows you to set employees up on different pay schedules—some weekly and others on a semimonthly period. If you need to add a bonus, commission, or reimbursement payout to an employee’s weekly or monthly salary, Gusto’s payroll module has editable fields where you can type in the amount for payment.

With Gusto, you can also add short personal notes to indicate the type of reimbursement or additional earnings processed. (Source: Gusto)

You also have to manually input your hourly staff’s total hours worked—both regular and overtime hours—directly into the system. While this is manageable for only a handful of employees, this isn’t advisable for small businesses with more than 10 staff. However, there are ways to avoid manual entry of time data into Gusto:

• Sign up for one of Gusto’s premium plans, which comes with time tracking tools.
• Use one of Gusto’s partner time tracking software (like Homebase and When I Work) that integrates seamlessly with its payroll solution.

If you’re paying salaried employees and don’t expect any changes to pay runs, you can set Gusto to run automatically. You can also do the same for hourly-paid staff, provided they have fixed working hours.

Automatic pay runs can be easily turned on and off through Gusto’s payroll settings.
(Source: Gusto)

Gusto calculates, files, and pays all taxes (federal, state, and local), which is notable because some services require you to know which local payroll taxes you’re responsible for paying. It also promises to pay any penalties resulting from its mistakes. And, to top it off, year-end tax forms come with each plan at no extra cost. This is unlike some of the payroll providers that charge you an additional per-employee fee to prepare and distribute W-2s and 1099s.

If an employee has an IRS levy or child support garnishment, Gusto can withhold the applicable amount from the employee’s payroll. It even sends the funds to all states, except South Carolina, at no additional charge.

A screenshot of Gusto’s “Tax and compliance” that shows helpful links to tax forms, tax credit claims, and important filing dates.
(Source: Gusto)

Employee benefits is an area where Gusto shines. Small businesses that otherwise wouldn’t be able to offer perks to their employees can easily sign up for one of the many benefits Gusto offers.

• Medical insurance
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Life and disability insurance
• 401(k) retirement savings plans
• Health and flexible savings accounts
• Workers’ comp (via AP Intego)
• Commuter benefits
• 529 college savings
• Financial management app called Gusto Wallet

Employers and employees can manage benefits online through Gusto’s one-stop-shop online portal. (Source: Gusto)

However, health insurance is limited to certain states. To confirm if the state where your business is located is covered, check out the health benefits map below.

Gusto has its own time and attendance solution that hourly employees can use to enter hours worked. Employees can also download Gusto Wallet, its free financial management app, as it has clock-in/out capabilities. However, as of this writing, your contractors won’t be able to use Gusto Wallet to track their time. Note that this feature isn’t included in Gusto’s Simple plan. You have to subscribe to its higher tiers to gain access to it.

The platform can also help track your PTO policies, making it easier to manage leave accruals and balances. If you want your employees and people managers to raise and approve PTO requests online, you have to sign up for either its Plus or Premium plans.

With Gusto, all approved employee hours automatically sync to its payroll tool for processing. (Source: Gusto)

Available to Plus and Premium plan holders, Gusto’s recruiting solutions are great for creating a company job board and sharing your job postings to attract qualified candidates. You can even share your job board across social media sites (like Facebook and Twitter) and add it to your company website.

If you want to reach a wider audience, Gusto offers sponsored job postings through its partner, Upward. For as low as $25 per campaign, you can select the job boards where you want your job posting to appear. Or, you can use Upward’s algorithm to identify where to distribute and publish your open job.

If you don’t want to pay extra to promote your job listings, Gusto can post your jobs for free to job search engines (such as Google Jobs) and more than 100 job boards (like ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn). However, you have to manually turn on Gusto’s “Free Distribution” option so that it can automatically post your jobs. You may opt to leave this off if you only want to distribute your open jobs via Gusto’s custom job boards.

Gusto’s job postings will remain live on job search engines and job boards for 30 days from the day you enabled the “free distribution” option for the job post. (Source: Gusto)

Creating job posts in Gusto is relatively easy, provided you have all the information you need, like the job description and skills required. While it allows you to copy job descriptions from another file and then save it directly in the job post, the process would be more efficient if the system offers sample job descriptions you can customize as you create the job post.

To automate hiring tasks, Gusto also allows you to add members of the hiring team (such as the hiring manager and other stakeholders) to job posts. Apart from serving as interviewers for the role, hiring team members can view applicant information, complete interview scorecards, leave comments on applications, and move candidates through the pipeline.

If you want to see all job postings, Gusto has a “recruiting” dashboard that shows your open jobs, including when it was created. It also provides the numbers of applicants who applied for each role and are moving to the interview process.

A screenshot of Gusto’s job posting dashboard (Source: Gusto)

With Gusto, you can add application screening questions that require applicants to provide free-form responses and select an answer from multiple choices. While you can create your own screening questions, Gusto has pre-set questions that ask about the applicants’ years of work experience, desired salary, work eligibility in the US, and more.

Gusto’s screening questions are included in its job post creation process. (Source: Gusto)

Once applicants submit their applications online, members of the hiring team can view their resumes and track where they are in the hiring pipeline. Gusto also allows you to move candidates through various stages, such as “interviewing,” “hired,” “not hired,” and “dropped out.” However, only the system administrator can move candidates who passed the selection and interview process to the “hired” stage.

While job seekers can submit their applications through online job postings, you can manually add applicants and upload their resumes into Gusto—provided you’re a system administrator. (Source: Gusto)

Gusto’s hiring support helps set it apart from basic providers. Small businesses looking to manage payroll and taxes appreciate the paperless onboarding process they can use to bring on new hires. Once you set up the new employees in the software, Gusto will send an email prompting them to start their online accounts where they can fill out all new hire forms (including Forms I-9 and W-4). It even submits new hire reports to the state—all at no extra cost.

Aside from letting you add new hires into its system, Gusto’s “Hire & onboard” module shows the status of each employee’s onboarding tasks. (Source: Gusto)

While the Simple plan comes with standard offer letters and onboarding checklists, upgrading to Gusto’s higher tiers will allow you to customize these tools. You can even assign, delegate, and track tasks, which helps streamline onboarding processes. If you need other HR documents, its online resource center has job description templates, labor law policies, hiring best practices, termination requirements, and an employee handbook builder.

Gusto comes with email and software provisioning/deprovisioning tools that enable you to create, remove, and manage employee accounts with more than 20 business software. This is helpful if you want to set up the online tools that new hires need while ensuring that resigning employees can only access their software accounts until their last working day.

Here are some of the business systems included in Gusto’s software provisioning solution:

• Asana
• Box
• Trello
• Dropbox
• Monday.com
• Google Workspace (includes Gmail)
• Microsoft 365
• Freshbooks
• QuickBooks Online
• Salesforce
• Paymo
• Teamwork
• 15Five
• Zoom
• Slack
• Webex

With Gusto’s Premium plan, you can send out anonymous monthly surveys to help you understand employee sentiment, gauge staff happiness, and identify areas for improvement. It’s also a good tool for deploying surveys that tackle specific topics, such as learning and growth opportunities, benefits, morale and retention, and work autonomy. Gusto even lets you select the survey topics and questions for each month. Aside from getting insights on a variety of topics, this helps keep employees engaged and improve survey participation rates (because of non-repeating survey topics and questions).

A look at some of Gusto’s survey topics and questions (Source: Gusto)

Plus, all of Gusto’s survey topics include an “employee happiness” question or statement, such as “I recommended this company as a great place to work.” To respond to this statement, survey respondents can choose from five answers—from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” This is great for getting valuable insights into your employees’’ sentiments about work and your company.

For new Gusto users, the system will automatically release your selected survey the Wednesday after you turn on this feature. Then, it will automatically send new surveys every month following the same schedule as your first one. Your employees have a week to complete the survey. After the survey closes, you can view the responses through Gusto’s “Team Insights” dashboard.

Gusto’s “Team Insights” dashboard (Source: Gusto)

Gusto’s performance review module (which is available for Premium plan holders) is designed to help you assess whether or not employees are meeting their goals at work. You can use it to identify your employees’ development opportunities and highlight skills they excel in. It also lets you create performance review cycles, track the progress of reviews in real time, share feedback, set completion deadlines, add manager review summaries, and gather insights.

Gusto has a question builder for creating simple employee self-evaluation and manager review templates. (Source: Gusto)

If you use third-party systems to manage your business processes, such as accounting and team collaboration, Gusto integrates with a wide range of software. Here are some of its partner solutions:

• Accounting: FreshBooks, QuickBooks, Xero, and ZipBooks
• Collaboration tools: Asana, Box, Monday.com, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Slack, Dropbox, Trello, and Zoom
• Expense management: Expensify and Dext Prepare
• Hiring: ApplicantPro, BreezyHR, Greenhouse, JazzHR, Lever, Recruitee, and Teamtailor
• Learning management: EasyLlama, Ethena, Trainual, and Traliant
• POS: Shopify, Clover, Upserve, and SpotOn
• Time tracking: 7shifts, ClockShark, Homebase, When I Work, Deputy, Sling, Ximble, and QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets)

With Gusto, you don’t have to worry about data and system security. Gusto’s production servers, databases, and supporting services are hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS), with data encrypted using AES-256 key encryption.

In addition, its platform is equipped with multi-factor authentication and fraud monitoring tools. Manager permissions also allow you to provide limited-access permission to user accounts. Gusto even has a dedicated team that conducts system vulnerability tests and responds to security issues.

Gusto doesn’t offer a free trial, as of this writing. However, it has a demo that you can access on its website for free. It also follows a month-to-month pricing scheme; with no annual contracts, you can cancel your Gusto plan at any time.

Gusto has a financial management app, called Gusto Wallet, that your employees can use to receive payroll, view payslips and tax forms (W2s), track and save funds, and even clock in/out for work. It’s free to download on Android and iOS devices.

Apart from Gusto Wallet, the provider doesn’t have a mobile app where employees can raise PTO requests, view benefits plans, and update personal information. However, these features are available in Gusto’s online self-service workforce portal. Meanwhile, payroll administrators who want to run payroll while on the go can access Gusto via the web browsers of mobile devices—provided an internet connection is available.

Pay-as-you-go workers’ compensation plans are available via Gusto’s partner, AP Intego.