Which accounting software is better for small businesses? Gusto or QuickBooks Payroll? The answer to that question depends on a lot of personal preferences. With so many similarities, some people might find one more user-friendly than the other. While neither option is perfect, there are essential differences between them that should be considered when making your decision. Gusto is a cloud-based payroll software that allows quick and easy payroll processing.
On the other hand, QuickBooks Payroll is accounting software that offers more features than Gusto. Gusto and QuickBooks are online payroll solutions that may help you handle all aspects of payroll, including taxes, direct payments, and even contractor wages. But, when compared to one another, how do they fare? After extensive study and side-by-side comparisons, gusto emerges as the frontrunner, offering more payroll benefits for lower prices. We go through each one’s pros and flaws in detail below.
Pros and Cons of Gusto
Pros
- Several payroll options help automate the tax process.
- Various pay rates and schedules are available.
- Contractor payments are simple to make.
- Capabilities for time tracking
- Requests for time off
- It allows you to build job descriptions and provides policy templates.
- Phone assistance that is dedicated
- Updates on compliance that are proactive
- Allows you to submit offer letters through the internet.
- Allows you to add on a 401k and commuting benefits, among other things.
- Employee access for the rest of their lives
- W-9s and W-2s are among the forms that may be e-signed and stored.
- Allows you to create and sign your worker’s compensation policy rapidly.
- Employees may self-create accounts that they can access at any time.
- Gusto debit cards are available to enable workers access to their money.
Cons
- Does not provide foreign payroll services.
- Does not provide payroll services to home employers.
Pros and Cons of Quickbooks
Pros
- There is no startup price.
- Payroll is unrestricted.
- Direct deposit the same day
- Automated payroll functions
- State and federal tax filings that are fully automated
- Features of direct deposit
- Payroll for Contractors
- Various pay rates and schedules are available.
- E-signature functionalities were incorporated.
- Capabilities for time tracking
- Checklist for custom onboarding
- If you make a filing mistake, you’ll be protected up to $25,000 in penalties.
- Google Workspace integration
- Experts are available to assist you by phone or chat.
Cons
- Health benefit add-ons are not included.
- It is more expensive to submit 1099s.
- Fees may apply if payments are made in various states.
Management & Employee Self-Service: Gusto
Employee self-service may help you save time throughout the onboarding process and your payroll processing. Distributing each employee’s related tax paperwork becomes a simple automated operation with employee self-service capabilities. Employees may readily see their pay stubs and record their hours worked by logging in. They may also readily update their data.
Though QuickBooks excels in other aspects of payroll, employee self-service is not one of them. By a long way, Gusto takes the cake. Even if they’re no longer employed by your company, after you’ve implemented Gusto as your payroll system, all of your workers will have access to a self-service portal where they can examine paystubs and tax paperwork. The ease of use doesn’t end there. Your workers may choose to use a Gusto debit card to access their money and check their balances using the Gusto Wallet app. Gusto wins in more ways than one regarding management and employee self-service.
Gusto’s Multi-State Tax Filings
Depending on the payroll software you use, you may encounter many difficulties and state government agency hoops to jump through if you operate with remote workers who reside in various states. Because each state has its unique tax laws, your tax filings may vary from one another. You may have to spend a significant amount of time registering with each state agency. Gusto, fortunately, provides remote employee payroll in all 50 states. It saves you time and money by automating your tax filings with the appropriate agency every time you process payroll, regardless of where you or your workers reside. Gusto also guarantees they are up to date on the most recent changes in tax filing standards, ensuring that your payroll is correctly filed. This function might save you a lot of time when it comes to filing your taxes. At the same time, QuickBooks Payroll can monitor several states’ taxes if an employee transfers from one to the next. Unfortunately, it does not support workers who work in many forms simultaneously or over a pay period or year.
QuickBooks Payroll Solutions are specialized payroll solutions.
QuickBooks does a better job of highlighting the many types of payroll systems available, both by industry and company size. On the other hand, Gusto does not specialize in customized payroll solutions. Instead, it promotes itself as a fully flexible payroll system that can be used by any company, regardless of size or sector. Through its QuickBooks industry solutions page, QuickBooks assists you in selecting the best payroll solution for your business. Restaurants, construction, retail, churches, non-profits, legal, professional services, and manufacturing businesses may benefit from its sophisticated payroll solutions. Alternatively, you may choose QuickBooks payroll options depending on the size of your organization—freelancer, small business, or midsize business. Gusto may not provide a lot of standalone accounting options that QuickBooks does. This is why it is beneficial to companies in the construction and legal sectors.
Gusto’s Pay Cycles
The frequency with which you pay your workers and contractors is determined by pay cycles. The more versatile your payroll software is, the simpler it will be to design and automate pay cycle rhythms that will keep your company running smoothly. For example, gusto may set payment plans weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. You may also put everyone on the same pay plan and organize pay schedules by compensation type, employee, or department. Once you’ve onboarded and established an employee start date, you may quickly configure this on the dashboard.
On the other hand, QuickBooks only allows you to set up a payment plan using four distinct pay frequencies: monthly, twice a month by date, every other week, and weekly. Pay schedules may also only be sorted by workers. QuickBooks has more rigorous pay schedules, but this may not be an issue if you’re a freelancer or manage a few people. Gusto is the apparent winner in the pay cycles category because of its vast array of payment plan options. In general, the more flexibility you have, the better you’ll be able to guarantee that every person is compensated precisely as you need them to be at the required intervals without skipping a beat.
Gusto’s All-In-One Advantages
What’s not to like about software that does everything? You won’t have to worry about payroll tool integrations, compatibility concerns, extra technical assistance, or additional expenses. Gusto’s all-in-one approach to payroll makes it a clear winner, as it provides solutions to assist you with payroll, recruiting, onboarding, and delivering comprehensive employee benefits that go above and beyond the fundamentals.
Gusto’s recruiting and onboarding capabilities, for example, provide you the opportunity to send job offer letters. Then, when your prospect agrees, you can be confident that you’ll be prepared to onboard them with a specific list of onboarding chores that you can create on your Gusto dashboard. Gusto also allows you to centrally manage and store all of your onboarding and employee documentation, allowing you to access them whenever you need them quickly.
Do you have to deal with Requests for time off? Gusto arms you with plenty of time-tracking tools to make PTO and scheduled time off a seamless process. It lets you customize your paid time off policies to calculate any PTO liabilities automatically. Its time tracking features also enable you to approve the time tracked by your contractors as they work on projects.
Gusto’s all-in-one solution to payroll now includes Gusto Wallet and direct access to trained HR consultants for any further assistance you may need. While QuickBooks goes into great detail about the accounting tools, it can provide as part of your payroll process, it ignores the larger picture of HR requirements, onboarding, and even full employee benefits. When deciding between Gusto and QuickBooks, this is something to keep in mind. While one product may seem like an all-in-one solution, your company requirements will ultimately determine which tool is the most excellent fit for you.
Gusto’s HR Hiring and Onboarding
Gusto’s recruiting, and onboarding solutions are strong product offers that QuickBooks lacks. Enthusiasm allows you to send offer letters, establish onboarding checklists, and develop employee self-service portals. It also stores all your employee paperwork and tax records in one location.
While QuickBooks can help you handle your payroll, you’ll need to utilize a third-party interface for extra HR-related tools to manage your employees. QuickBooks focuses on payroll administration’s cash flow, tax, and accounting elements. However, enthusiasm provides you with a complete environment beyond the metrics.
QuickBooks Time Tracking
While QuickBooks and Gusto are practically tied, QuickBooks provides a complete-time tracking system. You may use QuickBooks’ time clock app on Android or iOS smartphones to monitor, submit, and approve any of your employees’ time from any location with an internet connection. Employees can quickly clock in and out with a single click and a monitor when they take breaks and when they don’t.
For on-the-go monitoring, QuickBooks’ time tracking function includes geofencing technology. This is a feature that Gusto does not provide, but it might be valuable for organizations that depend on field service staff.
Finally, the time tracking function in QuickBooks allows you to produce timely reports. You may use them to forecast future work costs, manage payroll, and boost profitability. Consider QuickBooks as a more specific option for time tracking if your firm depends on it in several ways.
Gusto’s Employee Benefits
Employee benefits are unquestionably an area where Gusto excels. Gusto provides a comprehensive list of available employee benefit add-ons from which to pick. 401(k)s, 529 college savings plans, commuter benefits, life and disability insurance, HSAs, and FSAs are examples of these.
When it comes to employee perks, QuickBooks isn’t as comprehensive. However, it provides health benefits via a third party and levies premiums as well as costs for worker’s compensation. As a result, enthusiasm emerges as the apparent winner in a product offering that incorporates employee benefits.
QuickBooks Inventory Management
Inventory management is a service that Gusto does not provide. However, QuickBooks provides a highly effective inventory management dashboard for product-based firms.
It interfaces with popular ecommerce systems like Shopify, Woocommerce, eBay, Amazon, Squarespace, and even Etsy, allowing you to keep track of all inventory levels from a single location. You can also observe which goods perform better on specific platforms from your cloud-based inventory dashboard. You can also sell wholesale, automate product listing across channels, monitor and fulfill orders, automate shipping processes, set custom shipping rates, and automate product listing across channels. This is an attractive solution for product-based and B2B firms who wish to use a platform like QuickBooks for more than simply payroll.
Conclusion
Gusto is the winner. You should choose a payroll tool like Gusto if you want complete payroll software that does more than assist you in performing payroll and tax calculations. It’s not only comprehensive in terms of payroll, taxes, time tracking, and HR features; it’s also extraordinarily configurable and provides plenty of freedom for your company. While QuickBooks is a solid option that can help some employers take care of standard payroll needs, it isn’t the pretty robust solution you’d want if you’re a growing business with various employees and contractors. It also doesn’t quite offer the same level of flexibility as Gusto, though it does offer a Direct deposit on the same day. You’ll often have to arrange and input information in QuickBooks manually.
In conclusion, QuickBooks seems better suited for small or seasonal firms with simple demands. Check out our post to learn more about Gusto, QuickBooks, and other leading payroll services. Gusto is a payroll platform that allows users to set up their own company. On the other hand, QuickBooks Payroll is an accounting software package that helps businesses manage their finances and taxes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Gusto suitable for payroll?
A: Yes, Gusto is good payroll software.
Does Gusto payroll integrate with QuickBooks?
A: At the moment, we do not offer a payroll solution.
Related Tags
- gusto payroll reviews
- gusto vs. QuickBooks payroll Reddit
- gusto payroll cost calculator
- ADP vs. enthusiasm vs. Quickbooks
- ADP vs. QuickBooks payroll