It can be a long, frustrating process to track employee hours and time off, and then apply it to their wages when it comes time to run payroll. Small businesses expend time and energy to be sure that each pay period goes off without a hitch.
Perhaps the best way for a small business to save time and resources is by partnering with a payroll provider that makes it easy to run payroll, file taxes, and stay mindful of compliance.
Introduction to Gusto
Gusto is a full-service payroll platform that is easy to use and exceptionally smart. It offers intuitive payroll features, coupled with benefits management and compliance support. Gusto’s ability to run payroll and file taxes automatically even impresses the experts.
A key advantage that Gusto offers is automated payroll management, i.e., it enables the users to set up and schedule payments and the system handles the rest. With these automated options in place, Gusto helps to eliminate human error from the payroll process and is thus less prone to errors.
Now that you know what prime advantages Gusto brings along, let’s unpack its primary features!
An Overview of the Prime Features of Gusto
1. Dashboard
Gusto’s dashboard shows a preview of your to-do list, reminders, upcoming events, and celebrations. You can even customize the HR features that your business uses most to make it easier to manage your team.
You can send a digital birthday/anniversary card to your employees right from the dashboard. You can personalize the card and even see its preview before sending it. Want to remind yourself about upcoming events? Gusto’s dashboard lets you add reminders to your calendar.
2. People
Here, you can take a look at a complete list of your employees and contractors, along with their roles in your company and contact numbers. On top of that, you can create your organization chart by simply adding managers for each of your employees.
If you are looking to grow your team, you can create offer letters, add details of new employees/contractors, and set up documents directly under this module.
3. Run Payroll
This is the core feature of Gusto. It offers a suite of robust functions that make it a breeze to compute and complete the payroll process.
Multiple States
When you set up Gusto, it lets you add the tax details of your State. Gusto runs payroll in all 50 states. If you fill the required details, Gusto will take care of the rest.
Flexible Payment Schedule
You can choose to pay your team weekly, bi-monthly, twice a month, or monthly. It also supports hourly and salary-based payment cycles. Plus, unlike other payroll providers, you can run payroll as often as you’d like at no extra cost.
Multiple Pay Rates & Schedules
Based on your employees’ time tracking and PTO during each pay period, you can set different pay rates. You can even personalize the pay schedules depending on your team’s needs.
Bonus & Off-Cycle Payroll
Off-Cycle Payroll means making payments outside of a regular payroll cycle. Reward team members for their excellent work with a bonus, gift, or commission. Then update their reimbursements and additional earnings, and schedule the payment.
Net-to-Gross Calculations
When you enter the net amount that your employee should receive, Gusto will determine what you need to pay before taxes. This feature is especially helpful for bonuses, which are taxed differently than regular payroll earnings.
Reimbursements
You can pay reimbursements to your employees at the same time that you run payroll.
Deductions
You can add deductions pre-tax for benefits and post-tax for other features like wage garnishments. This helps when calculating payroll and filing taxes accurately.
Garnishments
For child-support garnishments, Gusto automatically sends payments to the state for you, provided that you’ve set up deductions.
Payroll Reports
Gusto allows you to generate and download various reports. This includes payroll history, bank transactions, paid time-off, contractor payments, tax payments, and more.
Pre-tax benefits
Gusto not only calculates your taxes but also files them with the right government agencies each time you run payroll. It allows you to administer benefits like medical insurance, 401(k), commuter benefits, college savings accounts, etc. Deductions automatically sync with payroll.
Federal R&D Tax Credit
For companies that are eligible for Federal R&D Tax Credit, Gusto supports claims for them.
Integrations
Gusto supports a wide range of software integrations for expensing (syncs expenses with Receipt Bank), accounting (Xero, QuickBooks, Clover, Trainual, and more), and time-tracking (TSheets, Homebase, Deputy, Ximble, etc.).
4. Pay Contractors
If your business works with contractors, Gusto makes it easy to process contractor-specific payroll. You can set the payment date, include wages, reimbursements, bonuses, and make the payment.
5. Time Tracking
With Gusto’s time tracking integration capabilities, you can free yourself from managing spreadsheets or keeping track of it manually. It lets you track your team’s working hours right from the portal. You can review their working hours and run payroll.
Whether it’s clock-in and clock-out system or you add hours all at once, Gusto keeps a tab on everything. The details are stored in the corresponding employee’s account along with time-off records, pay stubs, and more. If employees forget to edit their hours, Gusto sends a reminder at the end of each pay period. Similarly, managers get a reminder to approve of their team’s hours. Once managers approve hours, they are locked for the pay period and employees won’t be able to alter them. You can then submit the locked hours to payroll in just one click.
6. Time-Off
You can review all of your employees’ time-off requests here. You can also apply different filters to view approved as well as paid time-off requests. Moreover, it provides a detailed look at the time-off request date (from-to date), description (the reason for time-off), and request (number of hours). Gusto also facilitates the admin to record employee time-off.
Here, you can view and create different time-off policies like paid time off, sick, paid holiday, and more.
7. Benefits
As many employees don’t have retirement savings plans, they are more likely to save when employers offer them benefits. Gusto lets you integrate 401(k) with payroll. Employee contributions are automatically deducted every pay cycle. Plus, employees can manage their own accounts and adjust their contributions according to their needs.
With Gusto, companies can also easily manage a multitude of other benefits like Medical, Dental, Vision, Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, Commuter, and Health Savings Account.
8. Stay Compliant
Gusto automates a lot of compliance items for you. Besides, you can also set up workers’ compensation insurance for your employees.
Your workers’ compensation insurance company will help if an employee gets injured on the job. You can call the workers’ compensation insurance specialist to understand how to submit a claim.
On top of these excellent features, Gusto offers other modules like Employee Surveys, Reports, Company Details, Referrals, and Documents. It’s a full payroll automation platform that allows for quick access to information and hassle-free navigation. Besides helping you stay compliant, it makes offering employee benefits a reality, even for limited small business budgets.
Thanks to its ease of use, over 100,000 companies use Gusto to manage their payroll. With integrated benefits, time tracking, compliance, and expert customer support, Gusto is the go-to Payroll solution for your business.
You can explore more about Gusto on their website, or the SoftwareSuggest Profile Page.
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