Gusto

Based on our experience, we found Gusto.com to have very bad and questionable business practices along with unhelpful customer service. We decided not to use them and within an hour of signing on, we tried to delete our account, and, incredibly, they would not allow that. We did NOT approve them adding or withdrawing a micro amount. We did NOT press the link on their site giving approval to access our bank account, but they accessed our account anyway even though we explicitly did not give approval. That was a huge breach. We would NEVER trust them with our payroll and we are lamenting that we had thought to give them a try. Terrible experience. If you sign on with them and then decide to not use them, they will not allow you to fully delete your account and will insist on keeping access "indefinitely." Beware of this company for payroll and do a lot of due diligence before signing on with them.

These people do not know what they are doing and apparently run this thing with AI. They screw up every single thing they touch. DO NOT buy the CorpNet deal for $400+ --- they do absolutely nothing for you - you are just giving them money for nothing. My account (1 employee-me) is totally screwed up - workers comp - state tax - anything they touch! BEWARE

We were using this for payroll and it was so screwed up. Have been fighting them for a year with their BS. They say I received two payments out of three and it was not true. It was so messed up my boss had to keep fighting them and had to pay us by check though Gusto was still taking money. Also they didn't take state or federal taxes out of the 3 they said I got. I will probably get stuck with paying even though I am barely making enough to live. In my opinion personal opinion they stole my money and many others. I meant to give a 0 review.

I've just tried Gusto, but am having a terrible experience. It has taken hours or days to get customer assistance, and then they have to call the real customer service.

Also, Gusto said approval would take 24 hours, but instead took 11 days, and now say there is an additional 15 day wait period (!). I was not able to get in touch with support and so my first payroll was nearly a week late, and now when trying to submit my 2nd payroll 2 weeks later, it was indicated it will be late again, because they've added (without notice) a waiting period on top of taking more than 24 hours for approval.

I also don't like that they have sent debit cards to my employees against their future pay - so creepy - like payday lending. My account is still on hold, yet my employees have already received debit cards from Gusto.

These guys screwed up my W2 and for MONTHS I have been emailing different people for a solution! Not intentionally! Someone would repeat my case in an email & EVERY few days there was a new people emailing me! Now 3-4 months later & these people still have not corrected my W2! They have the FULL pay stub that is missing but continues to not add the 933.00 payment made for state taxes. Everything else was added except this so it appears that I owe what I already paid & that's not right! They will cause me to be audited & everything due to their negligence! I have been stressing about this for months! This is so EVIL

I've been using Gusto for more than two years and it's been fantastic. I made some initial payroll mistakes, my fault, and they spent a chunk of time helping me fix them and rolling back the issues. I'm writing this review primarily because I saw the negative reviews and found them very unrepresentative of how helpful and hands-off Gusto can be for a small business. I'm very happy with them and have and will continue to recommend them wholeheartedly.

Gusto has been a nightmare for us. We have been working for three weeks to correct a bank payment routing error. Gust has been debiting an account that should be credited. Today they sent us a dunning letter from Kelsey in their collections department. In addition, they made a mistake in transcribing our EIN number so tax payments are not being credited by IRS to the proper tax account. None of the account representatives have been able to correct these problems. Their user interface and telephone help interfaces seem to be designed to be as difficult as possible to use in an effort to discourage customers from seeking assistance. I strongly recommend that, if you need payroll processing services, you look elsewhere. Gusto is terrible.

Gusto accidentally withdrew $2k from my clients account for no reason. It's way more expensive than Quickbooks Online, yet doesn't even provide half the service. I thought switching from Quickbooks would have been an easy endeavor, but it's been one hot mess after another. There's one client that it keeps $#*!ing up the payroll tax returns for, which is quite astounding how often they $#*! up such a simple payroll tax filing for a small business with just two employees

It was ok until I tried to change a checking account to my square checking mind you my regular business checking account was still valid and on there! I get suspended immediately saying I can't use that type of checking account (figured since all my money goes through there be easier) but no problem I could have just changed it back to my original business account which was still on there. Nope, drastic, absurd and extreme measure to suspend. After weeks of back and forth chats and emails that take 4 days to respond I decided to change companies oh and yes weeks later they unsuspended it. No thanks bye bye horrible customer service and response time.

Eight months after we closed down our company and several customer support customer support tickets later, this company is still debiting our account for $40 per month. This will be handled through small claims court.

Gusto was authorized by my state to take care of tax filings. I verified they were authorized by the state to take care of taxes on my behalf. They said they were rejected and could not file taxes and if this is not handled in 13 days they will freeze my payroll account. I looked into and corrected the issue and gave Gusto the go ahead. I let them know the issue was corrected and please resubmit. They continued to email me, on multiple occasions, telling me they need authorization. It took them OVER 10 days before finally resubmitting the tax forms, and, ONLY after me getting loud with them and threatening them with an attorney if tax fines occurred. I am less then happy with them and am looking for an alternative service. I can no longer trust them with my finances.

Started with Gusto in 2016 when it was a startup. Was super user friendly and a great company to work with. In the last few years as it has grown and scaled, it has honestly become one of the absolute worst companies to deal with. Their customer service is terrible. The benefits administration is absolutely atrocious. They give conflicting information. The call center has no authority to do anything other than read help articles to you. They refuse to connect you to anyone who can help. For example, during my open enrollment period I had an employee who intended to waive coverage because he was getting married and getting on his wife's plan. He happened to be out of the country (getting married) when the open enrollment period was closing. I called Gusto to find out what to do in that situation and the call center assured me not to worry that they would automatically waive coverage if he took no action. Instead, I found out days later that Gusto automatically enrolled him in the previous years plan. Its been three days and I cannot get anyone from Gusto (by phone or email) to provide actual assistance on this issue. This was after three weeks of getting literally zero help trying to navigate the complex process of selecting health insurance plans and other benefits. They should stick to payroll because Gusto has absolutely no idea what it is doing when it comes to benefits.

I have been a customer of Gusto since 2018 or so. I had 5 companies registered with Gusto. I have paid thousands of dollars in fees, payroll taxes, state taxes through Gusto. After covid our business has struggled and we are finally able to start back up within the last month or so. I tried logging into Gusto to receive information about a potential for us to get an ERC return. I was unable to log in. I reached out to Gusto and they informed me that our accounts were closed and they are exercising there rights to end the relationship. I now went to two other payroll providers and got denied; which is odd. I got an email from Gusto stating we owe $49,000 on our account. This is untrue as we did not run payroll this year. We ran small 1099 payments earlier in the year through my company 1 Holdings and that was it. We have been scammed and are being penalized for this. For these companies I have not ran any payrolls in 2023 and 2022; if in 2022 one payment. Business has not been where we want to run payrolls or carry employees or contractors. Now when we are ready we have been skewered by this company when we do not owe them this money. I wish I could give a 0 star rating

Absolutely horrible support! DONT USE THIS COMPANY. AFTER GETTING you SIGNED UP. ITS GAME OVER
YOULL BE ON HOLD 2 hours to speak to someone in Thailand..

I recently had the unfortunate experience of using Gusto, and I must say, it was utterly disappointing on every level. Where do I even begin?

First and foremost, their responsiveness—or rather, lack thereof—is appalling. Attempting to get a simple query addressed felt like trying to communicate with a brick wall. It seems they have a knack for ignoring their customers, leaving them stranded in a sea of frustration.

But the cherry on top of this abysmal experience has to be their handling of tax documents. Retrieving essential tax documents became an odyssey fraught with unnecessary hurdles and delays. It's as if Gusto delights in making the simple act of accessing vital financial information an arduous task.

And let's not even get started on their so-called "customer service." It's abundantly clear that their support staff are either poorly trained or simply indifferent to the plight of their users. Dealing with them felt like talking to robots programmed to deflect responsibility and gaslight customers into believing that their issues were somehow their own fault.

Moreover, Gusto's integration with Xero is a complete disaster. One would think that a platform aiming to streamline HR and accounting processes would have a seamless integration with popular accounting software like Xero. But alas, Gusto's integration efforts seem to be stuck in the dark ages, causing nothing but headaches for users trying to reconcile their financial records.

And let's not forget about their incompetence when it comes to setting up state taxes correctly. It's mind-boggling how a company supposedly specializing in HR and payroll services could botch something as fundamental as state tax setup. This oversight not only reflects their lack of attention to detail but also exposes their users to potential legal and financial ramifications.

In conclusion, Gusto is a complete and utter mess of a platform. From their unresponsiveness and convoluted processes to their incompetent customer service and lackluster integrations, using Gusto is an exercise in frustration and futility. Save yourself the headache and steer clear of this debacle of a service.
CONS
Per-person pricing gets costly at scale
No invoicing or accounts receivable features
A lot of upfront manual data entry
Customer service is awful
The bigger their error the more likely they are to ignore, delay and gaslight

After my husband's passing, they continued to debit his bank account, when his account was supposed to be closed. Horrible customer service.

I've used Gusto payroll for years and have been happy. We decided to move our benefits over and it has been a complete nightmare. They over deducted employees and we could not get an answer why. When the benefits ported over, they had in their system that benefits skipped when they didn't, so their system calculated overcharges. They would state that it was fixed but then something happened on their end where it wasn't cleared out and it would over deduct again. They spontaneously started taking benefits from an employee who was not on benefits.
I couldn't get any answers. During open enrollment, numbers were incorrect when employees signed up. They couldn't understand why it was a big deal. Employees elect based on what you have in the system. If they go to sign up and you're telling them it's X when it's Y, it affects their decision. They were correcting midway through open enrollment.

Shortly after porting our benefits over, we had open enrollment. In error, they put the company was sponsoring a 300k life insurance policy which didn't even exist. This went on for weeks. I paid my controller to audit everything. We sent everything all the new benefits rates. After a month into the plan, an employee reported being over deducted for dependents. Gusto responded it's because there is no employee contribution when we cover 75 percent, always have. Every conversation we had and the census sent over showed we cover 75 percent. Now I have employees being grossly overcharged and it's four days later and Gusto hasn't responded even. We're going to be running payroll again and it's going to incorrectly deduct. After this was discovered, a new hire just told me they didn't sign up with our insurance because it was so high, that they would have had the accurate numbers shown up. It was only high because Gusto incorrectly entered the contribution. It seemed to be fine in November but for some reason is showing no employee contribution. Their pure negligence is impacting people's lives and they don't care.

Gusto does not know how to do garnishments correctly and refuses to take accountability for their mistakes.
I have an employee who has two child support garnishments. Gusto was on the telephone with the child support agency here in Ohio with me this morning and were told that their "way" of doing things does not meet state of federal collections law.
Essentially, on September 8th Gusto withheld 87% of my employee's check. The max for an individual with dependents in the home is 50%.
Gusto claims since they are a "self-pay" system it is my responsibility to do the calculations not them. THAT IS WHY I PAY THEM! Child Support confirmed it is the payroll company's responsibility to get it right, that is their service.
Gusto then said it was my responsibility to get Child Support to refund the money. Child Support said no.
So now I need to tell my employee to sue me and then I can sue Gusto. All because they refuse to take ownership of their mistake.
They also refuse to write the correct formulas for their payroll system so this does not occur again.
Previously, another employee had a garnishment that was entered into the system and since there was not enough money to pay the full amount of the garnishment they withheld $0.00!. They should have at least withheld 25% of the check. Now I am in trouble with the local court for not complying with the order. My attorney is working on this; but again Gusto refuses to take on any responsibility for this.
I will be pursuing action against them for the money I will need to pay my employee for the overpayment of the garnishment and for the legal fees I will incur with the local court of common pleas for their mistakes and refusal to accountability for their mistakes.

We started using Gusto in 2017 and it was great for us. As a very small company using Gusto is OK, and maybe it still is now. However the last few years as Gusto and our own company has grown, Gusto has really has become one of the absolute worst things I have to deal with as an owner.

Their customer service is terrible. The benefits administration even worse.

Our company now is about 25 employees and we have seemingly outgrown Gusto's support. We are paying for the most expensive plan (previously Concierge and now called Premium) and the "premium" customer support is terrible. Previously with the concierge plan, we were assigned dedicated team of people that helped us and also knew about the company and previous issues we've encountered. That was excellent, but it has all changed. Now, even with the premium plan, the support is a call center and each time you call it feels like you have to start over explaining things for the Nth time. The call center has no authority to do anything other than read help articles to you. If you have a tax issue, they need to route it to their tax team, which you are NOT allowed to have a conversation over the phone with them to even explain the issue. This results in emails back and forth, taking days just to get on the same page, and weeks before any resolution. Mind you that these are time sensitive tax issues.

The benefits support team is even more of a mess. For example, this past year for open enrollment, we had our company select our plans based on what Gusto provided as the broker. After we finished enrollment, Gusto came back and said that they could not issue our medical insurance plans at the price THEY quoted and forced us to have a second round of open enrollment. In doing so, they somehow removed our HSA plan benefit and offered our employees high deductible plans w/HSA eligibility, WITHOUT actually having an HSA. They also changed the company contribution amounts and created another issue that took way too long to resolve. Because your issue ticket is thrown around the call center teams, they give conflicting information and it can take forever to get anything resolved.

Since the pandemic and what was seemingly an exceedingly great resignation by their support staff at the time, the service has dropped off a cliff. We are now transitioning off of Gusto due to their inability to adequately process and support payroll for us.

Since the pandemic and what was seemingly an exceedingly great resignation by their support staff at the time, the service has dropped off a cliff. We are now transitioning off of Gusto due to their inability to adequately process and support payroll for us.

If you are a very small company (>10 employees) and very simple payroll, then Gusto could work for you. Otherwise, Gusto is expensive enough now that other more established vendors like ADP or even a dedicated accounting firm can cost less and provide significantly better services.