Best Payroll Services

As it usually is, filling out all of your employee records is by far the most tedious and time-consuming task. There's quite a lot that goes into it but, fortunately, their website walks you through the whole thing on a step-by-step basis. Plus, you can invite your employees to enter the bulk of the information for you. Of course, it isn't just their information and all of the different types of taxes that you will have to deal with. Using the company's services, you will be able to distribute the benefits, including paid time off and sick pay. Aside from a number of presets, both the website and the application will provide you with the opportunity to add all kinds of benefits. Simply choose the "Add Benefit" option and create a new entry.

When it comes to actually running the payroll, Square's payroll services will provide you with a convenient screen that features the list of all of your employees in a single tab, including their pay rates. In this tab, you'll be able to enter the number of hours that each employee worked in the appropriate columns like Regular, Overtime, Additional (for commissions, bonuses, and similar elements), and Tips.

Square's website is optimized for mobile viewing but the same cannot be said about its payroll-processing elements. Since there's no mobile application available as of yet, you might run into an issue or two trying to pay your employees via a smartphone. That said, with iPad or any other gadget that boasts a larger screen, you should be able to get the hang of it. Plus, Square Payroll is second to none when it comes to summarizing the entire payroll run. The Withdrawal Summary tab will display the exact amount of money that will be taken out of your checking account and go into direct deposits and taxes. The tab also includes the total net pay for all of those paychecks. And if you happen to run into any issues along the way, the company's representatives are available via phone, email, or Twitter.

All in all, if you're running a small business that relies on individual contractors more than it does on the full-time employees, this is easily the best payroll service for you. Their website presents outstanding user experience and navigating through the sizable number of automation options won't prove to be much of a challenge.

Another thing that we liked about Intuit is its setup wizard. Despite the fact that the company doesn't offer live setup help, this is easily one of the most intuitive wizards in the business. There's quite a lot of information and a number of forms that you will have to fill out but the setup wizard walks you through the whole thing and makes the process as easy as it could be.

The said information includes elements like pay schedule, pay types (with a pretty generous number of choices), and deductions (both employee and company contributions). While you're building the profile for each of your employees, the website displays a sampled paycheck with projected numbers for income, taxes, and deductions. It may not seem like much but it helps paint the general picture of what it is that you're dealing with here.

Unfortunately, we cannot give the same amount of noise to Intuit's interface. Being one of the older options on the market, the design could certainly benefit from an update or two. At the time, it seems a bit clunky and inconvenient. Some pages may bombard you with information while others do not offer enough of it.

But if there's one more thing that Intuit does well, it is the payroll service's comprehensive and customizable report system. In fact, the company offers more reports than just about any payroll service on the market. Their iOS application is exceptional as well. With it, you will be able to work with employees, taxes, forms, and historical data. You'll also have the ability to issue a pay run right from your smartphone.

The only real gripe we have with this service is the fact that you will have to cough up $99 a month for their Full Service plan in order to receive access to automated tax submission. Though the Enhanced plan provides some guidance and the platform does the calculations for you, it will still be up to you to actually file those taxes.

Other than that, what we have here is probably one of the best payroll services for sole proprietors. Thanks to their flexible options, you will be able to automate parts of the process without overpaying for the unnecessary features. It isn't the most comprehensive service but it is certainly one of the more straightforward ones.

Part of what makes Paychex special is that it is one of the very few payroll service providers that offers HR and benefits administration and probably the most exceptional service out there when it comes to the sheer scale of the latter. With Paychex, you will be able to create and manage basic health insurance plans (dental, vision, medical). Their website also offers insurance options for short- and long-term disability insurance.

And though these options aren't necessarily unique, the same can't be said about Paychex Insurance Agency. Under the somewhat ambiguous name lies a group health insurance service that is often immensely useful when it comes to helping small businesses save money on group rates for carriers, deductibles, co-pays, prescriptions, and hospitalization costs. The platform also includes retirement plans and startup services.

All in all, because Paychex payroll services are part of a larger human resources ecosystem, their platform offers far more flexibility in terms of shaping every payroll run. That means that you will be able to create records that include personal preferences of your employees and a number of small but important details. On top of that, Paychex is the only platform out there that will allow you to create and define an unlimited number of custom fields. As far as the actual payroll processing is concerned, the company also features an extra option or two that you will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. For example, if you know ahead of schedule that one of your employees ought to receive a bonus after the next payroll run, you can go ahead and schedule that bonus instead of wasting your time with some sort of a reminder.

All things considered, Paychex is probably the most comprehensive payroll service on the market. With its HR and benefits administration, the platform will prove to be useful for small business ventures as well as for larger companies that would like to automate part of the HR department's responsibilities.

Then, there's the company's Complete package that will cost you the same amount of money per month but an extra 12 bucks for every employee. In addition to all of the aforementioned features and a number of standard elements that we didn't feel the need of mentioning, the Complete package will also provide you with HR and benefits administration tools. Using the latter, you will be able to utilize 401k management, document management, and an employee directory.

The benefits administration tools (BA for short) offer a number of services but, most importantly, they will give you medical (including dental and vision), life insurance, and disability coverage. This is a sophisticated system that runs an automated algorithm. The algorithm suggests personalized health plans for your budget based on current payroll data, location, number of employees, and their average salary.

As for the HR tools, Gusto's payroll services include considerable self-service features. With the help of the latter, your employees will have the ability to choose their own health plans, add dependents, and schedule plan changes based on upcoming life events.

Though the Complete package is by far the company's most popular plan, Gusto also offers the so-called Concierge deal (149 a month and 12 bucks per every employee). With it, you will receive the benefits of previous plans and you'll get access to certified HR pros as well as a dedicated support system that is available to subscribers.

Now, we did mention earlier that Gusto is probably the best payroll service when it comes to user interface and interaction. But it would be difficult to explain why that is the case without providing a long series of screenshots that detail everything from the setup process to all of the pages of their platform. Since the company offers a free trial, we'll let you experience it for yourself. Simply put, what we liked so much about it is that we never felt stuck on any part of the process and it was always easy to figure out how to get to the next page or how to access the desired tools.

So, to sum it all up, there are a lot of payroll services out there but Gusto manages to stand out from that crowd. The platform's visual appeal makes it a pleasure to use. The simplicity of the interface makes the services as convenient as possible and the number of HR and BA tools make Gusto one of the most complete options on the market.

We like to believe that any service is only as good as its customer support. And with Patriot Software, customer support is one of the company's strongest suits. The whole payroll automation thing is confusing, exhausting, and often difficult. So we cannot stress enough how important it is that Patriot Software's payroll experts are there for you and you can always rely on them to help you complete this task.

When it comes to business accounting, managing payroll is by far the most complicated part of it. You cannot afford to screw up employee compensation. And neither can you miss on payments to benefits providers and tax agencies. Plus, even if you're running a small business, your employees might have multiple deductions, which would add further complications that you'd be better off outsourcing to Patriot Software's specialists.

That said, it isn't like the company's payroll services platform is particularly complicated. They have recently added a setup wizard that makes the entire process substantially easier. The wizard uses its digital magic to walk you through a series of screens and those screens include detailed descriptions that will help you get started running payrolls. The wizard will also provide you with links to a number of useful resources, like the ones that describe the way to obtain a state unemployment number (commonly referred to as SUTA).

Finally, we would be remiss to wrap things up without at least briefly mentioning the flexibility of the platform. It's easy to say that these payroll services include the absolute majority of tools that you'd like to see in these types of services. But not all of those services could rival Patriot Software's flexibility in terms of creating entries for the hours that employees can work (regular, double-time, holidays etc) as well as the types of pay that your employees will be able to receive (the types include bonus, commission, and expense reimbursement).

In conclusion, just the fact that Patriot Software is probably the most affordable payroll service on the market already makes it a particularly attractive option for small business enterprises. On top of that, the company's customer support system is simply exceptional, making the platform particularly suitable for inexperienced employers.