Best Payroll Services for Small Businesses in 2024 (2024)

Gusto

Most User-Friendly

• What We Love: Gusto has intuitive features that make it easy for businesses to run and manage payroll.
• Who It’s Best For: Small-to-mid-sized businesses that need to pay team members across different states and countries
• Alternatives: Gusto’s platform may be limiting for large organizations that want more advanced tools. If this applies to you, consider ADP Run, which is more scalable.

Gusto is best known for payroll processing, though it also offers other HR features, such as recruiting, onboarding, benefits administration and time tracking. When we tested Gusto, we noticed how sleek and intuitive the interface was as well as how many video tutorials, step-by-step guides and other resources were offered. We noted that this makes it easy for even small businesses and startups without a ton of HR experience to use Gusto’s features.

You can pay domestic contractors and employees with automated payroll runs through the AutoPilot feature. Gusto also supports contractor payments in more than 120 countries, and you can use the employer of record service, Gusto Global, to pay international employees. If you just need to pay contractors, there is a pared-down version of the platform at a lower monthly rate.

It’s easy to get workers set up in the system, as you can invite new hires to self-onboard, minimizing the manual work for your HR team. From there, your team has a good amount of flexibility regarding how and when you pay them, including the ability to run off-cycle payments and assign multiple pay rates to one employee.

Within the platform, you can easily navigate to the payroll function from the tab in the main menu. From there, you find all upcoming tasks listed, including any pending payroll runs. Clicking “Run payroll” initiates the process. And, we liked how easy the platform makes it to add bonuses, tips and other earnings using the dedicated button listed next to each team member.

View of a pay grid for a pending payroll run in Gusto (Source: free trial)

Gusto supports payments via direct deposit for employees and contractors, though employers can print paper checks if preferred. There’s also the option to pay employees with prepaid debit cards, though this doesn’t apply to contractors. An added bonus is the Gusto Wallet app, which helps workers with self-service tasks, such as viewing their pay stubs and accessing their tax documents. There are even unique tools for saving and budgeting.

Compliance with labor laws and tax regulations is often a sticking point for smaller organizations. However, Gusto handles all of this for you, reporting any new hires and sending all federal and state filings. As guidelines change, Gusto notifies you and updates the platform accordingly.

Justworks

Best for Small Businesses

• Handles payroll duties for small businesses
• Easy employee self-service portal

• Can be more costly than some competitors
• No global payroll processing capabilities

Rippling

Best for Global Payroll

• What We Love: Rippling offers comprehensive payroll processing, which includes international employees, as part of its integrated platform.
• Who It’s Best For: Medium-to-large companies or scaling small businesses looking for an integrated solution to manage IT, finance and HR matters
• Alternatives: The platform may be too robust for organizations that are just looking for payroll help. A more streamlined solution, such as OnPay, might be a better fit.

Rippling takes a unified approach to HR, IT and finance, giving businesses a single source of truth for all key back-end operations. It offers a full-service payroll solution as part of its HR cloud, which includes payroll for both U.S. and international employees.

The platform processes automated payroll runs with automatic calculations and filings for payroll taxes at the local, state and federal levels. We like that Rippling offers a 100% accuracy guarantee, providing businesses with the peace of mind that their employees will be paid accurately and on time.

When we attended a one-on-one demo of the product, we saw how sleek and intuitive the interface was. It has tiles on the main dashboard to navigate to various functions and applications within the system (akin to a smartphone).

During the demo, we also noticed Rippling’s customizable reporting. There is a no-code report builder that you can customize to track the exact metrics that matter to you with minimal technical expertise required.

View of the main dashboard in Rippling (Source: live demo)

The customizations don’t stop with reporting, though. There are hundreds of pre-built workflow templates that users can deploy out of the box or customize to meet their unique needs. Rippling also helps administrators set customizable user permissions, giving them granular control over what each employee can view and edit within the platform.

Given the robustness of the platform, we’re not sure if it makes sense to use Rippling solely as a payroll processor. If you have complex needs, though, you can build a custom solution for onboarding, time tracking, reporting and other functions. Given that each solution is tailor-made to the customer, Rippling only provides a starting price, not pre-set packages.

ADP Run

Best for Growing Businesses

• What We Love: ADP Run offers various features, including tax and compliance support.
• Who It’s Best For: Scaling small businesses that are looking for a payroll platform to accommodate their evolving needs as they grow
• Alternatives: ADP Run offers many of its HR features, such as time tracking, as add-ons. If you want HR functionality in your base plan, consider a comprehensive platform, such as Gusto.

ADP Run, also called RUN by ADP or RUN Powered by ADP, is a payroll and HR software. Though it’s designed for small businesses, it offers all the tools needed to support growing businesses as well. There are four packages to choose from based on your stage of growth, though you must contact a sales representative from ADP for pricing.

ADP Run includes a number of automated features to streamline workflows. For one, ADP runs recurring payroll as well as calculates and files payroll taxes. The provider also covers any fines or other penalties that result from filing errors it makes.

Excluding the lowest plan, ADP provides printing and mailing services for businesses that still pay their employees via check. Other payment options include direct deposit and prepaid debit cards, providing employers with plenty of flexibility over how they pay their employees.

Using the guided demo on ADP’s website, we got a glimpse into the platform, which appeared straight and to the point, perfect for the types of businesses it’s built for. The dashboard features a number of widgets and reports, which could be a bit overwhelming visually. However, it’s easy to edit this and navigate to the other tabs.

You can run payroll over the phone, in the mobile app or online. Online, clicking to run payroll opens up a grid of all employees, including their name and compensation. Before moving to the next step, the system flags any items for you to review. Upon approving payroll, you are met with a summary of the total cash you need to pay employees and a list of reports you could run to analyze payroll data.

The mobile version is even more streamlined with AI technology to help you catch any errors. We like the search bar within the mobile app, which can help you retrieve reports, documents and more with a keyword search. Seeing as our survey data indicates that 67% of HR software users want mobile access to HR functions, this is a major advantage for ADP Run.

View of an advanced search in the ADP Run mobile app (Source: pre-recorded demo)

QuickBooks

Best for QuickBooks Users

• What We Love: Businesses that already use QuickBooks for accounting can add on the payroll function for seamless syncing with their general ledger.
• Who It’s Best For: Businesses of any size using QuickBooks as an accounting software, as they’re already accustomed to the interface
• Alternatives: Companies can find more robust payroll offerings elsewhere with Gusto, Paychex Flex or another payroll- or HR-focused software.

QuickBooks is an accounting software provider that helps businesses track cash flows, send invoices, collect payments and more. Even though the payroll processor is not QuickBooks’ primary offering, we believe it provides the key features that most businesses are looking for when it comes to paying their employees.

In our experience, the platform is easy to use. If you have ever used an Intuit product, such as TurboTax, the payroll interface will look familiar to you.

Summary of financial metrics in QuickBooks Online (Source: pre-recorded demo)

If you already have a QuickBooks Online account, you can activate payroll within the platform or over the phone. Or, you can opt for one of QuickBooks’ standalone payroll plans if you’re not a current user. We like that there is transparent pricing with several plan levels to accommodate varying business needs. Plus, we found it convenient that QuickBooks offers bundled plans for payroll, accounting and bookkeeping.

All plans come with unlimited automated payroll runs for salaried employees. QuickBooks also calculates and files payroll taxes on your behalf. The integration between QuickBooks Online, the payroll processor and the time tracking app can help you save time and avoid manual errors by transferring data seamlessly between them.

It’s worth mentioning that a few of QuickBooks’ most impressive payroll features only come with the higher-tier plans. For example, only the Premium and Elite plans include an expert review of your payroll setup to check for common tax mistakes and ensure smooth data migration. Plus, QuickBooks’ tax penalty protection, which covers up to $25,000 in government penalties, is only in the Elite plan.

Paychex Flex

Best for Insufficient Fund Protection

• What We Love: Paychex Flex is a straightforward platform that offers key payroll features for small businesses, including automated payroll runs and tax filings.
• Who It’s Best For: Small business owners looking for a simple solution to manage payroll
• Alternatives: Large companies that want a comprehensive HR platform to manage personnel might want to look for another system. For instance, Workday is designed for enterprises with complex needs.

Paychex is a long-standing provider of HCM solutions. Paychex Flex, in particular, helps businesses run payroll in just a few clicks, but it also offers a range of other HR capabilities, such as performance management, time tracking, document storage and benefits administration, as add-ons.

Paychex Flex offers three payroll plans to choose from, though it doesn’t have public pricing for comparison shopping. However, all plans include numerous ways to pay employees — direct deposit, pay cards and check printing — as well as payroll tax calculation, deduction and filing.

It’s notable that Paychex offers 24/7 support for all plans, which is hard to find from other payroll providers. We like that the phone number of your dedicated agent is prominently displayed on your main dashboard when you open the application. For top-tier plans, you can even submit payroll over the phone with this specialist rather than approving it yourself online, which can be appealing to business leaders who aren’t as tech-savvy.

View of the main dashboard in Paychex Flex (Source: self-guided demo)

Paychex Flex has several features of note. Starting with the Preview Preprocessing Report, you can review each payroll run to identify any discrepancies or errors before it is approved, finalized and processed. Paychex Flex also offers automatic tip disbursem*nts for tipped employees as well as early access to earned wages for all employees.

The final capability that stuck out to us was Paychex Promise. Available for an added annual fee, Paychex Promise supports you should you not have sufficient funds come payday. Rather than charge you with fees or other penalties, it extends the collection of payroll funds from your account for up to seven days so that you can still pay employees amid temporary cash flow shortages.

OnPay

Best Customer Service

• Straightforward payroll
• All-in-one plan with competitive pricing
• Easy employee self-service portal

• No customizable plans
• No free trial
• No built-in time tracking feature

Wave Payroll

Best for Freelancers

• What We Love: Wave has an easy-to-use platform that supports direct deposit payments and W-2 and 1099 filings for employees and contractors.
• Who It’s Best For: Small businesses that want an integrated tool to manage contractor and employee payments with added functionality for financial management
• Alternatives: Wave isn’t a dedicated HR software, so it lacks some helpful capabilities, such as benefits administration and employee onboarding. If you’re looking for this, you might want to consider OnPay, Paychex Flex or a similar provider.

Wave is quite unique from the rest of the providers on this list. Rather than being a comprehensive HR platform with a payroll function or a dedicated payroll processor, it’s a financial management tool for small businesses that includes the ability to pay employees and contractors with direct deposit.

The platform still includes the necessities, such as employee self-service and year-end W-2 and 1099 tax forms, but it lags behind the other leading providers in a couple distinct areas. For instance, the automated tax filing service is only available in a handful of states, while nearly all the other platforms offer this in all 50 states. However, Wave takes its shortcoming into account with a lower price for states where businesses have to manage filing themselves. Another downside is that there is no phone support. The only available support channel is the chat.

When testing Wave, the main menu had a few tabs that other providers didn’t, including “Sales & Payments,” “Purchases” and “Banking.” That being said, the platform didn’t feel cluttered. Though we wished there was an option for employees and contractors to self-onboard, adding them ourselves was fairly straightforward. It was also easy to set up payroll, as the platform had prompts to walk us through the process and collect the necessary information, such as selecting a run frequency, assigning a signatory and linking a bank account.

View of the guided payroll setup process in Wave (Source: free trial)

The one part about the setup process we didn’t like was that there was a quick note stating that we wouldn’t be able to change the frequency once we ran our first payroll. The note was pretty small, so it’s possible for users to miss it. It’s also an indication of Wave’s inflexibility. Other providers, such as Paycor, allow you to make these types of one-off changes.

TriNet

Best Compliance Support

• What We Love: TriNet is a straightforward self-service payroll solution with the option to outsource compliance to a dedicated expert.
• Who It’s Best For: Small businesses that don’t have the time or resources to handle compliance matters internally
• Alternatives: Businesses that want a bit more flexibility might look for a different platform. A better option might be Rippling, which has similar offerings but more customizations.

TriNet provides a comprehensive solution for managing HR, payroll and compliance. Though you can purchase and use the software on its own, TriNet is best known for its professional employer organization (PEO) service where it handles outsourced HR matters on behalf of businesses. Whichever route you take, TriNet promises to streamline HR workflows, reducing the amount of hands-on time your HR professionals spend on running payroll, managing benefits and ensuring compliance.

Testing the platform ourselves, it is intuitive and modern. From the main dashboard, you’re met with a number of tiles to navigate to the various features of the software, including payroll. You can run payroll in just a few clicks, with the platform flagging any inaccuracies or discrepancies before pushing it through.

View of an error message for a pending payroll run in TriNet (Source: self-guided demo)

You also get a clear view of past runs that are done, approved runs that are pending payment and upcoming runs that are pending approval. There are a number of pre-built payroll reports, but it doesn’t appear that you can build custom ones.

View of available payroll reports in TriNet (Source: self-guided demo)

Overall, we think the customizability of the platform might be a bit lacking compared to some other providers. This could be a deciding factor for certain shoppers, as our survey of HR software users indicates that 31% think customizability is the most important feature to look for in HR software.

However, we feel that TriNet shines with its compliance support. Within the platform, you’re met with tasks and notifications to inform you of anything that needs your attention, including regulation changes that impact your business. There’s also a navigation panel highlighting TriNet’s advisory services, which require a separate purchase but provide compliance help.

There are three support plans available, with the bottom two tiers being specifically designed for payroll. Even with the most basic plan, the Payroll Tax Compliance Manager, users receive help with setting up tax accounts, monitoring changing regulations and filing corrections.

Paycor

Best Implementation Support

• What We Love: Paycor has a robust platform with hands-on implementation support from its team of experts.
• Who It’s Best For: Businesses of any size that want an automated and flexible solution for running payroll and managing other HR tasks
• Alternatives: The Paycor platform doesn’t have the most modern or sleek design. If this is something you’re looking for, you might want to check out Gusto or Rippling.

Paycor offers human capital management (HCM) software, advertising it as a useful solution for businesses of any size. After researching Paycor, we think this description is pretty spot-on. For large businesses, the top-tier plans have key HR features, such as performance management and time and attendance tracking, alongside its main payroll offering. For small businesses with more limited budgets, they can enjoy the automated payroll and compliance support from the base plans.

We were able to test the platform with the online demo. Though it doesn’t have the most modern-looking design, it was still relatively easy to navigate. We could view a breakdown of the upcoming payroll run by employee.

View of a pay grid for a pending payroll run in Paycor (Source: free trial)

We also liked that the dashboard included a quick view of key metrics and reports. In particular, it tracked the total cash requirement for the upcoming payroll run and compared that to the previous pay period.

Though the platform doesn’t look modern, it has a few modern capabilities. For example, the Paycor Mobile Wallet has an OnDemand Pay feature where employees can access up to half of their paycheck prior to payday for a nominal fee.

Unlike some of the other legacy platforms on the market, Paycor doesn’t run payroll in batches, so you can make revisions to a run on the fly without needing to restart the entire batch. In other words, if you need to add a bonus or expense reimbursem*nt at the last minute, you can quickly make that change before the run moves forward to approval. During the approval process, the system automatically flags any item that is still up for review to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

Paycor does not provide transparent pricing or pre-built plans like many other payroll and HR providers. However, past customers note it being on the more affordable side. The platform also comes with hands-on implementation support, which can be especially helpful for large businesses that have a lot of data to add to the system.

SurePayroll

Best for Household Payroll

• What We Love: SurePayroll is a simple payroll software with flexible plans for paying household employees.
• Who It’s Best For: Small business owners or individuals with household employees who need a way to streamline payments and manage taxes
• Alternatives: Consider Paycor or Workday if you’re a growing or large business that wants a comprehensive platform with advanced features to manage personnel.

SurePayroll is a Paychex product that is built specifically for paying small business employees as well as household employees, such as nannies and housekeepers. Though we only had access to a brief pre-recorded product tour, it’s clear that SurePayroll is a much more streamlined platform than some of the others on this list, including Paychex Flex. However, it works for homeowners and small business owners who don’t need all the bells and whistles.

View of a pay grid where employers enter/edit hourly employee wages and hours (Source: pre-recorded demo)

Even though SurePayroll is a bit basic, it still offers all the key payroll features, including PTO management, unlimited and automated payroll runs, automated tax filing, employee self-service and same-day or next-day direct deposit.

We like that SurePayroll offers phone support for when you need hands-on help. The phone line is available for extended business hours during the week as well as limited hours on Saturday. There is also a chat available outside of these times. You can send a message for an agent to see and respond to once they’re back online.

There are a limited number of payroll processing solutions that offer transparent pricing, so we appreciate that SurePayroll has its plan details easily accessible on its website. Plus, you can enjoy month-to-month billing with the Household plan, so you can pause and unpause your plan as needed if you only pay for household workers seasonally.

Workday

Best for Enterprises

Workday is a prominent player in the payroll and HR management space, particularly favored by large organizations for its comprehensive and scalable solutions.

It integrates payroll management with a suite of financial and human capital management features, offering a robust platform that supports global businesses with complex payroll requirements.

Workday stands out for its ability to handle multi-country payroll and compliance, advanced analytics and a user-friendly interface, making it a top choice for multinational corporations.

• Excellently manages payroll across multiple countries

• Offers deep insights into workforce and financial data

• Well-suited for large organizations and can grow with the company

• May be too intricate for the needs of smaller companies

• Typically more expensive, reflecting its enterprise-level capabilities
• No free trial