Old school payroll companies charge you every time you process payroll. If you run payroll every two weeks, they bill you every two weeks. Every time you want to do an off-cycle payroll – like if you fire somebody or make a mistake – they charge you extra.
Newer payroll companies charge you a flat rate per month, per employee. You can run as many payrolls as you want during that month. If you run someone’s payroll and forget to pay them their tips, just run another payroll the next day. No problem. That flexibility is very helpful because this industry has so many moving pieces and it’s easy to make a mistake.
Here’s a rundown of my favorite payroll companies,from favorite to least favorite. I’ll also touch on Toast Payroll, Square Payroll, 7shifts and Paylocity, four additional options.
GUSTO
Gusto is very tech forward with a great user interface. They’re not the cheapest payroll service, but they’re very reasonably priced and very flexible.
Pros – Gusto is absolutely the best at:
- Storing documents
- HR onboarding
- Hiring employees. Having new hires sign paperwork couldn’t be easier.
- Directly integrating with QuickBooks Online and other accounting systems
Cons:
- They don’t send physical checks to employees, so everyone has to be on direct deposit.
- You still have to handwrite or print checks after completing payroll. In most industries that’s not a big problem, but in the restaurant industry, a lot of people don’t have direct deposit ability. Some integrations can work to deliver checks through Gusto, but that increases the total cost.
ADP / PAYCHEX
ADP and Paychex are both a little old school.
Pros:
- People are familiar with them. They’re trusted brand names.
- You could probably get slightly better pricing with them on basic packages.
- You will probably be able to spend less money with them AND get checks delivered.
- They both have good customer service, especially Paychex. Probably even better, at times, than Gusto.
- They are both reliable.
Cons:
- They’re not as flexible. You’re paying them every two weeks based on your payroll.
- If you want to run an off-cycle payroll it’s a pain in the ass.
- If you just want to send a direct deposit to somebody off-cycle, as opposed to writing a check, that’s even more of a pain in the ass.
- Their dashboards are older. The user interface is not as good as Gusto. They keep layering more things onto stuff they’ve built over the years, which doesn’t work as well.
- New hires, integrations, and accounting takes a lot longer and is not as up to date.
- When you start adding bells and whistles, like HR tools, the price can jump up a lot.
ADDITIONAL PAYROLL OPTIONS
TOAST PAYROLL
Pros:
- If you use Toast for your POS and use Toast Payroll, the tech speaks the same language, which is great.
- They have a great tip reporting tool where you can be very creative in the way you calculate tips for your employees.
- It’s not that expensive.
Cons:
- The moment something doesn’t go right, you have to make an adjustment, someone’s hours aren’t being reported correctly, or you have to pay someone off-cycle, it’s terrible.
- They bought an old payroll company called StratX and slapped their logo on it. On the surface, it looks like a new tech forward payroll company, but behind the scenes, it’s actually a very old school company without much flexibility.
- The customer service is terrible.
- If you’re an individual operator trying to run your own payroll, Toast still isn’t a bad option. The moment you have employees working at other locations, for example, it becomes a mess.
SQUARE PAYROLL
Square is a very basic payroll service that’s limited, but easy to use.
Pros and Cons:
- If you are a Square POS system customer, have a small operation, and are just trying to run basic payroll, it’s not that expensive, user friendly , and integrates with QuickBooks.
- The integration is limited, but it’s not a bad option for a first-time restaurant operator.
7SHIFTS
7shifts is a scheduling platform. They just built a payroll function, and it has room to grow.
Pros:
- 7shifts scheduling dashboard already has a lot of functionality for tracking overtime and tracking labor law compliance specific to districts. This helps with processing payroll.
Cons:
- Their payroll functionality is not as developed as some of the other options.
- Customer support is not quite there yet, but it can be if they invest more resources.
PAYLOCITY
Pros:
- Paylocity is an older company, too, but from what I know, they have very good customer service. If you want a payroll company where you can call your rep right away and get an answer, Paylocity is good for that.
- They also have very strong employee HR onboarding tools.
Cons:
- Integrations and functionality aren’t as user friendly as some of the others.
