The Best Payroll for Small Businesses

OnPay is our overall winner for small businesses. OnPay is a simple, affordable, and easy-to-use service that makes payroll a breeze. OnPay’s team will set up your payroll themselves, for free! 

The one-month free trial provides you with a great opportunity to test out this platform before you commit. The platform has been designed for a variety of businesses and industries including startups, hospitality, NGOs, gyms, franchises, accounting and more. 

With great integrations including Xero and QuickBooks Time, you can streamline your business’s operations and ensure your employees are well looked after. You can integrate 401k plans seamlessly into OnPay, making deductions and 401k matches & contributions easy. 

Gusto is our runner-up, boasting a full-service payroll platform. However, the poor customer service reported by some users keeps it in second place. Gusto offers great tax management, taking away any tax-related headaches and ensuring your tax filings and payments are correct and done on time. Payroll taxes are automatically filed at the same time as payroll – at no extra cost to you. 

Gusto’s intuitive platform has been hailed by users as well-designed and easy to use. It sends timely email reminders to run payroll as well as keeping you informed on any tax updates. The platform has no steep learning curve, making it suitable for those of us who aren’t so tech-savvy.

Insurance and 401k plans are automatically deducted and you can integrate with other platforms such as Xero or Quickbooks, creating one easy-to-use financial platform for your business. 

Your employees can easily set themselves up and can view their payslips or W2s at any time. Gusto also provides a unique feature where employees can request an advance on their paycheck directly through the platform without needing to approach anyone in person. 

In third place, we have Deluxe, a full-service payroll provider. Deluxe offers a digital onboarding and hiring process, making it easier for your business to hire and onboard new employees. Deluxe promises to file your taxes and make running payroll simple. 

The system is well priced, easy to use and flexible – you can run payroll from anywhere in the world from your cell phone. You can also easily change payroll dates, making it a dynamic system that can suit your business needs if you predict you may want to change those dates in the future. 

Deluxe offers tax filings for all 50 states and keeps you up to date on any tax changes or legislation updates. You can be confident that your business is compliant without doing any of the dirty work yourself. 

Deluxe provides integration with Swipeclock, a time management app where your employees can clock in and out with ease. This data will allow you to manage your payroll much more effectively. However, Deluxe  is limited in terms of customizability – so if that’s important to your business, this may not be the app for you. However, it’s well priced, a full-service provider and fairly flexible. 

Although Square comes in at 4th place, we recommend this system to new payroll users as it provides all the basics for a payroll system. The pricing is offered at a flat rate and can be cancelled at any time, so you aren’t locked into a contract. This flexibility makes it accessible for new or small businesses. Square also provides a contractor-only version, making it suitable for various business models. 

This payroll system can be integrated with other Square apps, so if you already use them or want to streamline operations by integrating payment processing with payroll, this could be a great option. Running your business from one platform makes things much more efficient and increases productivity, as data and information can flow between different tools. For example, you can use Square’s payroll software to pay your employees using funds from your Square checking account or Square balance. 

Tax filings and payments are automated, ensuring you’re never in trouble with the tax man. Tax is one of the more intimidating aspects of payroll and is one the main reasons you might choose to outsource some of these responsibilities. New or small businesses need to ensure they’re tax compliant, and Square provides an easy-to-use, bare-bones payroll system to help with just that. 

Last but not least, Wave is here to make waves in the payroll industry. Especially price-wise, as it offers a flat rate depending on the state you’re in. Other payroll providers tend to increase the price based on the features offered. 

Wave’s software is simple, taking only a few hours to set up. Invoice and accounting software can be combined with payroll services, free of charge. Wave provides a full tax filing service, although this is only currently available in 14 states (AZ, CA, FL, GA, IL, IN, MN, NY, NC, TN, TX, VA, WA, and WI). Wave promises this feature is coming to more states soon, but in the meantime, users in the rest of the country will have to file and pay taxes themselves. That said, Wave tries to make this process painless by providing the necessary information, like how much money is needed per payroll. 

Some Wave users have complained about poor customer service, with bots providing automatic answers that aren’t always helpful. It seems to be difficult to speak to someone on the phone and deal with enquiries quickly and efficiently. 

However, small business owners will have access to workers’ compensation and employees can access their own payslips and W2s. Depending on your location and business setup, Wave could be a great option. Its 30-day trial means you can test out for yourself how well the service would work for your business.