One challenging year. Twenty new features to help.

If 2020 has shown us anything, it’s how incredibly resilient small businesses are. To support small businesses as they continue to rebuild and grow, we’ve built a ton of new features, made improvements to workflows and app performance, and trained our customer care teams to handle some of the toughest questions many businesses have ever had to ask. Major updates include next-day direct deposit for employees and contractors, labor costing, customized report builders, and other tools to take care of hardworking teams everywhere.

Let’s take a look at all the new features available now..

New hiring and onboarding tools to help small businesses grow.

In this rollercoaster of a year, taking steps to hire and onboard employees can be overwhelming. Not to mention, businesses everywhere are navigating changes to the norm like layoffs and furloughs, remote workforces, new revenue streams, and more.

That’s why we rolled out a new suite of hiring and onboarding tools to make it easier for businesses to grow and rebuild their teams. From new hire paperwork to personalized offer letters, building an amazing team isn’t so hard after all. 

• Customized offer letters A simple, scalable way to create, customize, and send unique offer letters.
• Onboarding checklist A must-have to help ensure the right forms are signed, benefits are set up, and more.
• Documents Easy access to employee documents that are sent, signed and stored, all online.
• Software setup Employees’ software accounts created in just a couple clicks. Also known as software provisioning and deprovisioning.
• Commission-only employees An easier way to classify and track commission-based employees.

Enhancements to make running payroll even faster.

Payroll has been at the core of Gusto since we were founded in 2012. As such, it was due for some updates to ensure businesses can easily accomplish one of their most critical tasks.   

• Next-day direct deposit A faster payroll deposit, landing funds in employees’ bank accounts the next day.
• International contractor payments in Canada Now businesses can pay certain international contractors with Gusto. (More countries coming soon.)
• Filter, search, bulk payroll updates A more flexible way to run and manage payroll. Especially great for companies with larger teams.
• Expenses and reimbursements Eliminate third-party software and allow employees to submit expenses and get reimbursed directly through Gusto.
• Contractor time tracking One place for W-2 employees and contractors to track time. Hours sync with payroll in just a few clicks.

No-cost, low-cost, and premium benefits options.

A happy, healthy, and financially secure team is at the heart of every successful business. But we know that taking care of a team with amazing benefits can be costly, especially in 2020. That’s why we added new, no-cost and low-cost benefits to our already robust lineup of benefits built for small businesses:

• Gusto Wallet app A free app for employees to track, save, and access their hard-earned money.
• Cash accounts Automatic savings and spending accounts to help employees meet their financial goals. 
• Cashout Employees access earned wages between paydays, repaid automatically from their paycheck with no fees and no interest.
• Health reimbursement (QSEHRA) A flexible, low-cost option for employers to contribute pre-tax dollars to their employees’ health costs on a monthly basis.

Insightful tools and resources for smarter business decisions.

Now more than ever, making informed decisions can have a big impact on the future of a business  — like whether to hire a new employee or how much to charge for a service. We made it easier to dig into data and get important insights.

• Payroll report builder Now employers can easily track and export payroll data using customizable payroll reports. 
• Employee report builder Like the payroll report builder, employee reports make it easy to track employment dates, compensation, withholding allowances, and more.
• Project workforce costing Once project-based employees report their hours, employers can process payroll and run detailed labor cost reports all in one place. Labor costs also sync with Quickbooks Online and Xero.
• Job codes A view into how much each job type costs the business by tracking employees’ pay rates, even if they work multiple jobs.

COVID-19 and PPP resources built for small businesses.

Since March, we’ve  worked tirelessly to help small businesses survive the crisis. We created more than a dozen new tools and resources so that our customers and businesses everywhere can get the help they need. 

• COVID Resource Center One central location for COVID-related resources about new legislation and product updates, to help businesses access relief and stay compliant with changing laws.
• Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) support We partnered with approved lenders to help businesses apply for PPP loans and find a lender. 
• PPP forgiveness A Gusto-generated report to help customers track their spending and submit to their lender for PPP forgiveness.

We love hearing from customers about what to build next. In 2021, we’ll create more advanced features and a larger ecosystem of tools to support all kinds of businesses and workflows.