Gusto has been pivotal in accelerating ApproveMe.com’s remote growth
Access to extra capital like R&D Tax Credits
Resources and guidance have been pivotal in helping businesses survive uncertainty throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Access to capital is critical in supporting businesses and enabling growth, which is why ApproveMe.com counts on Gusto resources and tools to take advantage of government programs like tax credits and forgivable loans.
The team at ApproveMe.com worked directly with Gusto’s approved vendor for R&D for their new cloud-hosted Document Signing Experience™ platform.
“I’m not an expert and needed more education on Research & Development Tax Credits. Gusto provided the knowledge and resources for ApproveMe.com to apply and as a result, we were paired with an incredible company,” notes Kevin Michael Gray, Founder of ApproveMe.com. We qualified for nearly $50,000 in R&D tax credits and an additional $50,000 in ERTC credits. That’s 100% free capital I’m able to use for our product launch and scaling the company into new verticals.”
Gusto also helped ApproveMe.com consolidate their paperwork for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness with a built-in tool that helps businesses export their payroll filings and paperwork.
“The combination of R&D, ERTC credits and PPP loan forgiveness with a one-click export was streamlined, simple, and incredibly effective to help my business get the capital we needed, especially at the height of the pandemic,” explains Gray.
The combination of R&D, ERTC credits and PPP loan forgiveness with a one-click export was streamlined, simple, and incredibly effective to help my business get the capital we needed, especially at the height of the pandemic
ApproveMe.com
Hiring US and international contractors remotely
Top of mind for ApproveMe.com has been successfully growing their remote team. However, before partnering with Gusto, the process was clunky and not streamlined for the organization to scale at the rate they desired.
“It was sticky trying to hire and pay our employees and contractors both in the US and internationally. Sometimes, we literally had to transfer money from one account to another to figure out how to pay our international contractors. That was less than ideal.” Gray explains, “It would take eight hours every month to process payroll. Figuring out how to run payroll once a month for our remote team was just such an arduous process.”
Once moving to Gusto, ApproveMe.com was able to streamline processes and save at least seven hours a month or two weeks (84 hours) of time annually, an amount that would only increase as they continued to add more employees. ApproveMe.com plans to nearly double their headcount over the next year and a half, so joining Gusto was a no-brainer. Without Gusto unblocking hiring across all 50 states and simplifying international contractor payments, ApproveMe.com would never have achieved such rapid growth. Now, they have dedicated time to focus on crafting seamless employee experiences that make hiring and onboarding simple and easy.
Essential HR tools that help support your team
Ensuring their employees and contractors feel supported throughout the onboarding process is a top priority for ApproveMe.com. Gusto is their most essential HR tool as they continue to grow and scale. Instead of using different apps to track payroll hours, onboarding checklists, and employee information, they use Gusto’s all-in-one people platform, and by doing so, they’ve sped up their hiring and onboarding process by 80%.
“Gusto solved a huge problem for us as an organization especially as we’re scaling because we were having quite the riddle with onboarding and hiring new employees and contractors,” says Gray. “For example, Arizona rolled out new employee requirements and it was a headache trying to figure out the best way to hire and onboard each employee remotely. Gusto relieved us of a lot of stress with figuring out onboarding tools and checklists, employee time off requests, tax documents, birthdays, and employee sick days and holidays. We are able to get our remote full-time employees and contractors hired and onboarded in record time at one hour or less now instead of four to five hours.”
Saving time when running payroll
Before they started using Gusto, the team at ApproveMe.com was using a messy combination of multiple apps and payment methods to process their payroll, including wire transfers, ACH payments, Paypal, Chase Quickpay, and handwritten checks.
“Before we started using Gusto, setting up our employees and running payroll was an administrative and accounting nightmare!” says Gray. “Payroll used to take at least one full day per month. At the end of the year, it took two full days just to make heads or tails of everything for tax purposes. We could only afford to pay invoices once per month because it would take my team at least eight hours a month. It was a process we really didn’t look forward to and it wasn’t ideal for our employees to be paid once a month as well.”
Switching to Gusto relieved the ApproveMe.com team of time-consuming, manual work so they could focus on what they do best: running their business. “We’re able to run payroll bi-weekly now, which takes us less than an hour each month. Time that I used to spend on payroll, I’ve now gotten time back that allows me to continue to scale at a faster rate than before,” explains Gray.
“The payroll process is so much more enjoyable now not only for myself, but also my employees. They love Gusto and enjoy having the option to build savings through features like splitting their paycheck into different accounts or even picking a charity to auto-donate to each month to pay it forward,” says Gray.
Growing with Gusto
As ApproveMe.com continues to hire more employees and scale, Gusto will remain a partner in their growth journey from recruiting to onboarding. Gray notes, “Gusto has built a product that we love and our employees love. That’s a really challenging thing to do and it inspires us as we continue to grow and build our company culture. We view Gusto as a long-term partner in our journey, which is only just beginning.”