Starting a business meant wearing many hats—including navigating payroll and HR without a background in either. That’s why Allison Zofan turned to Gusto.

"With no background in payroll, I needed software that was going to help me learn as fast as possible — a resource that could act as an additional member of the team."

With Gusto, Allison quickly became confident in running payroll and answering employee questions—thanks to easy workflows and a responsive support team.

"What's so great about Gusto is that there's no question I can't get an answer to… I can quickly become the subject matter expert with help from the Gusto support team."

By simplifying administrative tasks, Gusto has freed up time for the ootBox team to focus on what they do best: building and scaling a unique product.

Wanting to attract and retain top talent, ootBox was looking at ways outside of compensation changes to meet employee needs.

"We needed to increase our retention efforts… but we weren’t able to just bump up salaries."

ootBox looked into offering health benefits, but needed a solution with more flexibility since they were unsure how many employees would enroll. Gusto’s advisors introduced ootBox to Take Command, Gusto’s expert HRA partner, which helped them implement a Qualified Small Employer HRA (QSEHRA)—a tax-free monthly allowance employees can use to buy their own health insurance.

"It all came down to giving our employees as much choice as possible… Knowing that we're helping everybody stay happy and healthy is important to Robbie and me. This gave employees peace of mind that they’d have health insurance available when and how they needed it. They fact that they could choose the coverage that best met their unique needs was great.”

In addition to providing current employees personalized benefits through a QSEHRA, ootBox also appreciated how it helps them stand out when hiring.

"Offering these benefits differentiates us from other companies a candidate might have chosen to work for."

The Gusto and Take Command integration makes benefits management easy.

"Having seamless reimbursements between Take Command and Gusto is a huge help.”

Allison receives a reimbursement report from Take Command each month and uploads it to Gusto with just a few clicks. The reimbursement is automatically included in payroll—no extra tracking required.

In addition to a seamless platform, Allison also says that having experts that can help her and employees out has been paramount to a positive experience.

“Having experts to guide employees during the enrollment season and beyond was so helpful. Employees were working long hours and were really busy. Knowing we had someone to rely on and that we didn’t have to navigate it alone alleviated a lot of stress.”

Offering benefits no longer feels overwhelming. With Gusto and Take Command, ootBox can support its team while keeping operations simple and sustainable.

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