How Campus Eye Center’s trust in their accountant led them to Gusto
Brenda Barnhart has had a long and successful career at Campus Eye Center. In July 2024, she’ll celebrate a major milestone – 35 years with the eye care company.
For most of that time, she handled payroll in-house using QuickBooks Desktop. But when she learned Intuit was sunsetting QuickBooks Desktop, she had no hesitation about listening to her accounting firm, Trout CPA, and switching to Gusto. Her trust in Trout’s expertise has paid off – within less than a year, she’s already saved hours of her time using Gusto.
With QuickBooks Desktop, simply manually inputting employees’ timecard data took roughly 30 minutes per payroll run, assuming everything was running smoothly. Now, with Gusto, all Brenda needs to do is approve employees’ timecards, and Trout CPA helps her run payroll in just 5 minutes.
Even after spending more than two decades using QuickBooks Desktop, Brenda says she has no regrets with migrating to Gusto:
- “If Trout's gonna recommend something to me, I know it's a good product … If Trout’s encouraging you to make the change, make the change. It's just made our lives easier, moving forward. I couldn't be happier that we made the transition last year.”
- “Learning the new process was not overwhelming. It was a very smooth transition … Gusto is very straightforward. It’s easy to run reports and it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.”
- “We were not using [time tracking] in Gusto when we first started, but switched to that very quickly because it makes it so much easier for our staff and for Trout. All we have to do on our side is approve the time card and [Trout] has it done in like five minutes. That’s amazing.”
How Gusto Helps Campus Eye Center Streamline Team Management
For Brenda, one of the biggest benefits of migrating to Gusto has been the ability to tap into its tools for HR and team management – features that were never available on QuickBooks Desktop. While she has transitioned to QuickBooks Online for accounting, she never considered using it for payroll as she knew she wanted more features for HR, payroll, and benefits.
- “A lot of people are hesitant around change, but change excites me in the fact that I know we're gonna get new features and improved capabilities, and that absolutely was the case … [Gusto] has made my life easier.”
- “I've been able to put more responsibilities onto my managers, since they have their own access and rights, and can go in and take care of their time cards, their reviews, their staff vacations, and all of that. So it's really been beneficial.”
- “Performance evaluations used to run through a whole separate program. So now, having it integrated with Gusto, I can alert the managers when it's time for them to do a review. I can see it online as soon as they've completed it. It's just a much easier process.”
- “From the employee side, [using Gusto has] been very nice for them, because all their W-2s are showing up in their Gusto Wallet app. They've gotten their information sooner this year, and it's readily available at their fingertips … It was paper forms before. They were all printed out, hard copy, and either mailed or hand-delivered to the staff. Moving into the electronic age has been nice for them.”
Why Trout CPA Recommends Gusto to Clients
Trout CPA has had a long history serving clients with strategic, proactive guidance. The firm started in 1929, and today it employs 150 professionals providing a broad range of services, including full-service accounting, assurance services, tax services, outsourced client accounting, and consulting services around transaction advisory and M&A.
Nikelle Druck, Director of Client Accounting Services at Trout CPA, says many clients, like Brenda, have been proactive about switching from QuickBooks Desktop to Gusto. Others still need that extra push. But they’re more eager to make the switch once they learn they can get more than just payroll through Gusto’s all-in-one platform for payroll, HR, and benefits.
So far, Trout has helped more than 40 clients migrate from QuickBooks Desktop to Gusto – and she expects more to take the leap as the discontinuation date looms nearer.
- “What we really needed was for our smaller clients who had less than 25 employees was an affordable payroll solution that was all-encompassing and didn't just do payroll … [Using Gusto] is kind of a no-brainer.”
- “At each and every turn, as QuickBooks Desktop makes it harder to get work done, it's making the transition easier for us … Bells and whistles don't come with QuickBooks' payroll – so you get a lot more bang for your buck with Gusto.”
- “The goal is to continue to do more payroll consultation and advisory services – like helping our clients understand multistate [hiring, tax, and compliance] challenges … As we get more people into automated systems, what it always affords us is the opportunity to be more advisory-focused, and help them see whatever other benefits that come from their tech stack.”
- “We owe it to our clients to provide a service – the service that you should be providing in this decade. It’s 2024. Why would you be doing something manually, if you could do it automated? We're all here to work smart, not hard … Gusto has enabled us to do that for clients.”