Far too many entrepreneurs overlook payroll software until they desperately need it, at which point it can take some time and effort to set up. It’s best to set up your payroll system early and then add employees and contractors to it as your business expands.
Starts at $0 + state fees and only takes 5-10 minutes
Workful is our favorite payroll service for hourly contracts. But is this the right payroll software provider for your company’s unique needs?
Old-school methods for payroll tracking were incredibly time-consuming. Even small businesses needed to invest way too much time into things like calculating payroll manually, tracking hours, writing checks, and calculating taxes. Thankfully, technology has simplified this process significantly.
Today, entrepreneurs can instead pay a reasonable monthly fee to one of many payroll software services and receive automated assistance with these and other related tasks. Workful is one of the best payroll software providers available, so let’s find out if it’s the ideal option for you.
Workful is an outstanding payroll software solution for hourly contracts. Let’s take a look at some of its pros and cons before we dig into the details.
With Workful’s payroll software — which costs $25 per month plus $5 per employee or contractor — you’ll receive access to its geolocational time-tracking app at no extra charge. This is an outstanding bargain for companies with employees or contractors working on hourly contracts. Workful also offers full state and federal payroll tax services.
In one word: wow. We don’t know of any competitors that can undercut Workful’s $25 base rate for payroll software with full state and federal tax services. In addition, when you consider that even a basic time-tracking app can cost $10/month or more, Workful including one for free is a steal.
Overall, there are cheaper payroll software services (like Patriot) but none with the robust features of Workful.
Workful is owned by “the people who brought you TaxSlayer,” which has been around since 1965. That said, Workful is a relatively new addition to the payroll software scene, and it doesn’t have nearly as much experience or as large of a customer base as some competitors.
Along these same lines, there is very little customer feedback available for Workful. While some competitors have thousands of reviews available online, we were hardly able to find any Workful reviews at all.
Workful’s customer support has its strengths and weaknesses. On the positive side, its representatives are knowledgeable and friendly, at least in our experience. In addition, we’ve had good experiences with Workful’s phone support.
However, Workful’s short hours of operation (9 am to 5 pm ET on weekdays) will force many entrepreneurs to take time out of their busy workdays to contact Workful, which isn’t ideal. Furthermore, the “Chat with Us” link on its website doesn’t actually start a live chat. It instead takes you to a calendar app to schedule a session with a Workful rep. Disappointing.
There wouldn’t be much point in using a payroll software service if it didn’t make the process of running and tracking payroll significantly simpler. Thankfully, Workful does just that, with an easy-to-use interface and plenty of intuitive features.
However, Workful loses a couple of points here because it doesn’t have an administrative app. There’s only an employee app, so you can’t run payroll through the app, for example.
While some other companies in the payroll software industry have hundreds or even thousands of customer reviews available online, we were barely able to track down two dozen unique reviews for Workful. There really isn’t any analysis we can do on such a small collection of feedback. Overall, customer feedback certainly isn’t a strength for Workful.
Overall, Workful is our favorite payroll software provider for businesses with hourly employees or contractors. Workful has a ton of features packed into its reasonably priced software solution, which is always an appealing attribute.
We’re big fans of what Workfu has to offer for payroll services, and we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this company to our families and friends. That said, we understand that this might not be the right company for everyone.
If you’d like to take a look at your other options for payroll software services, take a look at our guide to the best companies in the industry.
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Disclaimer: The content on this page is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or accounting advice. If you have specific questions about any of these topics, seek the counsel of a licensed professional.
Written by Team ZenBusiness
ZenBusiness has helped people start, run, and grow over 700,000 dream companies. The editorial team at ZenBusiness has over 20 years of collective small business publishing experience and is composed of business formation experts who are dedicated to empowering and educating entrepreneurs about owning a company.
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