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Zenefits launches free payroll software for small businesses
- SwellJoe 11y agoI don't know much about this industry, but this seems like a hilarious response to the ADP lawsuit. When your partner/competitor screws you really hard, launching a free product that performs the most important function of their very expensive product line is just about the most satisfying form of vengeance I can think of. Also, I hate Intuit Payroll (and it's cost me a small fortune due to deadlines being missed and other random crap based on Intuit requiring constant babysitting to do anything on time), so I'm signing up. If it supports multiple states, I am totally on board.
- JeffreyKaine 11y agoWe're launching in all 50 states. Happy to have you on board!
- tzier 11y agoI doubt this is a response to ADP; ADP is a horrible product, and Zenefits knew they could make a better solution (like ZenPayroll/Gusto). They've probably been working on this for a year, to be honest, given the requirements for payroll providers and syncing with the IRS/etc. What's more interesting is that the payroll is free only if the company manages everything else HR related in Zenefits. Talk about lock-in.
- SwellJoe 11y agoI'm sure they've been working on it for a while. And, it may even be part of the cause of the falling out between ADP and Zenefits, who knows? But, nonetheless, I bet it feels good to launch.
- semiquaver 11y agoThe CEO explicitly says that this is a response to ADP: > As Conrad tells it, a select group of Zenefits employees holed up in the Courtyard Marriott to start working on a secret project to create a payroll system shortly after paycheck services giant ADP cut the company off earlier this year. > “We’ve been working on this basically since the day we started getting blocked by ADP,” Conrad told TechCrunch. http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/16/zenefits-launches-its-own-payroll-platform/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/16/zenefits-launches-its-own-p...
- SwellJoe 11y agoI would have probably been working on it before that, if I were them, as I don't ever feel comfortable being a sharecropper on someone else's land. But, they've delivered quickly.
- tomasien 11y agoI think ADP and Gusto forced their hand. They realized they needed to be in control of this part of their business, and while before they had planned it as an "eventually" thing, it became a material risk that was no longer tolerable. If I were them in the absence of the ADP shut down and Gusto competing head to head I would have wanted to focus every dollar on the core service and scale and kicked Payroll down the road. Makes sense in context they did it now though.
- mikemac 11y ago> a free product that performs the most important function of their very expensive product line There is zero chance I'd subject employees to a hacked together payroll system. Building one is far from trivial, considering the complexities of tax and employment law in 50 different states.
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- SwellJoe 11y agoI've not seen any indication that Zenefits is offering a shoddy product. Their other products seem to be well-regarded, do they not? And, their other products are in the same general area (most benefits programs have some tax and accounting repercussions that they'd need to understand, as well as integration with banks and payroll systems), so they already have some domain expertise in-house. So, yes, it's hard to build. That doesn't mean that no one can do it. Many companies have done so, including several startups. And, given how poorly one of the market leaders (Intuit) has implemented it, I'm willing to give a startup a try.
- mintplant 11y ago>Their other products seem to be well-regarded, do they not? Not entirely, no. There's a history of Zenefits customers and their employees suffering from serious technical and support failures. http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/zenefits-hr-rocket-ship-but-some-customers-left-behind#.adyjge6VD http://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/zenefits-hr-rocket-ship... >in late February this year, with coverage supposed to start days later, Zenefits informed Hawkins that it had made a significant mistake, attempting to enroll his employees with an insurance provider that didn’t cover the company’s region. The insurance wouldn’t come through as planned. [...] In several cases employees like Harris, who had put their trust in Zenefits, were left without health insurance for a month or more after they had expected it.
- x0x0 11y agoMy 15-person company uses zenefits. When our HR person was sold on zenefits she was promised some features that, bluntly, didn't and don't exist. They also, as a user, required some emailing to get stuff set up. It seems to be ok now that it's all set up, but it definitely wasn't 0 friction initially.
- run4yourlives2 11y agoPretty sure the ADP fiasco was likely an understanding by ADP that zenefits was working on this already. Payroll/Benefits is long overdue for disruption.
- soccerdave 11y agoWhat exactly does this line mean from their 'Pro' plan? "Includes everything from Self-Driving Mode plus the ability to directly customize deductions, earnings, and more." I don't have any clue if the free plan would work for me or not.
- zsgoldberg 11y agoif you use Zenefits for HR/Benefits, they will know everything they need to determine your deductions and taxes. This makes it simple or them to run everything for you in 'self-driving' mode. All the changes you make in Zenefits are reflected in your payroll automatically The custom experience where you can go in and configure things specifically for payroll without making those changes in Zenefits, that's the one they're charging for
- ianstormtaylor 11y agoWhat's an example of something that would need to be custom? Does anyone know? I'm also confused by that line, and the plans in general.
- jayess 11y agoI'm confused as well. What if you have a part-time employee who doesn't have benefits? Or what if you're a small business that doesn't offer benefits?
- JeffreyKaine 11y agoSelf Driving Payroll will work perfectly in this case. If you don't offer Benefits, use Zenefits for onboarding and keeping track of your employee info (also free), and have self driving payroll take care of your payroll for free.
- JeffreyKaine 11y agoYeah, I think it's a little confusing as well. But, basically if Zenefits manages all of your benefits, Self Driving Payroll will be your best bet. If you offer a benefit that Zenefits doesn't manage, you'll need to go Pro.
- jayess 11y agoThis must be their answer to Zen Payroll/Gusto now offering worker's compensation and health insurance. It's great to see competition in this space. ADP and the other dinosaur providers in this area have had it too good for too long.
- mrmch 11y agoHas anyone done a breakout comparison of Zenefits vs Gusto (/zenpayroll)? There has to be quite a few companies who have benefits with Zenefits and payroll in Gusto; wondering what's ideal moving forward.
- gatsby 11y agoI would love to see this as well. A salesperson from Gusto (fka Zenpayroll) who we use for payroll sent me multiple emails about switching to Gusto for benefits, so I emailed, "Hey - We're currently running everything through Zenefits. Are there any advantages to switching over?" and I never heard a response. Could have been a mistake (i.e. forgot to respond), a bad salesperson, etc. but not having any differentiators makes the decision tough on my end.
- papa_bear 11y agoSame - I'm actually starting the process of switching over the Gusto simply because I wanted to consolidate the services I was using, but now I'm having second thoughts since Zenefits is free. So far I much prefer the Gusto/zenpayroll interface, so I'll probably keep going forward with Gusto and only switch back if I run into any frustrations.
- goeric 11y agoI sent the same email to them, but I did get a response: We're fundamentally different than Zenefits in a few very important ways, so accessing all of Gusto's features still makes sense: 1) Payroll is your system of record in your back office and quite simply, we believe computers follow rules a lot better than humans do. Zenefits functions on a “hub-and-spoke” model… they’re the hub, we’re the spokes. But that's already an outdated functionality-- there should be no spokes when it comes to payroll and benefits—they are really just one single hub functioning in unison. Removing the spokes and human operations that Zenefits uses removes the opportunity for error. 2) We’re a customer service organization, not a sales organization. With the technology comes the vital human touch—you’ve got your dedicated Care Team trained to support your benefits just like you have a Care Team trained to support specific payroll needs.You also have your dedicated and experienced Benefits Advisor for business and benefits strategy planning. This way, you can go to one partner for all your back-office needs rather than using an intermediary to control several different disjointed resources. 3) Because it’s all in one place, you get one beautifully simple experience for your entire team—administrators/managers and regular employees. That means onboarding your employees' payroll and benefits in one place while we help you navigate the confusing world that is US Health Care Reform. Basically, we love you as a customer and we want the best product experience for you. That happens when you use the full Gusto platform to combine payroll, benefits, and compliance. It wasn't very convincing to me, and I think it might be an even harder sell now that Zenefits is launching payroll. I love both companies but I definitely would prefer to have everything integrated in one platform.
- criley2 11y agoDoes it support businesses who mainly only work with contractors including helping to create 1099's to send out? Don't see anything about it on the page. After leaving Quickbooks for a contractor based business, I've been looking for a solution for 1099 work outside of "do it by hand" which I can and am prepared to do, but it takes a long time.
- JeffreyKaine 11y agoZenefits definitely supports Contractor Payments, if you sign up, look for the "contractors" card to get started. edit: to be clear, this is a separate product from payroll.
- ambiate 11y agoHow does Zenefits handle if a Employer paid check does not match the Zenefits charged amount? ie: reconciliation portion. Employee X terminated, check is $22.8k instead of $23k. Employee Y has three policies for a single benefit, but only two get paid through the employer. Is this all automagically handled by the UI in a simple 'SSN or Policy' amount does not match for these three records, how do you want to apply the $30? 'No record found for Employee X, reason for non-payment?' Does Zenefits handle managing/forwarding that to all to the carriers? (disclaimer: I work in insurance)
- tvladeck 11y agoI know this is now "industry standard" but I hate the practice of quoting a yearly price as if it were a monthly price. There is a meaningful difference between $120/year (where you pay once, upfront, for the full year) and $10/month (where you pay each month). Note here that they quote $4/month/employee in the "Pro" plan, but the prices are actually $48/year/employee or $6/month/employee. There is no $4/month plan.
- pbreit 11y agoI see what you mean but don't think it's that bad. The actual cost is $4/employee/month. It's not like using it for less than a year is a common scenario.
- tvladeck 11y agoBut using it for non-whole multiples of a year probably is. Also, it both obfuscates the price and creates the impression that you can trial the product without being locked in. If it didn't confuse people (even if only unconsciously), it wouldn't be such a widespread practice.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago> If it didn't confuse people (even if only unconsciously), it wouldn't be such a widespread practice. And this is the key observation about those sales practices. Most of them work, because you're being dishonest. You only call it "growth hacking".
- eitally 11y agoIt absolutely is in the service & manufacturing industries.
- stevoski 11y ago"Zenefits launches free payroll software for small businesses IN THE USA", I'm guessing the title should be.
- kalvin 11y agoPSA: Go with Gusto (formerly Zenpayroll) instead for payroll. We signed up for both Zenefits and Zenpayroll several months ago. Zenefits was a nightmare. Zenpayroll has been an absolute delight. They obviously don't offer identical functionality, but they're getting more similar now so this is a comparison of where they overlap. Customer support: Both Zenefits and Zenpayroll are very responsive, but Zenefits provides significantly less helpful responses, the kind you'd expect from first-level big-corporation support. Zenpayroll is much better on this front. Software: Zenefits is clearly not a startup driven by product or engineering. It's fine given it's free, but still has tons of rough edges and bugs everywhere (e.g. it's easy to click submit twice all over the site and create duplicate entries.) I know it's better than the incumbents, but Zenpayroll has a far better product and it really shows even in basic usage-- it's kind of amazing this level of quality now exists for payroll. Health insurance: If you have an extremely simple situation and are a startup in CA, Zenefits is probably fine. We have about a dozen employees based in DC, SF, and NYC. Instead of telling us to go elsewhere, Zenefits spent two months and dozens of hours/email threads/phone calls making slow "progress", telling me information that ended up being inaccurate, omitting critical information, replying to one out of every three questions, saying repeatedly it would get done, and finally telling me they just couldn't do it. The Zenefits rep could not have been worse-- if he'd been actively hostile or more clearly ignorant, that would have been better since we would have short-circuited sooner. (Yes, I did complain about the rep... they routed me right back to him on the same call.) Afterward, I called Zenpayroll and their rep was super knowledgeable and set expectations clearly. It was night and day. We also tried talking to Zenefits' partner Ubiquity for a 401k, and had a negative experience there as well. We've now heard many, many versions of our story above. I wish Zenefits all the best since they've made a lot of startup founders' lives easier (including ours, for new hire onboarding), but boy do they have scaling issues... all I'm saying is, if you have the option of both Zenefits and Gusto for a particular service, 100% go with Gusto.
- CatRules 11y agoOur experience mirrors yours...we couldn't be happier with ZenPayroll/Gusto. We signed up with Zenefits recently to try to get the benefits piece in place, and it was a nightmare, both with the software, and the reps/support.
- HongQiGong 11y agoYou guys could also try Justworks. It's a really nice product.