The 13 Best Payroll Tools For Small Business [2024]

Updated: February 28th, 2022

Running a small business means that you need accounting and payroll tools to keep your books straight and pay your employees timely. There are many tools in the market that can help you with your payroll functions.

Payroll is definitely one of the more tedious tasks in an accounting department. Take this task off your hands and use some of these payroll software tools to manage it efficiently. Here, in this article, you'll find all the best small business payroll and accounting tools

After interviewing thousands of founders, we put together a list of the most popular payroll tools.

Here they are:

1. Paychex

Paychex, the nation’s leading payroll company for small businesses, offers hundreds of thousands of businesses with services and support that can help ease the time-consuming burden of small business payroll processing and tax filing.

More About Paychex

Paychex Small Business Payroll Services

  • Flexible and automated small business payroll processing online from desktop and mobile, or you can call your payroll specialist
  • Ability to pay different types of workers — exempt and non-exempt employees, contractors
  • Automatic payroll tax administration
  • Payroll dashboard with configurable views
  • New-hire reporting to government agencies

Pricing Details

  • Paychex Flex Essentials: $39/mo. + $5 per employee
  • Paychex Flex Select: Custom based on your needs
  • Paychex Flex® Pro: Custom based on your needs

Additional details about Paychex:

Businesses using Paychex:

22 successful businesses are using Paychex ➜

2. ADP RUN

ADP offers industry-leading online payroll and HR solutions, plus tax, compliance, benefits administration, and more.

More About ADP RUN

RUN personalizes your experience and puts critical information at your fingertips to help you run payroll even faster.

  • Access everything you need from your personalized dashboard, including your next payroll, priority to-dos, payroll history, and quick navigation to every part of RUN.
  • Pay employees their way with flexible payment options such as direct deposit, including the ability to enroll for Wisely® Direct (a debit card offered exclusively by ADP3), and ADPCheck™.
  • 24/7 support from certified payroll experts.

Pricing Details

  • Pricing starts at $59 per month plus $4 per employee.
  • Businesses can request a price quote on the company’s website.

Additional details about ADP RUN:

Businesses using ADP RUN:

3. Intuit

Intuit is a global technology platform, powering prosperity with TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint, Credit Karma, and Mailchimp.

More About Intuit

  • Personalized experiences to help you get your maximum refund. Plus, on-demand expert help and advice are available with TurboTax Live.
  • Data intelligence to help you make better spending decisions to improve your cash flow.
  • Save more and spend smarter with data-driven AI. They keep all your money at your fingertips so you know at a glance what’s happening with your budgets, bills, and spending.

Pricing Details

  • Intuit Online Payroll Basic: $30 + $4 per employee
  • Intuit Online Payroll Enhanced: $45 + $4 per employee and contractor
  • Intuit Online Full Service Payroll: $109 + $4 per employee and contractor

Additional details about Intuit:

Businesses using Intuit:

4. Wagepoint

Wagepoint is a payroll accounting software for small businesses to pay their employees and independent contractors.

More About Wagepoint

Pay your employees and contractors.

  • Send money directly to your employees’ bank accounts.
  • Give everyone online access to their payment details.
  • Stop worrying about missing tax payments and late reporting.
  • Make issuing annual W-2s/1099s pain-free.
  • Provide Workers’ Compensation and 401(k)s.

Pricing Details

  • Plans start with $30 for 10 Employees for 1 week.
  • Pay one price, get all the features.
  • Visit the Website for more pricing options.

Additional details about Wagepoint:

Businesses using Wagepoint:

5. TimeStation

TimeStation is the perfect solution for small and medium businesses looking to track time and attendance without the usual costs and overhead of traditional systems.

More About TimeStation

TimeStation is a quick-to-setup, easy-to-use time and attendance system that runs on smartphones and tablets.

  • Track employee time and attendance for your business
  • Track student attendance for your school
  • Track member attendance for your club or group
  • Track time spent across multiple projects or clients

Pricing Details

  • Free forever Employees Up To 10
  • $19.95/month Employees Up To 20
  • $29.95/month Employees Up To 50
  • $39.95/month Employees Up To 100
  • $59.95/month Employees Up To 200

Additional details about TimeStation:

Businesses using TimeStation:

6. Payworks

Payworks is a leading expert in the field of total workforce management solutions, providing cloud-based Payroll, Human Resources, Employee Time, and Absence Management to businesses across Canada.

More About Payworks

  • Payworks offers a total suite of fully-integrated workforce management solutions. Clients can easily enhance their Payworks experience with additional modules including HR, Time Management, Absence Management, Applicant Tracking, HR Advisory Services, Workforce Analytics, and Employee Self Service.
  • A dedicated & knowledgeable service representative will be there to answer your complex questions relating to payroll legislation or to guide you on how to use their products.

Pricing Details

For 1 week and 10 employees plan starts from $40.90

  • Unlimited payroll preview functionality
  • Online and mobile access to pay statements
  • Includes management report package
  • For more pricing details visit their website as they have custom plans as per your need.

Additional details about Payworks:

Businesses using Payworks:

7. TSheets

TSheets is a great software for your business, which can ensure compliance of employment contracts, build real-time reports, and much more.

More About TSheets

  • Employees who work remotely can easily clock in and out with the TSheets app available in the Google Play Store and iTunes Store. Be prepared to get rid of the traditional wall-mounted punch clock!
  • With TSheets, managers can approve employee time before it goes to payroll. It's also easy to set up alerts to remind people to clock in and out - and to warn managers before employees go into overtime. You can customize how employees track time, clock in and out, and who is are responsible for approving time.
  • Never miss a beat, with TSheets’ real-time reports you’ll know when and where your employees are at all times. The who’s working feature will also give you up-to-date reports of who’s on the clock, who’s late, and who’s off.

Pricing Details

  • Pay-As-You-Go Starting at $125 per hour for support
  • Special Pricing Monthly Starting at $349/month
  • Special Pricing Weekly Starting at $499/month

Additional details about TSheets:

Businesses using TSheets:

8. iSolved

iSolved is a cloud-based software suite that encompasses payroll, benefits, learning management, and other core human resources activities.

More About iSolved

  • Centralize HR Processes: Remove the need for data imports, exports, and multiple entries by unifying all major HR components into a single suite of modules.
  • Streamline Recruiting and Hiring: Control, manage and standardize the hiring process. Post to job boards and collaborate on hiring across teams centrally to reduce hiring costs, speed up hiring processes and improve the candidate experience.
  • Simplify Onboarding: Streamline onboarding by guiding new hires through required tasks, notifying other personnel for required actions, and more. Support includes WOTC, direct deposit setup, W-4 and I-9 documents, and voluntary benefits enrollment. Configure the system to collect data and sync it to payroll, time, and benefits modules.

Pricing Details

  • iSolved Time costs $4.00 per employee per month, according to our research.
  • However, there is a monthly minimum of $80.00.
  • There is also a one-time implementation and training fee which costs around $700.00 for a staff complement of 20.

Additional details about iSolved:

Businesses using iSolved:

9. Portland Payroll

Portland Payroll specializes in payroll services, workforce management, time and attendance, scheduling, and HR services.

More About Portland Payroll

  • Local Makes the Difference: Their focus is on saving & managing your time, empowering your employees, and helping your business improve. They consistently provide leading-edge automation, accuracy, and compliance at an affordable price.
  • They offer flexible payroll services and integrated solutions for Oregon and Washington organizations of every size.
  • Their automated time and attendance solutions will reduce your labor costs, and mobile tools provide 24/7, anywhere access.
  • They can help you empower your employees with self-service time cards and shift trading, making workforce management easier.

Pricing Details

Pricing is available upon request.

Additional details about Portland Payroll:

Businesses using Portland Payroll:

10. ConnectPay

ConnectPay is a One-Stop-Shop for all your banking needs from smooth onboarding, flexible pricing, to a personalized banking approach for all your daily financial operations.

More About ConnectPay

ConnectPay’s main activity and focus are banking payment services for business and institutional clients:

  • Payments: Eurozone (instant) & Cross-border
  • Accounts: Business & Segregated
  • APIs: Online Banking & Merchant
  • Accept payments: Banking & Card payments (NL, FI & DE)
  • Corporate cards
  • BaaS (Banking as a Service)

Pricing Details

Starting at $30 per payroll

Additional details about ConnectPay:

Businesses using ConnectPay:

11. SurePayroll

SurePayroll is a Small Business Payroll Company providing Easy Online Payroll Services, SurePayroll Makes Payday Easy, Fast, and Affordable.

More About SurePayroll

  • SurePayroll will deliver peace of mind by combining innovative, industry-leading technology and personalized support from an award-winning, U.S.-based customer care team.
  • SurePayroll has been helping small business owners with payroll and taxes for over 20 years. They were the first to offer online payroll services and haven’t stopped striving to make payroll easier for small businesses across the country
  • Theirur online payroll is easy to set up, fast to learn, and runs from your computer or smartphone in minutes.

Pricing Details

  • SurePayroll's basic plan starts at an affordable $19.99 per month, plus $4 per employee.
  • SurePayroll charges extra fees for some functions like a time clock and accounting integrations.

Additional details about SurePayroll:

Businesses using SurePayroll:

12. Gusto

Gusto's people platform helps businesses like yours onboard, pay, insure, and support your hardworking team. Payroll, benefits, and more.

More About Gusto

All versions of Gusto offer access to full-service payroll. The more you level up, though, the more features you’ll get. Every Gusto plan comes with these features:

  • Full-service payroll software
  • Employee self-service and profiles
  • Health benefits administration
  • Workers’ comp administration
  • Customer support
  • PTO tracking

Pricing Details

  • Starting at just $45 a month.
  • The Gusto Complete plan is the next level up and has the same $39 base price but is an additional $12 per employee per month.
  • The Gusto Concierge plan, the most expensive plan, costs $149 per month and an additional $12 per employee per month.

Additional details about Gusto:

Businesses using Gusto:

80 successful businesses are using Gusto ➜

meet the author
Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.