Square Payroll Reviews

Pros

I loved that this was plug and play ready, user friendly and made payroll less of a headache. Tracking hours, schedules and pay was extremely easy and they handled all the government paperwork after set up. Reminders were super helpful and I never missed payroll deadlines.

Cons

I didn't like that I couldn't activate previously canceled plans. Since the pandemic caused me to temporarily shutdown I had to cancel the service to save the monthly fee. I was super disappointed that I had to create a NEW Square account just to get access to the plan again. In doing so, I had two locations, two Square accounts and double the headache of managing. Honestly this was one the biggest reasons I decided to switch to Zenoti to streamline everything into one account and make management easier.

Pros

The ease of use is the biggest pro for me. Requires very little prep work for me to prepare payroll, unlike other companies I have used in the past.

Cons

There is very little downside to Square Payroll, the only issue I have come across has been that I am not able to cancel or make any changes to payroll later in the week. There have been times where I have made an error and did not realize it until midweek and it is already too late to make any changes.

Pros

The ease of paying employees when I want to and knowing all the tax forms are done for me is great!

Cons

Lack of flexibility. You cannot open/close your payroll account more than once. If you have part of the year you don't run payroll or have employees for, you must keep the account open the entire year, until January of the next year if you want your tax forms. If you then bring employees back, after closing the account, you cannot reactivate it. The second thing I have issue with is lack of customer service. They respond in 3-5 days, with a stock response, and it took me 3 agents before this was explained to me. I have no employees for 6 months, but I have to pay the $45/month if I want my tax forms at years end.

Alternatives Considered

Gusto

Reasons for Switching to Square Payroll

I use their cc processing

Pros

So quick and easy to use. Set up is quick and easy! Reports are perfect! Payrolls are always timely and accurate. Agency reporting at state, local and federal level have always been accurate and timely

Cons

WE NEED AN ACCOUNTANT LOGIN FEATURE!!!!!!! Need a way to customize the weekly summary to load into the client bookkeeping! One sheet that explains the Federal and local withholdings for bookkeeping purposes. For example (a breakdown of EMPLOYER FICA and Employee Fica, Federal unemployment, State unemployment and state withholding need to be printed on the summary sheet)

Pros

Square Payroll is fast and easy to use and it works.

Cons

It takes 4 days after processing payroll to get employees paid. However, you can apply to have that shortened to 2 days.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Payroll

Reasons for Switching to Square Payroll

I've just found every Square product I've used to be very usable and accurate. So I chose it for Payroll too. It is great.

Pros

I love Square Payroll Services. They take care of all the paperwork allowing me to manage my business.

Cons

I love this software and I plan to keep using it for many years.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Payroll

Reasons for Switching to Square Payroll

Because I already had a Square account to invoice my clients. It seemed easier to keep only one account. They are great!

Pros

Easy to use. We use them for payment processing as well. I can do payroll in about 5-10 minutes. On boarding is easy as employees securely submit their own information.

Cons

For direct deposit you can only have your pay deposited into one bank account. There is no option for splitting.

Alternatives Considered

Patriot Payroll

Reasons for Switching to Square Payroll

I already used them for payment processing and the price was similar to my previous provider.

Pros

Extremely easy to run bi-weekly payroll. All reporting is handled for you.

Cons

It’s a little on the expensive side, hold times for support can be a little long but my questions have always been answered quickly enough.

Pros

It makes my life and business functional.

Cons

Nothing i love this software and everything about it

Alternatives Considered

PayPal

Reasons for Switching to Square Payroll

Its product overall quality is so much better

Pros

I appreciate square payroll reminders, ease of use, importing of time cards, calculations, etc. The set up makes it easy to use and follow.

Cons

I have experienced no issues at this time.

Alternatives Considered

Wave Accounting

Reasons for Switching to Square Payroll

I choose square because I already use the Square POS system and I wanted everything integrated in one place.

Pros

We appreciated the inclusion of so many capabilities inside the Square Payroll application such as salary calculators which generate
accurate payroll rates individually or by group. This is one of many features Square Payroll offers through an easy to use front line
interface. Our team was also impressed with Square Payroll's ability to integrate with our third party operational management software
already in place. Synchronization is proven in most cases quite fluid. As Square Payroll supports mobile use on IOS and Android, access is
readily available for employees when remote.

Cons

With such an outstanding and comprehensive application , our team found Square Payroll's customer service difficult to contact
and almost as equally difficult to work with during our installation and integration phases. We are happy to report that this level
of service improved as we progressed with Square Payroll's application features. There is a rather robust and informed online forum that
is available where so many issues can be resolved thus improving client quality control levels.

Pros

1. The option to fix things right on your account. It makes accuracy and ease seamless. It is also very quick.
2. The customer support! Because I'm constantly on the go with my job, being able to send an email and receive an email response to my question makes it easy anytime and anywhere to get help. The responses are always knowledgable, patient, and consistent.
3. Being able to see the stats on our payroll is AMAZING. With previous payroll specialist it seemed like we didn't have the option to really see behind the scenes, but now we are able to see everything and every penny.

Cons

There are times that the software gets glitchy when people punch in and/or out (will say they punched in or out but didn't actually/will say they worked a different amount of hours than they actually worked). Employees can usually tell from the punch screen though if something went wrong. After letting me know, it is always an easy fix, but still a fix to have to take care of.

Pros

Hands-down is the high compliance standards for very low cost. Close runner-up reasons are ease of use, both from the employer side as well as the employee side. This software is really great, offers a lot of protection, and cuts my payroll processing manhours from tens of hours every week to roughly 45 mins of double-checking things before hitting "PROCESS". Seamless direct depositing, set-up and managed by the employees themselves (though I can go in and make changes if they need help - only had that happen once so far, but still important). Very very VERY intuitive if you have spent even a little time in any other payroll software (yes, including manual spreadsheets).

Cons

I haven't had a chance yet to test the multi-state or international aspects (assuming international even exists).

Pros

I love that I can run payroll in 10 minutes or less and that they file all the necessary paperwork. The cost is based per employee, which works for my business model. They have a new app for folks on the go, too. I've downloaded that, but not used it yet.

Cons

Editing timecards isn't too bad, however, you have to wait until the employee is clocked out to make the edit and it can be easy to get busy and forget. But sometimes the system doesn't let me add a timecard from scratch. The employee doesn't drop down in the menu so I have to go add the hours to an existing timecard. This isn't a big deal if you're not carefully monitoring costs, etc.

Also, my employees go back and forth between locations, so if they start at location 1 to pick supplies up and clock in there, they're clocked in at that location for the whole shift. I wish there was an option to select which location they're working at.

Pros

Easy to use and customer service is always willing to help but at time since they don't use the products. Some questions are hard for them to answer, giving a text book answer and not fixing the problem. Even though they were ready and willing to help in every way. I have called multiple times and have had great experiences with staff.

Cons

Easier way for a receptionist to ring out different employees to lessen any mistakes, when pulling reports. Or..... giving an option to change service provider when pulling reports, if a mistake is made. Sometimes making the report irrelevant having to manually add all service and retail because something was rung up under an another employee. When paying employees commission a mistake can create tension. Ringing out you can not make any mistakes without voiding the transaction. when the only mistake was it was under a wrong employee name.

Pros

Time tracking and tax reporting were invaluable

Cons

No complaints - everything worked as I hoped

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Square Payroll

Ease of use and support

Pros

I absolutely love the ease of use, Square Payroll submits all my tax documents for me, works up my W2 and W3 forms at the end of the year, it is so easy and effective!

Cons

I wish the app was a little bit easier to edit when I need to adjust a Timecard. Sometimes one of my employees forgets to clock out, and it takes a while for me to go in and change their timecard.

Pros

Like many small businesses, payroll is not something I know how to do. I needed a quick and easy way to handle this and still be in compliance with all the laws. It's a bit daunting, but Square Payroll made it so simple. I don't have to worry about anything because they handle everything with incredible efficiency.

Cons

I do wish I could have the vacation tracking be done simply by the month, and not by hours worked. My team gets vacation time based on the month they work instead of the hours because we have slow months where they don't work as many hours, but I still want them to have the benefit of that time off.

Pros

The software is very user friendly, which is a major plus of the software. I like that you can add Memos to the paystubs now. This is a nice feature. Also the software's features are of a great value for the services provided.

Cons

I do not like that you cannot generate complete timecard spreadsheets which include the date, start and end times for each day for a specified time period. You can download individual timecards for any given day, and you can generate a spreadsheet with the total number of hours worked for a given time period, but you cannot generate a single spreadsheet which includes the date, start and end times for every single date in the time range. I have addressed this with Square support and have asked for this to be something considered in software updates. Employers in CA are required to maintain timecards for their employees so it would be very convenient if Square could add this feature to the software. Having to download each individual day's timecards is rather burdensome. Also, Customer Service has not always been very helpful. Sometimes I just get a cut and paste with the rep which does not address my specific inquiry.

Pros

I love how employees can set up direct deposit OR have a manual check, along with Square withholding the taxes and telling me exactly how much has to written in the check.

Very easy to manage employees, adjust hourly rate, overtime, timecards and off-cycle payments.

Cons

Wish there was a way to bulk add employee timecards. For example, if an employee works 5 days a week from home (I know of Homebase, but from a manual perspective) and the same hours every day. I currently have to submit 5 timecards, instead of one batch one.

Employees ask about seeing a breakdown of their hours inside of a pay period.

Pros

I've been very happy with the ease of contacting a real person to answer questions, of which I've had many. I appreciate how simple and streamlined the process is, and that I don't have to file any of my own paperwork.

Cons

When I signed up, it was at the beginning of Q2, and I had to run offcycle payments for Q1. Instead of filing Q1 late on it's own, Square combined it with Q2 and filed it all together. This was an inconvenience to sort out, and caused lots of confusion. I am still waiting to find out if I have to pay an IRS penalty because of this issue. Also, when I was signing up and adding employees, the software glitched and created multiple accounts for several of my employees. There is no way to completely remove these erroneous accounts from my employees list, so at times it has been difficult to sort through to figure out which is the "real" account for each employee. I'm currently trying to figure out how to find out the YTD payments for one of my employees, and I'm having a hard time finding this information.

Pros

Square provides us with payroll and credit card processing. Without them I do not think we could afford to have employees. The fact that they do all the work for me with taxes, forms, compliance, etc. is amazing. This service has helped my business grow.

Cons

Nothing problematic, we have not had any issues with square payroll.

Pros

The fact that the taxes are filed is a huge relief for an employer, square stays on top of tax rate changes and notifies you if there are any tax rate changes being made for state or federal taxes.

Cons

I really don't have any cons, it's easy to use and meets my business payroll needs.

Pros

The payroll services makes things easy and removes the headache and compliance worries.

Cons

Haven't found any issues that are troublesome. It's working great for us.

Pros

Price and easy access. Easy to install and best program for small business owners

Cons

need more time to submit payroll. Overall system is great.