I'm certified in both. I'm Gusto Payroll Certified through Gusto Academy, and I hold Intuit's QuickBooks Workforce certification, which is what QuickBooks Payroll is called now. Both will pay your people, deposit and file your payroll taxes, and produce W-2s. The real question is where you want payroll to live, and how much you care about the employee side.
Short answer: pick QuickBooks payroll if you live in QuickBooks Online and want payroll in the same login as your books. Pick Gusto if you want the smoother employee and HR experience, or you're not on QuickBooks at all. Our own payroll service is built on Gusto.
First, the name change
In 2026 Intuit renamed QuickBooks Online Payroll Core, Premium and Elite to QuickBooks Workforce Payroll, Workforce Premium and Workforce Elite. Same product family, new name, with more HR and onboarding folded in. If you search "QuickBooks Payroll," this is what you'll land on.
How each one works
QuickBooks payroll (Workforce)
It's built into QuickBooks Online. Paychecks, employer taxes and liabilities post straight into your books with no sync in between. It supports Auto Payroll for salaried employees on a fixed schedule, and hours can come from QuickBooks Time.
Gusto
Gusto is a standalone payroll and HR platform. It connects to QuickBooks Online, Xero and other accounting software through an integration that sends a journal entry to your books after each payroll. Employees get their own logins for pay stubs, W-2s and onboarding, and the setup is friendly for a first-time employer.
Side by side
| QuickBooks payroll (Workforce) | Gusto | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | Inside QuickBooks Online | Its own platform |
| Getting data into the books | Posts directly, no sync | Integration sends an entry per payroll; the mapping has to be set up right |
| Tax deposits and filings | Handled | Handled |
| Employee experience | Solid | A real strength: onboarding, self-service, benefits |
| Works without QuickBooks | No | Yes (Xero and others) |
| Best for | QuickBooks-first businesses that want one login | Growing teams, first-time employers, non-QuickBooks books |
I've left pricing out on purpose. Both change their plans often and both have several tiers. Compare current pricing for your headcount when you're ready to decide.
The bookkeeping side most people miss
Whichever you pick, payroll touches your books in more places than one expense line:
- Gross wages go to wage expense. Employer payroll taxes go to their own payroll-tax expense account.
- Employee withholdings and employer taxes sit in payroll liability accounts until they're deposited.
- Net pay leaves the bank on payday, and tax deposits leave on their own schedule.
After every tax deposit, the payroll liability accounts should come back to zero. If they don't, something was missed, and it's far cheaper to find out in March than in January.
With QuickBooks payroll, the thing to get right is which expense accounts payroll posts to. With Gusto, it's the integration mapping. A common mess is a Gusto sync that dumped all of payroll into one account for a year.
Two more to watch. If you're an S-corp owner, your reasonable salary has to run through real payroll, and either platform works. If you run a restaurant, tip reporting through payroll is its own topic, and the restaurant bookkeeping guide covers it.
When I'd pick each
QuickBooks payroll if you already run everything in QuickBooks Online, you have a small, steady team, and you'd rather not maintain an integration.
Gusto if you're hiring your first employees, you want employees to self-serve their onboarding and documents, you're on Xero or another system, or you want the HR side to feel modern.
Switching mid-year
You can switch either way mid-year, but year-to-date wages and taxes have to come across so W-2s and wage-base limits come out right. The start of a quarter is the cleanest time to do it, because quarterly filings then line up with a single provider.
Want payroll handled and reconciled?
We set up or take over Gusto or QuickBooks payroll, and keep it tied out to your books every month.
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