Top Rated Square Payroll Alternatives
Square payroll does everything for you, so you don’t have to worry about sending in W3s, 1099‘s,quarterly reports or a new hire report. This makes it super easy to be in compliance with all state and local regulations regarding payroll, as well as federal guidelines. It is not directly related to the payroll system, but it is also very convenient that ‘Square’ offers Worker’s Compensation insurance through their payroll. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The one thing that I am not thrilled about with Square payroll, is that it is not easy to understand at first, why or why not you may need what they call teams plus. This feature cost an additional $35 a month for our operation, and it has been difficult to understand that we did not need this additional feature. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Video Reviews
30 out of 31 Total Reviews for Square Payroll
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I like the ease once I first setup my payroll for my business. It was very straightforward, and it was easy to figure out where to put my state's EIN and additional tax numbers. I like that when I hire employees, it is easy to onboard them. The new hires can either onboard themselves, or I can import their information into payroll. I also like that it remits all the taxes owed to the state and Federal government. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Sometimes, there are issues of overpayment of taxes on Square's side, and also, there was an instance where Square changed my withholding rate, and I had to change it back manually. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
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Square makes it incredibly simple to convert worked timecards into easy payroll processing for wages Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There is a bit of difficulty if you run into a problem with banking info using direct deposit Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Literally nothing. For the handful of months we used them, it was a convoluted headache of confusing interfaces, convoluted setup, having to enter hours on *salaried* employees, tax issues, etc. etc. Literally nothing was good about this experience. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The interface is very wonky. All employees have to be entered into Square first, then "invited" to Square Payroll. Both processes were convoluted and confused the daylights out of the staff resulting in a lot of unnecessary administrative work on my end. Since Square, as a company, is super interested in referrals and wants everyone to buy a Square Reader, many employees thought they actually had to buy one. Thankfully no one did. The on-boarding process was easy to turn into a sign-up-for-Square process, which I confirmed when I sent myself an invite to an alternate email address. Once we got past that, it was all downhill from there.
We're a family farm with about 35-50 employees, most of whom are seasonal. We use Square to run both our farm stands and all our farmers' markets so Square Payroll seemed to make sense. Before we signed up, I asked numerous questions, including if they supported farms, including IRS 943 filing. I was told "yes, Square Payroll absolutely support farms.'" They do not, in fact, support farms. All farms are required to file IRS 943 for Agricultural Workers. Square Payroll only supports IRS 941. Unfortunately, we didn't catch that for 2 months - after we began enrolling the hourly employees. When I contacted them for clarification, I was told, by phone-based support, that 943 was "for household and domestic workers." Form 943 clearly states it is for Agricultural Workers right in the title of the form. No wonder they think they support farms, no one has ever looked at Form 943!
Initially, we tested only with a handful of salaried employees. Running payroll for salaried employees is an absolute mess. Everyone is converted to an hourly rate and then you enter how many hours the *salaried* staff member works. Which defeats the point of putting someone on salary. Additionally, we pay bi-monthly (on the 1st and 15th). No matter how long the pay period, you don't enter hours based on a 40-hour work week, which they do not tell you anywhere in the videos, documentation, or even several chats. You have to enter in 86.67 hours, which not having known that, meant I underpaid everyone for the first 2 paychecks.
When we started paying the hourly employees, the immediate annoyance was that I couldn't pre-enter hours for the next payroll run since there isn't a save function. This meant that for the employees who only work once a week at the farmers' markets, I couldn't enter their hours ahead of time. We have some employees who are paid by the day and others who are paid by the week (flat-rate). All of those people had to be entered just like the salaried people - so I had to remember who got paid 8 hours per day, who got paid 40 hours a week, and who got paid 20 hours a week (my boss is mostly to blame for this since this day-rate / weekly-rate apparently made sense when she was doing payroll by hand). This meant that each payroll run was way more time-consuming than necessary.
Having to enter every employee into Square first, then invite them into Square Payroll was a mess. But the biggest most confusing part of that was setting up permissions & permission groups for everyone. Square has basically decided every one of its customers is a restaurant or a commission-based retail outlet. Since we're neither, the permissions made zero sense, especially since only a handful of employees ever interact with Square. We immediately realized their time-tracking system wasn't going to work since it required everyone to clock in & out using Square. For those who don't work on the farm, they could use the Square Team app to do this but this was still a very confusing thing for a lot of the staff so we scrapped it since everyone is used to tracking their hours in 15-minute increments on an electronic timesheet at the end of the day so this was just an annoyance for most & incredibly confusing for others. It did make a mess of our Square system which, even after completely canceling Square Payroll, I have to by-pass the Square Team login to get to my dashboard, and some of the register tablets still have the option to clock in / out even though we disabled that feature and it shows as disabled at all locations.
Square Payroll does not export to an IIF file for QuickBooks Desktop or any other format / software, it *only* supports QuickBooks Online. This meant I had to manually enter all the payroll information into QBD by hand, each and every pay run. It was a nightmare. Square Payroll is upfront about only supporting QuickBooks Online but not having even a .csv download is absurd.
Our employees had wanted direct deposit for a long time. Square Payroll offers that - so long as you're with a bank they support. One employee had a checking account with a local credit union. Square Payroll rejected every single direct deposit, including the one made after I entered the employee's banking information myself. When we switched to OnPay, the employee had no problems with getting direct deposit at the same bank.
Reporting in Square Payroll is basically useless. All reports are .csv files that are generated & downloaded when you click a link. There is no preview of the 'report' and the explanations of what each report contains is seriously lacking. There is no customization of the reports. You have to choose between a few pre-generated options, then download the file and hope it contains the information you need. None of them were useful to running the business in any way.
I think I could honestly write a book about the issues we had with Square Payroll, only a few of which I touched on here. We left Square Payroll after 3 months for OnPay. We couldn't be happier with OnPay. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Clocking in from offsite, checking hours and paystubs live.
Square makes it easy for hourly workers to understand their paychecks and track their income from their phone. oh Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The phone app could use more features. There is so much potential in the app that simply doesn't exist. If Square took a few pages out of Venmo's book, it could be a super tool!
Also wish it didn’t log you out so eagerly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
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I have used the Square interface for years as my primary method of taking payment. I love the simple userface and for me, upgrading to Square Payroll was a no brainer! It's easy to use, the interface is perfect and I can do everything right on my phone. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
While I don't have any complaints about the functionality of Square Payroll, I would recommend relying more heavingly on the website for more tedious tasks like adding new accounts. Sometimes the web interface is easier to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
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I like that I am able to see my payroll using the app on my phone. Square makes the inteface very straightforward which makes it a breeze to use. If I need to change any detials it's at two taps away. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I have had some issues adding a new account while using the app, but no problems on website. Also, this was on older versions of the app but I sometimes could not navigate between the menus. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
What I like the most is the fact that everything is the practicality and ease with which I can do all my operations in terms of the payroll of my employees, its ease of use at all times is something quite admirable, the simplicity with The one that I can load the payroll processes is quite simple and practical, the fact that I can do a general load and then the system takes care of making the calculations individually for each employee with a fairly specific detail in such a way that the employees They can see their payment receipts in a quite detailed and explicit way, so that they can know what I am paying them without so much complications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I have not gotten any complaints regarding the use of this application in a fairly fluid way, so I find it quite useful to use it and I recommend it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Square Payroll is a dream if you work in administration or HR. Your job will from now on be very limited to employee interactions and no more doing tedious data entry or control.
Here is how you will notice that you are using Square Payroll:
- Your employees will clock in and out on the POS at work and it will automatically calculate overtime, paid or unpaid breaks, and more.
- Square will show you if an employee has worked overtime and it will be clear (blue is for shifts that have ended, green is for shifts that are currently taken place or "open" shifts, and red will show when your employee has been clocked in for too long or for an amount that requires you to pay overtime.
- No more sending in Quarterly Reports, New Hire Reports, or W-3s. Square will do all of this on your behalf.
- IF you add Worker's Compensation to your plan, you will get it through AP Intego and you can get a plan that is "pay as you go". This means you are never overpaying, you are only paying for the amount of employees you have right now, and you pay it little by little which is much easier than paying a large amount upfront. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
At first, we had some issues with Square Payroll and the following situations:
- Our employees could download an app themselves and that meant they did not need to be in the café or physically at work to clock in. This can be disabled in your dashboard, but I think it is important for Square to warn about this or make this featured disabled as the standard option.
- There is no way to add anything other than benefits to an employee's "account" or payroll. For example, we allow our employees to eat at the cafe at a discounted price, but they still need to pay for it. Most employees chose to have this discounted from their payroll instead of having to pay out of pocket for their food and drink items. We had them sign that this was okay to deduct, but there is no way to do so in Square. Only for other more common issues. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Square does everything for us! It is so difficult being a business owner with employees because you always have to worry about following reporting laws etc, but Square does all of that automatically! You never have to worry about sending W-2s again! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
More options for deductions would be great. Our employees eat for different amounts each week that they want deducted from their pay instead of using their card at the store and we can only set up automatic deductions at a certain amount, so we have to manually deduct each week. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.