10 Best Payroll Services For Small Business Of 2025

The rise in remote employment gives SMBs an expanded pool of potential candidates for their open positions. Managing a multinational workforce becomes as automatic as processing payroll for local employees with Remote’s global-focused payroll solutions. The company manages tax and regulatory compliance for operations in nearly 200 countries, including support from local experts in each jurisdiction.

Remote’s integrated payroll processing gives managers a clear view of their international operations, allowing them to check the status of payroll runs in all countries and the pay of all workers in a single window. The status of employee onboarding, expense reimbursements, work schedules and time-off requests are a click away. Managers can see at a glance which payroll runs are scheduled, in progress or awaiting approval.

Multinational companies get a single view of the pay records for all employees in a single window.

Companies gain deeper insights into their international payroll through Remote’s reports that cover year-to-date payroll costs, gross-to-net breakdowns, expense reimbursements and PTO for workers in all localities. Remote’s international compliance includes the IP Guard service that protects your business’s intellectual property by establishing a local entity to which IP rights are transferred and then passed back to your company. You also receive automatic compliance updates to your international payroll through the Remote Watchtower service that monitors regulatory changes and automatically updates your payroll system to maintain compliance.

Learn more: Read our full Remote review.

Payroll and HR are two fundamental business processes that go together like peanut butter and jelly. Gusto’s affordable payroll packages make managing the two functions as easy as preparing a PBJ sandwich. You can move seamlessly between keeping tabs on your recent and upcoming payroll runs and checking the status of your recruiting efforts and benefits sign-ups. The simple Gusto interface puts all the controls you’ll need for both processes in a single window.

Payroll and HR options are easy to access in Gusto’s clear and intuitive interface.

The payroll features in Gusto’s entry-level Simple plan let you pay employees and contractors in a single state and include automatic payroll processing with the company’s AutoPilot feature. The HR features in the Simple package are basic but include health insurance administration, background checks and new-hire reporting to the state.

However, many SMBs are better served by the midrange Plus and high-end Premium packages sold by Gusto for $80 a month plus $12 per employee a month and $180 a month plus $22 per employee a month, respectively. The former adds next-day direct deposit and many more scheduling and time tracking capabilities, while the latter comes with a dedicated support manager, compliance alerts and access to certified HR experts.

Learn more: Read our full Gusto review.

Every homeowner knows that there’s a time to do it yourself and a time to let the pros take over. The same goes for SMB payroll services. Many companies will benefit by paying a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) to handle their payroll processing so they can focus on managing their business’s core activities. While many PEO vendors charge $200 or more per employee each month, Justworks’ PEO Basic and PEO Plus are priced at $59 and $109 per employee each month, respectively.

When you outsource your payroll operations to Justworks PEO, you can give your accountant and other third parties access to your payroll data and set the permissions each will have for accessing your payroll data. The options include managing expenses, making payments, processing timecards, and handling invoices and reports.

Set third-party permissions for accessing payroll data in Justworks’ PEO settings.

The PEO services from Justworks don’t allow you to create custom pay schedules or process tips, both of which are included with the company’s standard Payroll plan. However, both the PEO Basic and PEO Plus products come with 24/7 support and access to the company’s HR experts. Only PEO Plus has a full range of health benefits and advanced payroll and HR analytics.

Learn more: Read our full Justworks review.

It’s no mystery why SMBs that use market leader QuickBooks for accounting would be drawn to the company’s payroll solution, a combination that’s available in three separate bundles from the company. Those products are far from the only integrations QuickBooks Payroll offers. In fact, there are hundreds of third-party integrations available for QuickBooks Payroll, including payment and expense-management tools, as well as dozens of non-QuickBooks accounting apps.

For example, companies that pay wages to employees and commissions to sales staff can link QuickBooks Payroll to one of 14 different commission management apps that work with QuickBooks Online to combine their compensation payments. If you’re switching to QuickBooks Payroll from ADP, Paychex or Gusto, you can migrate your employee information and payroll history directly to QuickBooks Payroll. The import wizard runs as part of your setup, giving you the option to upload your employee earning record and employee journal report from your previous payroll service by dragging and dropping them or selecting them in a file window.

Import your previous payroll and employee information when switching to QuickBooks Payroll in just a few steps.

Other QuickBooks Payroll integrations link your payroll operations with time-tracking apps, such as ClockShark and Timesheets.com, and sync with ADP RUN, Square Payroll, Paychex and dozens of other payroll apps. The product’s employee benefits integrations include Gusto, GoBenefits and Vestwell.

Learn more: Read our full QuickBooks Payroll review.

ADP RUN’s payroll reports go further than the standard financial records and analyses to cover your payroll liability, employee change and garnishments, as well as assigned property and employee skills, including their licenses and certifications.

ADP RUN’s reports go beyond the standard quarterly and YTD summaries to include job profiles, retirement contributions, and employee education and certifications.

The tax-related reports available with ADP RUN explain federal and state compliance requirements for quarterly federal tax returns (Form 941), annual federal unemployment (FUTA, Form 940), reports of wages and annual reconciliation of tax withheld for each state. ADP RUN’s custom reporting options let you base reports on employee or contractor data, payroll transactions, deductions or paid time off. The data can be filtered in more than a dozen ways, including net pay, special payments and payroll tax category.

Learn more: Read our full ADP RUN review.

Getting payroll right is a core competency of any business, especially considering the dire consequences of payroll failures. Square Payroll shows that you don’t have to pay a premium price to get a first-rate payroll service for your SMB. The list of payroll and HR features Square Payroll provides rivals the higher-priced offerings of competing vendors. In addition to payroll for employees and contractors, Square Payroll includes automatic payroll runs, employee self-onboarding, labor-cost reporting and multistate tax filings and payments.

It took me less than 30 minutes to create a Square Payroll account once I entered information about the company and a payment method. You start by designating and linking your bank account, then you add team members, set your pay schedule and sign up for benefits, if you wish. Time-tracking options include when your workweek starts, clock in/clock out preferences, and break and overtime settings. Lastly, you scan a QR code to download the Square Dashboard app.

Getting started with Square Payroll takes only a few minutes, including your company information, team members, payroll settings and mobile-app download.

Square’s reputation for affordable and easy-to-use POS systems carries over to its payroll services that works with its Shifts time-tracking and scheduling app, Team Communication collaboration tool and Advanced Access security app to create a complete workplace management system. Unfortunately, each of the four components is priced separately.

Learn more: Read our full Square Payroll review.

The two most common SMB accounting operations are payroll and invoicing. Rather than switching between two separate apps for each function, Wave Payroll gives you access to create and send invoices without any added charges. Wave’s free Starter plan teams with the company’s free Invoice Generator to create professional invoices that are delivered to you by email for sending to clients (you have to agree to receive communications from Wave).

Create custom invoices for free to pair with Wave Payroll’s payroll service and free accounting tools.

Wave also provides free invoice templates for specific industries that include legal offices, consulting businesses and freelancers. The templates can be downloaded as Word docs, Excel files, PDFs, Google Docs or Google Sheets. Wave Payroll is fully integrated with the company’s free and low-cost accounting software to create a complete solution that meets the payroll and accounting needs of small businesses, including wage and tax payment reporting, benefit calculations, and automatic tax filing and payments.

Learn more: Read our full Wave Payroll review.

Rippling’s payroll service stands out for its ability to automate common workflows. For example, many businesses offer a bonus to employees who refer a job applicant who is ultimately hired. The standard way to track the referral bonus is to enter the trigger date on a payroll calendar and manually add the bonus on the next payday after that date.

There are any number of potential glitches with the manual approach to paying referral bonuses, starting with remembering to check the calendar before running the payroll that should include payment for the referral bonus. Rippling automates the payment trigger by allowing the manager to create a custom recipe, or automated workflow, that adds the referral bonus once the trigger event has occurred.

Rippling’s recipes make quick work of common payroll tasks, reducing the likelihood of human error causing a missed payment.

Paying the referral bonus becomes part of the onboarding process for the new hire by using a recipe template that triggers the payment automatically. Start by entering the conditions and trigger. In this example, the conditions to be met are the employee start date and an employee referral, while the trigger occurs 60 days after the new hire’s first day on the job. The referral bonus is then added automatically to the referring employee’s next paycheck.

Learn more: Read our full Rippling review.

Each January brings a raft of new tax laws, many of which affect a business’s payroll tax obligations. Running afoul of tax rules can lead to hefty penalties being levied against your company. The Payroll Manager bundled with TriNet’s HR Plus administrative services organization (ASO) includes a Compliance Assistant that explains compliance deadlines, sets reminders designed for your businesses specific needs and adds the reminders to your personal calendar.

For an added layer of protection, TriNet’s Payroll Tax Compliance Manager outsourced service offers on-demand advice from payroll experts on matters such as retroactive filings, account recovery and tax risk mitigation. The service reviews your company’s existing payroll tax processes, ensures that your local and state payroll tax information is up to date and helps monitor your active payroll tax accounts. TriNet’s tax advisors review the payroll tax notices you receive and suggest actions to improve your payroll tax management.

Learn more: Read our full TriNet review.

If you ask your employees how soon they would like to receive their pay, the answer will likely be “yesterday.” Paydays can’t come too soon, which makes the OnDemand Pay feature of Paycor’s mobile wallet a sure way to boost the morale of your workforce. The earned wage access (EWA) capability allows employees to receive up to half of their pay as many as two days before their scheduled payday. The wages are transferred to a Paycor-issued Visa card and are accessible from the Paycor mobile app’s wallet.

The wallet in Paycor’s mobile app lets employees access up to half of their earned wages before payday.

The OnDemand Pay feature is free for employers, but workers may be charged a small fee, depending on the terms of the bank issuing the credit card. The funds on the card can be accessed through an ATM or used for in-person or online purchases. To help employees manage their finances, the Paycor app provides tools for budgeting, savings plans and other financial coaching.

Learn more:Read our full Paycor review.