ZenPayroll is now Gusto • Hacker News Board

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#61

Post by elsewhen » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

edawerd wrote: post #34

tarr11 wrote: post #22

Yeah, my company has 3 overlapping products now. Zenefits, zenpayroll, and indinero (bookkeeping / accounting). They all offer some sort of employee onboarding and have their hands in payroll to a certain degree. We seem to spend a lot of time syncing our employee records between all 3, it is not great. Of those, I probably need zenefits the least of all of those, and I would consider switching to gusto's service jus…

One of the main benefits of a truly integrated payroll, benefits, and compliance product is that you don't have to worry about the syncing of employee records across these systems. We intentionally wanted to start at the lowest, most fundamental layer (payroll) and build these other pieces into a single product.

if you knew all along that you were going to expand to these other services, why did you name the company 'zenpayroll' to begin with. without more context, this sounds like a rewriting of history.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#62

Post by ericd » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #23

localcrisis wrote: post #12

First off, congratulations to the team. This is a big change and I'm sure a huge amount of work went into making this happen. I wonder what this says about the company's focus. They started out focused on payroll, with the BI press release saying they had 20k customers out of millions of small businesses. So obviously a lot more to be done and they are off to a good start. Which raises a few questions: Do they consid…

Wasn't payroll solved decades ago? How have companies been paying their employees? We paid our employees through BofA and it was cheap and easy.

Came from ADP, ZenPayroll has been so much better, and cheaper to boot.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#63

Post by enjo » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 6:04 PM UTC

localcrisis wrote: post #12

First off, congratulations to the team. This is a big change and I'm sure a huge amount of work went into making this happen. I wonder what this says about the company's focus. They started out focused on payroll, with the BI press release saying they had 20k customers out of millions of small businesses. So obviously a lot more to be done and they are off to a good start. Which raises a few questions: Do they consid…

Zenefits does payroll and benefits as well,...

They do, but they are far far far far away from having this stuff solved. Very few people I've talked to are completely thrilled with Zenefits at this point. It's an extremely hard space, and hopefully one that Gusto can bring some new perspective to.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#64

Post by pc86 » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 6:07 PM UTC

espinchi wrote: post #57

darksaints wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the MBAs have gotten to you.

Well, not necessarily. Starting off with a more accurate keyword (payroll) and then broadening it up as you extend your service (benefits) makes sense to me, and I'm far from having an MBA. Also, the prefix "zen" is being a little bit abused these days.

> Starting off with a more accurate keyword (payroll) and then broadening it up as you extend your service (benefits)

They should have renamed to Zenefits! Wait...

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#65

Post by brazzledazzle » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 6:46 PM UTC

elsewhen wrote: post #61

edawerd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main benefits of a truly integrated payroll, benefits, and compliance product is that you don't have to worry about the syncing of employee records across these systems. We intentionally wanted to start at the lowest, most fundamental layer (payroll) and build these other pieces into a single product.

if you knew all along that you were going to expand to these other services, why did you name the company 'zenpayroll' to begin with. without more context, this sounds like a rewriting of history.

Or to be more charitable they wanted a name that conveyed the one thing they were doing and didn't want to prematurely optimize for something they couldn't be 100% certain they'd execute on or what timeline they could accomplish it in.

I think HN needs another "be nice" post from management.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#66

Post by adrianmacneil » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 6:46 PM UTC

edawerd wrote: post #21

adrianmacneil wrote: post #13

I really like the Zenpayroll product, but I wish they would focus on expanding into more states before adding benefits etc and trying to compete with Zenefits. This would prevent companies who have employees in multiple states outgrowing them and needing to switch to ADP.

On the payroll side, Gusto is actually a full-service payroll provider in all 50 states, meaning we do all your tax calculations, direct deposits, tax payments, and quarterly tax form filings. For workers' compensation insurance, we're also nationwide. For health insurance, we're currently available in California only, but we're already expanding to get nationwide.

Oh nice! Last time I checked I thought you only supported a dozen or so states, but that may have been quite some time ago.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#67

Post by shiftpgdn » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 7:08 PM UTC

edawerd wrote: post #21

adrianmacneil wrote: post #13

I really like the Zenpayroll product, but I wish they would focus on expanding into more states before adding benefits etc and trying to compete with Zenefits. This would prevent companies who have employees in multiple states outgrowing them and needing to switch to ADP.

On the payroll side, Gusto is actually a full-service payroll provider in all 50 states, meaning we do all your tax calculations, direct deposits, tax payments, and quarterly tax form filings. For workers' compensation insurance, we're also nationwide. For health insurance, we're currently available in California only, but we're already expanding to get nationwide.

Please add the ability to do 1099-DV payments. As a C-CORP founder this is a serious downside.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#68

Post by ericd » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 7:16 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #25

sjs382 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strange. I didn't think it was unclear at all. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gusto guss toe

Anyone with any exposure to Spanish or Italian would think goo-sto.

The pronunciation in English in the US (their target market) isn't ambiguous, though.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#69

Post by pbreit » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 8:16 PM UTC

ericd wrote: post #68

pbreit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with any exposure to Spanish or Italian would think goo-sto.

The pronunciation in English in the US (their target market) isn't ambiguous, though.

Considering the number of Spanish speakers in the USA, particularly in the population centers, and that the word is much more common in Spanish than it is in English, I'm not so sure.

Re: ZenPayroll is now Gusto

#70

Post by margotleong » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 8:22 PM UTC

kgrin wrote: post #55

I like ZP (now Gusto), I really do, but their support over time has been lacking (and it feels like it's degrading), and as a customer I'm growing increasingly concerned that they're growing too fast to keep up. Granted - I'm a tiny account (3 employees). That said, it's frustrating that it takes weeks to get answers to questions (some simple, some less so). When I finally do get someone's attention, the resolution i…

Hi Kevin! I'm the community manager over at ZenPayroll. Thanks for taking the time to post.

I can't tell you how sorry we are to hear about this issue and there's no excuse for the delay in our response. Please rest assured that your business (no matter how small) is incredibly important to us. In fact, because your company is small, we especially want to be there to help!

We have been particularly busy lately on the support side, especially with the launch, but again, that's no excuse. We hold ourselves to a certain standard of delight on product, support, and overall customer experience and we didn't deliver on that for you. We should and can be better.

We want to let you know we've done a ton of hiring lately, in addition to opening up an office in Denver that is focused specifically on support and care. As a result, these kinds of wait times should not continue going forward.

One of our team is looking into your case and should be responding shortly. We are always committed to getting better and appreciate you giving us the chance to prove that. Thanks and again, we've very sorry about that.