Wagepoint Payroll Review: Features, Pricing, Alternatives

Keeping on top of your company’s payroll is one of your most important responsibilities as a small-business owner. Thankfully, there are tools out there to help you manage payroll, including Wagepoint Payroll.

This Wagepoint Payroll review dives into the program’s specifics, price, features and other elements that might make paying your employees a little easier. Plus, you can take a look at some Wagepoint competitors and other options to see which is the best fit for your needs.

» MORE: NerdWallet's best HR software for small businesses

Wagepoint is an online payroll software, which is a fancy way of saying that it takes the manual labor out of paying employees and contractors while handling federal, state and local taxes. Software like Wagepoint simplifies payroll by moving the entire process into the cloud — the platform takes care of the fine details and mundane components of getting your folks the payment they’re due. This is true for salaried and hourly employees, as well as freelancers and independent contractors.

Wagepoint is able to automate the finer points of payroll management by organizing and maintaining your company’s data. This makes it easy for the system to retain key details about your employees, such as their deductions, direct deposit information and any additional income. Roll it all up into one package, and you’ve got a software solution that reduces the number of human-driven interactions that stand in the way of paying your staff.

Better still, Wagepoint does much more than act as a recordkeeper for vital company information. The platform also keeps track of new employees as they onboard and file tax-related forms, gives online paystub access to your employees and even helps you run payroll calculations. All of these features are cloud-based through Wagepoint, which means you can manage payroll from anywhere with an internet connection.

Wagepoint provides a range of features to automate your administrative workload, each with a unique approach. The platform makes it simpler for you to pay your staff (and freelancers) and to monitor salaries, payroll calculations and deductions in an effective manner.

Payroll processing

Wagepoint offers payroll processing that makes it easy for your employees to get their checks (or direct deposit payments). The platform makes it simple to get at-a-glance details about each of your workers, whether they’re independent contractors or full-time, salaried employees. Best of all, you don’t even need to toggle between different parts of the program in order to handle different employee classes — all the information you need is accessible from one handy interface. Better still, Wagepoint even allows you to create different groups of employees, called Paygroups, in order to send out payments on different pay periods.

Taxes and year-end reporting

Wagepoint calculates and collects payroll taxes each time you run payroll. Additionally, based on your filing and reporting schedule, it will submit taxes and reports on your business’s behalf. Moreover, at year-end, Wagepoint automatically generates W-2s and 1099s and files them with the IRS. Both employees and contractors can access their respective year-end documents, W-2s or 1099s, using the online employee portal.

Online paystub access

With Wagepoint, employees no longer need to hang onto paper paystubs (or come running to you whenever they need access to their paystubs, either!). The platform allows employees to access their paycheck information from anywhere at any time. Wagepoint’s website gives access to each employee within the plan, meaning that they can find all the information they need without reaching out to you for it instead. This can save time, reduce inefficiencies and improve employee satisfaction with the click of a button.

Luna paid time off management app

Wagepoint doesn’t just handle payroll — the company also offers two add-on products to help small-business owners track time-off requests and employee timesheets. The first one, Luna, helps keep track of paid time off simply and efficiently. Users can observe and take care of time-off requests from their staff without having to build their own calendars. Employees enter requests through the Luna system, and once approved, their days off then appear on a global calendar so everyone knows where the rest of the team is. Better yet, Luna builds off of the Wagepoint framework already in use if you’re a subscriber. All you need to do is add Luna into your existing Wagepoint environment to get started.

Track time and attendance app

Many small-business owners have to rely on less-than-elegant (or straightforward) ways to track employee hours. Sometimes those efforts take the shape of spreadsheets, emails or (heaven forbid) paper sign-in sheets. Wagepoint’s Track tool allows you to keep on top of your employees clock-ins and clock-outs as well as their overall hours on the job. This makes it even easier to get your people paid the right amount for their work, all without requiring you to spend any additional time manually entering information into Wagepoint from another source.

Wagepoint is upfront about its pricing: There are no contracts to sign, no hidden fees to brace for and no unexpected end-of-year costs to contend with. This business model is similar to Wageworks and Gusto, which also eschew the back-and-forth dance that comes with reaching out to a provider for a quote that’s specific to your business’s size and needs.

Instead of making would-be customers jump through pricing hoops, Wagepoint has one simple pricing model: $20 a month gets your company onto the Wagepoint system, and each employee costs another $2. That’s it — no service tiers, no tricky fees. Bear in mind that this setup is for biweekly payroll payments; weekly payroll comes with a $10 base fee and quarterly payroll a $75 base fee. No matter which pay cycle works best for you, Wagepoint has you covered with a transparent fee structure that might meet your needs.

Furthermore, to use either Luna or Track, you’ll have to pay an additional fee. For either of these add-on apps, you’ll pay a $20 monthly flat fee for one to six users and for more than seven users, you’ll pay $3 per user. However, you’ll only pay for employees who have assigned plans with either Luna or Track — meaning if you have 10 total employees and only three are set up with these add-ons, you’ll only pay for those three.

There are a ton of Wagepoint reviews out there, making it somewhat tricky to figure out which one is the definitive voice on what the platform has to offer. Most focus on the same core components of the program, such as its ease of use, flexibility and simple setup processes. Plenty of Wagepoint users have great things to say about the program, though it doesn’t get perfect scores across the board. Here’s a synopsis of how the average Wagepoint review shakes out.

Positive

The majority of Wagepoint users are happy with the platform because of how easy it makes their company’s payroll process. The user interface gets top scores from many reviewers, most of whom herald Wagepoint for being easier to use than many of its other (and perhaps better-known) competitors. Some go so far as to say that they no longer dread doing payroll because of how intuitive Wagepoint’s design is for the average user. Other reviewers champion Wagepoint because of how easy it is to find information through the platform. Employee data is stored conveniently in the cloud, which means no potential data losses if on-site computer systems fail (or vital pieces of paper get lost in a filing cabinet).

Reviewers say that Wagepoint’s user experience isn’t just great for managers and business owners. Employers also rave about being able to access pay-related information with the click of a mouse. The platform gets praise for offering W-2 forms, pay stubs and other commonly used paperwork without the hassle of having to ask a colleague for the same information. All told, most reviewers are generally satisfied by the entire Wagepoint experience, particularly with how well the system works — and how few headaches it causes along the way.

Negative

As solid as Wagepoint praise is from most reviewers, the platform does get negative marks from a few current users. Some reviewers have chided Wagepoint for being on the clunkier side when it comes to paying out for vacation time. The system makes paying out vacation time less than straightforward, as it gets paid hourly rather than daily. This can make it a little time-consuming to get your employees’ paid time off settled from a payroll perspective.

Other reviewers have a few complaints regarding special circumstances, such as unique garnishments and reporting features. Even these complaints, however, come with the caveat that Wagepoint representatives are easy to reach and reply quickly to user queries and concerns.

If you're trying to decide whether Wagepoint is right for your company, or if another platform might offer a better solution for your needs, here are some top alternatives to consider.

Paychex Flex

Paychex Flex is a cloud-based platform from a titan in the payroll processing space, known for delivering consistently solid performance that can be measured by the decade. Paychex Flex offers small-business owners the chance to use a leader in the payroll processing sector with a lengthy history and track record in terms of trust and safety — all without having to be a midsize company or larger. This product provides payroll and HR support including benefit planning and management, as well as other helpful tools to assist small businesses function without needing to employ a fully-fledged payroll team in their own company.

The prices for Paychex Flex are hard to determine without reaching out for a quote, as its product page doesn’t offer pricing specifics. Your best bet is to reach out to a Paychex Flex representative to determine how much a plan might cost for your company.

Gusto

In the arena of payroll systems, Gusto is known for being easy and straightforward for novices and experts alike — be that in terms of payroll processing or computer savviness. The main strengths of Gusto are payroll management and tax management, which are at the core of the program and sit alongside a number of other features to help manage your company’s HR issues. Gusto may be worth considering for your company’s long-term, overall human resources needs. The platform focuses on payroll at its core, but that’s far from the only capability it currently provides. Better yet, there are likely to be more features and upgrades in the works as well.

The Gusto Simple plan costs $40 a month, with an extra $6 per worker in the system. The Plus bundle provides several extra HR programs for $80 per month, with each worker in the system costing an extra $12. Gusto Premium offers a high-touch level of support, replete with licensed HR experts on hand to guide you through any and all HR-related questions that might come up. This plan is quote-based pricing. Gusto also has an option for contractor-only employers, who simply pay the $6/employee rate and no base price.

» MORE: NerdWallet's best small-business apps