Payroll in the USA is a nightmare and I have outsourced to payroll services in the past at previous business startups. It’s just too complicated to do payroll internally here. I was hoping that someone in the US has figured out a way to integrate with ERPNext, but in checking the discussions and integrations, I don’t see that anyone has posted about this.
I would welcome any suggestions on successful small business payroll solutions for US business. If there is already someone who has figured out how to integrate with Intuit, Square, Gusto Patriot or any others, I would be thankful for the advice.
Yes, I looked at the HR module and the payroll processing and it is not in line with the needs of US businesses. Witholdings and distributions to various government agencies are made through a payroll service and ERPNext does not do this. Plus these services also do direct depositing and the various compliance filing for medical insurance coverages which are required for US businesses. HR is a VERY complicated business in the US.
In summary, right now we use a payroll service and book a journal entry to cover payroll and payroll expenses, it’s fine but a manual process. It would be great if ERPNext could integrate with one or more of the major payroll providers, this would really be an attractive feature for any potential us company looking at using ERPNext.
Thanks, I am familiar with Gusto but I was hoping to find out if there is a packaged integration or solution which works with ERPNext. Something which leverages the API to automate the process. There are lots of great integrations currently out there with ERPNext (Stripe, Dropbox, Fedex) but nothing to address Payroll or HR. Curious if anything like this exists or is in development.
@woakes070048 I would love to have $$ to put a bounty on this but we are a small startup with only three employees right now. We couldn’t justify the expense as a group with limited resources and payroll being a “wish list” item. Our hope is to grow on the ERPNext platform and have the ability to give back to the community once our company matures and has greater sales growth.
You might not have the money, but you could put in the requirement documents, create a bounty & make enough noise. Perhaps people will contribute and it will become a reality. Giving back doesnt have to be code. Could be initiatives, time, etc…
I spent a good deal of time reviewing various payroll/HR services and also arrived at the conclusion that Gusto would be a good candidate to integrate. Unfortunately, payroll, benefits administration and compliance are a nightmare in the US. Our insurance industry is unlike most countries and employee contributions to health care make it impossible to handle payroll internally for a small business. As a founder of other companies, I can say that addressing payroll and sales taxation are the two biggest hurdles to implementing a successful ERPNext system for a US business.
Based on the feedback on this string, I’ll craft a bounty for Gusto integration which has a well documented API. Gusto happens to also be based close to our offices in San Francisco, CA so I would be happy to be a point person/project manager in seeing this successfully integrated.
If anyone else has thoughts on this subject, please feel free to chime in as I will be happy to incorporate other “wish list” items into the bounty scope of work.
We settled on using Gusto to do our payroll and HR benefits administration. It’s pretty cheap and easy to use. They do all the payroll tax filings for us so it’s pretty simple for us. We run payroll every two weeks and just book a journal entry for the salary expense as well as the employee and employer payroll tax withholdings.
Gusto debits our bank account for the salary payments (net pay to employees) as one transaction. There is a second debit which goes to the government for payroll tax withholding. This is for both the employee and employer amounts due. Two journal entries every two weeks. Since the ammounts are almost always the same we just use the duplicate function for the journal entry and slightly tweak the amounts as payroll is mostly the same from week to week. Takes us two minutes to run these.
Hi @AV8 is there still interest in integrating erpnext with Gusto or you are not using ErpNext at all? We are also evaluating ErpNext for consulting services in US markets. Just trying to get info on its feasibility.
We have been using ERPNext for close to five years and love it. We also use Gusto for managed human resources and payroll services in the US. Using the ERPNext payroll is not very useful because you cannot pay all of the required employer taxes without a third-party service.
Gusto is the best third party Service that we have found thus far. We have been very please with both.
We’re new to ERPNext and trying to figure out how to both use it internally for our own ERP, but also create a consulting business around it for manufacturers.
We’ve used Gusto for a couple of years for payroll processing, and Freshbooks for invoicing and light accounting. Gusto is quite good, especially if you are avoiding the Intuit machine, like we are.
Integration with Gusto and GitHub issues are high on our list of integrations to create or buy once we get proficient with ERPNext.
I integrate Gusto with ERPNext (v11) through a combination of Gusto General Ledger report, Google Sheets and n8n. Works well. I create a detailed Journal entry for each week’s payroll. Takes minutes.
For those using external payroll like Gusto: Do you use ERPNext time sheets or Gusto’s time keeping?
Anyone know of relevant example integration code for exporting time worked to a payroll service and and importing the various costs after payroll is run?
As a point of contradiction, I disagree that ERPNext isn’t compatible with US businesses. Taxation isn’t that complicated as the IRS publishes the exact rules and tax tables, rules for deduction, etc. We are a small $10MM business and I successfully automated all of our payroll including deductions for healthcare, 401k, state and federal taxes, some filings/forms (like W-2, W-4, 1099, 941 - I’m working on some others), and even sales tax.
Experience with ERP systems in general and an understanding of how to customize ERPNext though workflows and scripts is required - but that’s required for implementation anyway. It only took me a few weeks to move all of our payroll over and we save money by not using 3rd party payroll providers. Gusto was our first option before I realized how much money we could save if I just implemented it myself.
This is an old thread, but I’m happy to answer any questions if anyone sees this in the future.