Introduced in 2018, Workful is one of the newest payroll websites we’ve tested. It was developed by the same company that produces TaxSlayer, an online personal tax preparation website. We reviewed Workful for the first time last year, and it’s made some good progress since then, including a complete overhaul of the user interface and navigation tools. Workful actually started the redesign on mobile, so that version is identical to what you see on a big screen. The site has simplified what used to be an odd pricing structure and modified its onboarding tools. It now offers automatic payroll tax filing, but only in six states as of this writing. Though it’s strong on clock-punching tools, Workful can run traditional payroll but not with as much depth and customizability as our two Editors’ Choice picks, OnPay and Gusto.
Workful Is Affordable
Workful has changed its pricing since last year. It now charges a flat $25 per month base fee plus $5 per worker per month. This makes it one of the less expensive sites we’ve reviewed, though the Basic version of Patriot Software is the absolute cheapest, at $10 per month plus $4 per employee per month (the site doesn’t submit payroll taxes at this level, however). Gusto Concierge is the most expensive; it’s $149 per month plus $12 per employee per month.
Setting Up Workful
Workful has revamped its setup process since I last reviewed the site. Once you’ve created a username and password, you’re asked for your company name and contact information. The next step would be to add employees, but this is optional at this point. You can just move on to defining your pay schedule. What will the frequency of your payrolls be? Weekly? Biweekly? What date will mark the end of your first pay period and what will the first paycheck date be? When that’s completed, the site pops you out to the Dashboard, with no more onboarding guidance.
There used to be a list of four onboarding steps in a pop-out window that you’d work your way through, but that’s gone. So, you’re on your own to explore the site. You can, however, get assistance by chat, email, and phone, or by consulting the site’s Help Center.
The Settings menu is always a good place to start, if you’re not sure what’s required to prepare a financial website for use. Workful’s contains several entries. You’ll establish a link to your payroll bank account here. You have to supply the bank name and account type, routing number and account number. You also need to provide Principal Officer Information (name, birthdate, and Social Security Number) and images of an ACH Authorization Form and drivers’ license of the administrator, as well as that individual’s Social Security Number.
You have to identify your tax entity and provide your Employer Identification Number (EIN) here, too. You can establish reimbursements for employee expenses and mileage and set up your connection to QuickBooks Online (no other integrations are supported). You can also assign user permissions that give owners, admins, and managers the ability to access, change, view, and approve specific elements of the site. These roles are more granular than those of other sites I’ve reviewed—even than those in Gusto. Workful even lets you restrict the permissions down to the screen level in some cases.
There are two more important setup steps: The first involves establishing your time-off policies. You’re asked a series of questions that helps you complete this task in a simpler fashion than some sites provide. Friendly is good when it comes to payroll setup.
Once your policies are established, you’ll be able to view each employee’s status on the best, most comprehensive informational screen I’ve seen for this purpose. You can toggle among the three types supported: vacation, sick, and PTO. This page also shows—in both numbers and a graph—how many total hours have accrued and what the current balance is (this can be manually adjusted). It also tells you how many hours have been approved and used and how many are pending. A table below lists the employee’s time-off history.
Finally, you can establish some of the parameters for your Time Clock. Hourly offers a similar tool. You have to tell Workful how to find employees so that they can clock in and out. There are two options: You can allow them to do so only when they’re on your company’s Wi-Fi network or if they’re within a certain number of feet of one of your office locations.
This may sound complicated, but it’s not. You simply enter the name of your Wi-Fi network or provide the physical address of your business along with the maximum proximity allowed (how many feet away from the actual office can they be and still clock in or out?).
Good Employee Records
Payroll websites used to have you set up deductions and taxes in areas separate from the employee records. It’s becoming more common, though, for those setup tasks to be found within employee records themselves. You start creating employee records, though, by supplying their names, titles, and pay types, such as hourly or salary; Workful doesn’t offer as many options here as competitors do, and you can’t create your own as you can in OnPay. The step-by-step wizard then asks for personal and contact information, then W-4 data and deductions. You select the deduction type and enter a fixed amount or percentage to be taken out of paychecks. Set up direct deposit or opt for printed checks, and you’re done creating the record.
Workful has changed the way it displays employee information after it’s been entered. The main screen is a general profile containing personal and pay information, as well as tax and withholdings. You have to click the down arrow next to Profile to see links that were more visible last year: Time Clock, Documents, Expenses, and Time Off.
Contractor records are handled separately. You only have to enter names and email addresses; Workful sends contractors an email that takes them to a screen where they can complete their onboarding, which you can also do with employees.
Workful opens to its Dashboard. The content in this has been rearranged since I last reviewed it, along with the order of entries in the navigation pane. The Workful Dashboard is not as robust as those of some competitors, such as SurePayroll. You can always get back to the Dashboard by clicking its icon, which is the first in a series of links that runs down the left vertical pane. Links to your current payroll and payroll history appear at the top. A list of employees appears below those in a different pane, along with their current Time Clock status (clocked in/clocked out). Notifications of tasks that need attention (time-off requests, for example) appear next to that. Information about recently completed payrolls and projections of the next are below that, with links to regular and off-cycle payroll runs.
The Team Members link opens a complete employee list with the current Time Clock status for each worker. Click on a name, and the corresponding employee record opens. You can enter new records from here and link to an organizational chart that Workful automatically creates by looking at which manager is assigned to each worker—an unusual and welcome feature, though Hourly offers it, too. Contractor records are stored apart from employees in Workful. Each record is divided into two areas. The first is a basic contact profile and the second contains financial information such as banking settings (for direct deposit), pay rate, and payment history.
The Payroll option contains links for running regular, off-cycle, and contractor payroll. You click Time Clock to get current and past information about employee hours.
The tab labeled Documents opens a clearinghouse for personnel documents that you’ve uploaded, both public and private. It also houses files such as employee handbooks and employee evaluations. If the worker has submitted expenses, they show up under the Expenses tab, along with their approval status. Time Off opens a list view of all employees and how many hours they’ve accrued and spent, as well as the current balances and absences pending or approved. You can add and edit policies here. The Expenses and Mileage tab opens status screens for those employee concerns.
Workful’s reports are rather skimpy. These will probably mature, but for now, they don’t meet the standard set by sites like QuickBooks Payroll. There are only eight of them, and they’re mostly just list views of data, customizable only by date range. One is a simple list of employees with their hire dates, birthdays, and phone numbers; another displays employee expenses. Others offer more depth, such as Payroll Register Detail and Tax Liability. In addition to those shortcomings, the reports can’t be exported to any other format, only viewed on the site.
Because the current iteration of Workful was designed for mobile, the user interface on the desktop is very clean and simple. Combined with its confusion-free navigation system, Workful provides a user experience that would be suitable for novice payroll managers.
Good Employee Portals
Every payroll service we’ve reviewed in 2020 offers employee portals—password-protected websites where each worker’s personal information is stored and can be accessed. Workful’s are better than most of the others I’ve looked at. They look and work like the main admin site, with a very similar vertical navigation toolbar. Employees can see their profiles and contact information for coworkers; their time clock history and documents; and their calendars, expenses, and time-off status. The Financials section displays their income rate, banking information, pay stubs, and withholdings. The sole report provides an overview of expenses and mileage. Employees can track personal expenses in Workful without needing to submit them.
The portal’s Dashboard gives an employee a quick look at some key information. It displays current time clock status and the week’s history, as well as messages from the administrator, reminders of any incomplete onboarding tasks, and a chart showing PTO totals.
The Main Event: Running a Payroll
As is the case with every payroll service, orchestrating an actual payroll run is the easy part, once you’ve gotten everything set up. To get started paying, you click Run Payroll on the Dashboard or select the Payroll icon in the left vertical toolbar. If there are outstanding expense approvals, Workful warns you and gives you a chance to resolve them before you run the payroll.
The Payroll Run screen has changed significantly since last year. It used to open with only one employee’s compensation, vacation and sick time, and withholding details visible. Now, it works like other products’ payroll screens, displaying a list of all employees. You enter the number of hours worked and other compensation (bonus, commissions), along with any reimbursements due. Earnings types, as I said before, are quite limited, and you can’t create your own. There’s a total for that stage of payroll at the bottom of the screen.
Click Save and Continue when you’re done entering data, and you’ll enter any time off on the next screen. Click Save and Continue again to see a preview of the current payroll. You can download a full summary in PDF format or a browser window as well as viewing a table with the employee check amounts, withholdings and deductions, company taxes, and a subtotal. But you can’t click a link to see an individual paystub at this point as you can on other sites. The payroll total appears at the bottom. Click Submit Payroll, and the next screen tells you which checks you have to print, along with the same summary you saw on the previous page.
If everything looks right, click Submit. The Payroll Run Details screen appears, once again displaying every employee’s earnings and deductions. You can download checks or stubs from this screen. But nowhere does it tell you exactly how much money will be deducted from your checking account for direct deposit and taxes, and on what date. There’s a payroll total, but that’s it. However, if you go back to the Dashboard and click Payroll History, you can open individual employee paystubs and at least see your tax liability.
Though Workful calculates your payroll taxes, transfers them to forms or worksheets, and reminds you of when filings are due, it doesn’t yet submit them for you in every state, as most competitors do. You still have to write the checks and mail them in or transmit the payments electronically unless your business is located in California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Texas. More state rollouts are on the way.
Solid Mobile Access
You can’t run a payroll from Workful’s mobile apps (available as both an Android app and an iOS app) as you can in QuickBooks Payroll. There’s no admin app, only one designed for employees to use when they need to clock in and out and for submitting expenses. That said, the employee app is simple and intuitive. It opens to the Time Clock, where staff members just have to click a link to punch in. They can also see up to a week’s worth of work hours. Clicking the navigation link in the upper left and selecting Submit Expense captures a receipt photo and creates a record with payee, amount, and category.
You can run a payroll by signing into Workful from your mobile device’s browser. You can do anything on your phone that you can do on your computer since the site looks and works the same. You may have to do some scrolling around to see everything, but it’s there.
We’re Hopeful About Workful
Workful has some exceptional features (employee portals, time clock, granular user permissions) and some deficits (customizability, reports, payroll taxes). But it’s young, and we’re looking forward to watching it as it matures. In the meantime, we recommend our Editors’ Choice picks, Gusto and OnPay, which excel in all areas. Both offer exceptional user experiences, along with the features most often needed by both new and experienced payroll managers.
For more reviews of financial services for yourself and your small business, take a look at our roundups of the best online accounting services and tax software.
Workful Specs
Mobile Admin App | No |
Submits Federal, State, Local, and Payroll Taxes | No |
W-2s | Yes |
1099s | Yes |
Time Tracking | Yes |
HR Add-Ons | Yes |
Free Trial | Yes |