Migrate from Gusto to Zoho Payroll with a US partner

Your employees and their pay rates come in through Zoho Payroll’s employee and salary imports, along with withholding elections. This calendar year’s Gusto pay runs come across through Zoho’s Prior Payroll tool, which builds each person’s YTD wages, taxes, benefits and deductions. Benefits, deductions, garnishments, earning types, time off policies and PTO balances are set up and checked against Gusto.

Yes. Zoho Payroll lets you start at any point in the calendar year, as long as this year’s earlier pay runs are imported as prior payroll before your first Zoho pay run. That import has to happen first, because Zoho won’t accept prior payroll once you have processed a pay run. We still aim for the first day of a quarter, which keeps each quarterly return with one filer.

With a quarter-start switch, Gusto files every quarter it paid wages in, and Zoho Payroll files from the first quarter it pays in. If a switch has to happen mid-quarter, only one provider can file that quarter’s return, so the handoff is agreed with you and your CPA and written into the BRD before cutover.

Zoho Payroll, for the whole year, because it holds the Gusto pay runs as prior payroll. When you cancel Gusto you tell it not to file year-end forms, so employees get one W-2 each instead of two. We check that setting with you during hypercare.

Zoho lists single-state payroll for all 50 states on Standard, and multi-state payroll on Professional. A short list of state and local taxes is calculated but not remitted by Zoho Payroll, such as Hawaii SDI and New York paid family leave and SDI, so the employer pays those directly. We check your work locations against that list in the assessment.

Payroll from earlier years, returns Gusto already filed and past pay stubs stay with you as an archive, because Zoho Payroll imports the current calendar year only. Tax account numbers, bank verification and portal invites are set up fresh. Contractors move to Zoho Books, and time tracking and onboarding move to Zoho People.

Zoho Payroll in the US is built for W-2 employees, so contractors are paid as bills in Zoho Books, which can e-file 1099-NEC forms. If contractors are a big share of the people you pay, we talk through whether that suits you before anything is signed.

That is what the side-by-side check is for. Gusto pays every period until a Zoho pay period has matched it, and the first Zoho run is approved at least four business days before payday so direct deposit lands on time. If anything looks off, Gusto pays that period and we fix it first.

Not today. Zoho Payroll runs one active pay schedule per organization, and the schedule can’t change after the first pay run. If you pay one group weekly and another semi-monthly in Gusto, we decide together during planning whether to merge them or keep one group on its own setup.

It depends on headcount, states, benefits and how far into the year you switch. We work back from a quarter start and your first Zoho payday, set Gusto’s last pay run as the stopper date, and the Migration BRD fixes every date in between. The planner on this page shows a sample calendar for your pay frequency.

Every move fits one of three packages, Quick Move, Standard Move or Complex Move, each with a fixed fee written into a signed BRD. Larger moves start with a paid Migration Assessment, and that fee is credited in full against the migration. The first call costs nothing.

Each team involved, usually payroll, HR and finance, names one contact, often its head, who signs the Migration BRD for their part and later confirms their sample employees in Zoho Payroll. Your overall project owner signs as well, and every sign-off is kept on record.

It stays open and read-only through hypercare so past stubs and returns are there to compare. You cancel it yourself, and only after you confirm Gusto has filed its last quarter and you have downloaded everything you want to keep.