Justworks fast factsOur star rating: 4.1 stars Pricing: Starts at $59 per month per employee) Our star rating:
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Justworks is a professional employer organization that provides software solutions and support for organizations looking to simplify and streamline their people management. The software offered by Justworks supports businesses with administrative and employee management operations, including payroll, benefits, HR and compliance processes.
The company advertises its software as user-friendly and designed to meet the needs of small and midsize businesses. Compared to its competitors, Justworks stands apart thanks to its plentiful features, generous customer support and user-oriented interface.
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Justworks’s pricing
Justworks doesn’t provide free trials of its solution and offers two PEO plans: Basic and Plus. Businesses that choose Justworks’ PEO solution can also choose Justworks Hours as an add-on time tracking product. Justworks Hours is priced at $8 per month per user.
For organizations only seeking features to help them with payroll processing, Justworks also offers a standalone payroll product.
Justworks PEO Basic
Price: $59 per employee per month.
This plan provides everything organizations require to support their basic payroll, benefits, HR, and compliance operations. The suite of tools includes payroll for salaried and hourly employees, vendor and contractor payments, off-cycle payments and features to help with payroll and other tax filings. Organizations that utilize this plan also receive access to benefits, including life and disability insurance, health and wellness perks, workers’ compliance, and 401(k)s.
Justworks PEO Plus
Price: $109 per month per employee.
The Plus plan is charged at a higher price but provides a broader selection of valuable tools and features. This includes everything provided with the Basic plan as well as access to medical, dental and vision insurance. Organizations that choose the Plus plan also gain access to additional perks, which include HSA/FSA accounts, life and disability insurance, COBRA administration and One Medical (where available).
Justworks Payroll
Price: $50 per month plus $8 per employee.
The Payroll plan is a lightweight payroll solution for smaller businesses operating within one or two states and is applicable in the following states:
- New York.
- California.
- Texas.
- Florida.
- Massachusetts.
- Illinois.
- New Jersey.
- Georgia.
- North Carolina.
- South Carolina.
- Nevada.
- Wisconsin.
- Tennessee.
- Arizona.
- Maine.
- Idaho.
- Colorado.
- Virginia.
- Maryland.
- Connecticut.
- Washington, D.C.
This solution is ideal for small teams of one to 30 employees or contractor-only organizations looking to streamline payroll and HR operations.
Justworks’s key features
Justworks provides a variety of features for businesses through its PEO platform. The platform includes tools and capabilities for processing payroll, HR, benefits and compliance tasks, with 24/7 customer support and an optional time-and-attendance add-on feature.
Payroll
Justworks helps employers pay their staff through its robust payroll software system, which automates multiple parts of the payroll process. Employers can schedule their online payroll with the help of the software’s primary tools, including automatic direct deposits for full- and part-time staff members.
Businesses can choose to pay employees through weekly or bi-weekly frequencies. The software supports payments for hourly and salaried nonexempt employees, and employers can pay employees across 50 states while complying with employment and payroll tax filing regulations.
The Justworks service keeps businesses compliant with their payroll tax processes as it files payroll taxes, 1099s, and W-2s for them. Justworks also takes the stress out of processing expense reimbursements with tools (Figure A) to simplify financial reporting and safely manage important documentation.
Figure A
By consolidating payroll tools and features within their software system, Justworks enables employees to take their payroll management into their own hands and facilitate visibility throughout the payroll process. Employees can use their Justworks mobile app to submit expenses and track their timesheets through the time-and-attendance software. This software connects timesheet data to payroll, making processing expense reimbursements and running payroll online easy.
Finally, the automation continues with Justworks auto notifications, which can get users’ attention with automated reminders and overtime alerts through emails and push notifications. Justworks automation is one of the many ways this software is optimized for user accessibility and easy navigation.
While Justworks does offer some features for managing distributed teams, the software doesn’t provide payroll to non-US-based employees. For this reason, an alternative solution such as Papaya Global may be a better fit for businesses managing international workers.
HR
Justworks supports businesses with its administrative HR tasks through its HRIS software tools, features and integrations. With fully automated capabilities, companies can safely and efficiently manage their staff throughout their employee lifecycles, from streamlining new hire onboarding to management and reporting.
The centralized HR dashboard helps HR managers automate administrative tasks and visualize important information. Businesses can tailor their software to their unique HR needs with set permissions, organization charts, company directories, handbooks, policies and secure storage of necessary documentation. Justworks also has employee scheduling and PTO management online, so employees can submit requests for administrators to approve all within the one easy-to-use system.
Onboarding new staff is simplified through the online dashboard, where employees can choose their health insurance plans and upload their direct deposit information safely within the system. The process is further supported through integration with Greenhouse, enabling the flow of employee data within the system.
Another helpful aspect of the software’s data storage and integration features is that they enable businesses to consolidate and analyze their data to track key business metrics (Figure B). Justworks provides prebuilt reports that decision makers can customize in real-time to generate insightful data visualizations.
Figure B
Benefits
Businesses can attract new members to their teams by offering a generous compensation package to employees that includes employee benefits. Justworks makes this possible and simple through its streamlined system, which comes with access to a benefits suite comprising a variety of top plans and offerings.
Through the Justworks platform, employees can allow staff to choose from medical, vision and dental insurance and benefits from top regional and national carriers. The platform ensures that users can access all of the benefits information they require to make an informed decision, as it offers estimated quotes and costs calculated through its data-driven underwriting process.
Employees can manage their benefits through the Justworks mobile app and employee portal, where they can participate in Open Enrollment and access their insurance information.
One unique offering that’s built into businesses’ health insurance coverage at no additional cost is wellness services. Wellness services can include fertility and family-building benefits, mental health services, primary care and other valuable perks.
The Plus plan lets businesses access benefits and perks usually reserved for larger corporations because Justworks negotiates directly with providers. This way, smaller organizations can access large group market offers for benefits like medical insurance, dental and vision insurance and HSA/FSA accounts.
Compliance
Justworks helps employers adhere to all employment regulations, covering federal taxes, state taxes, employment practices liability insurance, workers’ compensation and local regulations. As a PEO, Justworks supports businesses with compliance tasks, such as filing 1099s and W-2s and reporting, withholding and remitting employer payroll taxes.
In addition, Justworks provides a suite of online training designed to help businesses stay compliant with city and state requirements for harassment prevention training. Organizations can also ensure compliance with support for state unemployment insurance filings, ACA Filings (1094-C and 1095-C) and workers’ compensation, to name a few.
Justworks Time Tracking
Regarding payroll accuracy, Justworks’ time and attendance features help businesses monitor the work and overtime of contractors and employees. By using the time tracking tool Justworks Hours to gather this data, companies can easily submit accurate payments and access payroll and invoice reports that correctly reflect their staff’s worked hours (Figure C).
Figure C
Justworks Time Tracking is an optional tool designed to work with the Justworks PEO systems. It enables users to perform time tracking capabilities and easily syncs this data into the software’s payroll functions. Some of the features provided by this tool include automated reminders and alerts, time-tracking with targeted geo-fencing, shift management and custom scheduling rules.
However, it’s essential to note that Justworks Time Tracking isn’t included within the Justworks PEO base plans. Businesses must pay an additional monthly add-on fee of $8 per employee to access this time-tracking tool.
Support
Businesses that choose Justworks can access full-service support through phone, email, chat (Figure D), Slack or SMS messages. This 24/7 support is a valuable perk to Justworks, as not all enterprise software providers offer help beyond standard business hours or through this many support channels.
Figure D
The Justworks support team includes certified HR consultants and dedicated onboarding managers available to provide guidance tailored to each business’s unique needs. Business administrators can gain support with all tasks related to the company’s human resources, finances, compliance, legal concerns or accounting. Better yet, employees can also get help from Justworks for benefits, payroll, HR and onboarding.
Justworks pros
- 24/7 employer and employee customer support through numerous channels.
- User-friendly interface.
- Employee self-service portal accessible through website and mobile app.
- Data-driven visualizations and customizable reports for deeper insights.
- Automation included throughout various payroll, HR and compliance features.
- Full employment-related compliance management.
- Access to high-quality health insurance plans.
- Automatic tax filing in all U.S. states.
Justworks cons
- Less expensive Basic plan lacks some features and employee benefits that can only be accessed through the Plus plan at almost double the price.
- Applicant tracking feature relies heavily on a third-party integration with Greenhouse.
- Can be expensive for larger teams due to the per-employee price structure.
- Time-tracking feature requires an additional add-on fee.
If Justworks isn’t ideal for you, check out these alternatives
Rippling
Our star rating: 4.3 out of 5.
Starting price: $8 per month per employee plus a custom monthly base fee.
Rippling is a workforce management platform that includes tools and features to support businesses with their employer operations. It’s an excellent option for companies looking for a more custom-tailored alternative to Justworks, as it allows them to decide between a non-PEO and a PEO solution and choose the essential features they need according to their unique business requirements.
BambooHR
Our star rating: 4.4 out of 5.
Starting price: Custom quote.
While Justworks offers employee self-service capabilities, BambooHR takes the employee experience to a new level. It’s designed for small businesses and provides a variety of tools to help them attract and retain top-quality talent. Some unique features BambooHR provides include employee well-being surveys, performance appraisal software and many other employee engagement tools to ensure employees are engaged and satisfied at work.
Papaya Global
Our star rating: 4.2 out of 5.
Starting price: $15 per employee per month.
Papaya Global is an excellent Justworks alternative for international teams. Businesses can use the Papaya Global PEO solution to process payroll for staff members in over 160 countries, with employer of record services and payroll compliance. Companies can set up automatic payments for all global workforce members through direct deposits in their local currencies.
Papaya Global provides several plans for companies to choose from, with options including EOR services, international contractor management and more.
Review methodology
This is a technical review using compiled literature researched from relevant databases. The information provided within this article is gathered from vendor websites or based on an aggregate of user feedback to ensure a high-quality review.
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