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OnPay is a highly rated payroll service that delivers a powerful package of benefits and customer support, all with transparent pricing and no hidden fees. OnPay's payroll software can support small businesses and mid-sized businesses across a wide range of industries and employee headcounts. Read on for a breakdown of this small business payroll software that combines payroll, HR, and benefits.
Pricing:
OnPay has only one pricing plan. It costs $40 per month plus $6 per person per month. So if you have 10 employees, you'll pay $100 per month ($40 base fee plus $60 for 10 people).
The biggest advantage of OnPay is that it doesn't only give you payroll software. It gives you a strong selection of HR tools and employee benefits, along with processing payroll, all in one place for one transparent monthly price. As your business grows and you hire more employees, OnPay can grow with you.
One downside of OnPay is that its integrations with other accounting software, time tracking software, and HR tools are somewhat limited. OnPay integrates with major accounting software like QuickBooks and Xero, so it should be easy to use if you're in the Intuit QuickBooks ecosystem. But if you'd prefer to manage your payroll and accounting with one platform, OnPay might not be the right choice.
OnPay is one of the best payroll software solutions for small businesses with multiple employees -- not solopreneurs, freelancers, or independent consultants. It's also a better fit for companies with lots of hourly employees, rather than salaried staff -- that's because the OnPay process for payroll runs requires review and confirmation of employee hours.
Are you a farmer or agribusiness owner? Check out OnPay. It has a special integration with Magnify (powered by Farm Credit) that can make OnPay a good payroll solution for farms and agriculture businesses.
OnPay offers clear, simple pricing that makes it some of the most affordable payroll software, as well as the most comprehensive. There's only one tier of OnPay pricing: $40 per month, plus $6 per person per month. This one all-inclusive price gives you all the features of OnPay -- no hidden fees or add-on costs.
OnPay is a powerful small business payroll solution because it gives you a wide range of features for one low price. No software solution is perfect, but OnPay can take the most worrisome payroll tasks off of your to-do list. Let's look at a few highlights and see why OnPay scores so highly on The Ascent's list of best payroll software.
The most important part of OnPay's payroll service is its comprehensive, flexible, multi-state payroll processing solutions. This payroll software covers all the bases for paying employees (W-2) or contractors (1099) in all 50 states.
Here are a few examples of what the OnPay payroll service does best:
OnPay doesn't just help your people get paid (and pay their taxes) -- it helps you hire, onboard, and manage people with built-in HR tools and documents. These essential HR tools make it easier for your company to maintain compliance and streamline the onboarding process.
Here are a few highlights of OnPay's HR tools:
Paying people's salaries and wages on time is important, of course, but the best payroll software can also help you manage the other big piece of people's compensation -- employee benefits. OnPay payroll software has built-in capabilities to manage employee benefits, including:
Along with tracking your employees' financial compensation and benefits, OnPay helps you manage your people's paid time off (PTO). Create a customized, flexible PTO policy for your company's unique needs, with up to three PTO accrual tiers. In-app PTO requests (and approvals) make it easy for employees to take time off when they're ready, with automatic subtractions from their PTO balances.
OnPay gives you payroll, HR and benefits all in one place -- and it can also help with accounting and other operational tasks. That's because OnPay integrates with some of the biggest small business accounting software brands, like Intuit QuickBooks (desktop and online versions) and Xero. OnPay also integrates with HR software, 401(k) providers, and more.
Choosing the right payroll software is often a matter of finding the right combination of features and integrations. No single piece of small business software can truly "do it all," but OnPay can connect your business functions across payroll, finance, accounting, and more.
As part of the research for this review, I did a quick behind-the-scenes free tour of OnPay. Here are a few general impressions about OnPay's ease of use.
Set up your company's payroll, HR, and benefits in whatever way works for you. See all of your workers in one place.
Each OnPay pay run takes just three steps:
You can also add extra pay items for employees or contractors, such as bonuses or sales commissions.
Employees have the ability to go into OnPay to view their payroll information, access their own tax documents, and make their own changes (if needed) to items like bank account numbers for direct deposit.
OnPay connects with major accounting software like QuickBooks and Xero and syncs data automatically, so you don't have to worry about duplicate (or missing) data in your bookkeeping. It also works with major software solutions for timekeeping, 401(k) providers, and other benefits and business operations.
OnPay gets high marks for its customer support. Many online reviews show clients saying that the OnPay customer support team is "responsive," "courteous," "understanding," and "knowledgeable." The OnPay team provides free help with setup and migration -- so if you want to switch to OnPay from another small business payroll software solution, you can get help to move your employee data and wage information.
The fastest way to get OnPay customer support is to log in to your account and use the built-in chat tool. Or you can call OnPay customer support at 877-328-6505 from Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. - 8 p.m. ET. OnPay also offers an online Help Center, an Onboarding Center, and makes it easy to submit a ticket for customer support.
OnPay ranks at the top of our list of best small business payroll software picks. It rates highly for its low costs and transparent pricing (only $40 per month plus $6 per person per month), with no hidden fees or complicated tiers. And unlike some payroll services that "only" do payroll, OnPay gives you a full suite of HR and employee benefits solutions, making it easier for small businesses to offer 401(k) plans, health insurance, and other in-demand benefits.
There are a few areas where OnPay might not be the best choice for every business. The three-step process for payroll runs (including having to check and update hours) might feel a little too high-touch for companies that prefer automatic payroll. If your company has mostly salaried employees instead of hourly staff, other payroll solutions might be a better fit.
OnPay's integrations could also be a point of friction for some companies. Although OnPay integrates nicely with QuickBooks, some companies that use QuickBooks for other everyday bookkeeping might prefer to keep their payroll entirely within the QuickBooks ecosystem, too. And if you already have a 401(k) plan and health insurance benefits set up through a broker or other providers, the OnPay selection of integrations for these employee benefits might feel too limited.
Ready to get started using OnPay? It's easy:
That's it! OnPay will ask you a few questions about your business, and take it from there. And you get the first month for free.
Do you want a low-cost payroll software solution that also gives you HR and benefits capabilities? Do you have a small business with mostly hourly workers? If you want a simple-to-use software solution that gives you sophisticated capabilities all in one place, OnPay could be the right choice for your business.
If you have a larger company (500-plus employees) with mostly salaried employees and you want auto-payroll, OnPay's simple three-step payroll run might still be a bit too time-consuming. Or if you prefer to keep your payroll software within the QuickBooks ecosystem (instead of just a QuickBooks integration), OnPay might not be the right choice.
OnPay is an impressive, comprehensive payroll software solution for small businesses. You can use this software to pay your workers and administer HR and benefits in all 50 states, with a wide range of flexible, customizable options to run your business the way you want -- with minimal friction and low costs. Despite a few limitations, this transparently priced, easy to use solution deserves to be in The Ascent's top rankings for small business payroll software.
Yes. Full-service payroll processing, including filing taxes, direct deposit, contractor payments, HR tools, and multistate payroll are all included in the cost.
Yes. Your employees can enter their own personal information, sign required forms, and fill out paperwork all using the employee self-service option, where they can also access pay stubs, W-2s, and tax information.
OnPay integrates with a variety of time-tracking applications including TSheets and When I Work.
OnPay costs $40 per month plus $6 per worker per month. So if you have 10 employees, your cost would be $100 per month or $1,200 per year.
A few types of small businesses that could be a good fit for OnPay include startups, medium-sized businesses, restaurants, farms and agriculture businesses, dental and healthcare clinics, nonprofits, franchises, fitness clubs, and more.
Yes, when you sign up for OnPay, you can get your first month for free.
Is it difficult to set up OnPay?
The OnPay customer support team will give you all the help you need to get set up for the first time, or to migrate your company data from another payroll service.
We're firm believers in the Golden Rule, which is why editorial opinions are ours alone and have not been previously reviewed, approved, or endorsed by included advertisers. The Ascent, a Motley Fool service, does not cover all offers on the market. The Ascent has a dedicated team of editors and analysts focused on personal finance, and they follow the same set of publishing standards and editorial integrity while maintaining professional separation from the analysts and editors on other Motley Fool brands.