On Friday, employees were shocked when they learned that their direct deposit paychecks weren’t in their bank accounts and companies were stuck with trying to figure out the reason why. Unfortunately, QuickBooks phone lines were all backed up for hours and chat was disabled, leaving business owners in a panic. QuickBooks claimed that there was an issue with a third party company that handles payments via direct deposit. Whatever the reason, having this happen at the end of the month with people have rent and bills due is awful.

This isn’t the first time Intuit, the makers of QuickBooks, has suffered such an outage. Payroll is probably one of the most critical operations for a business. And no one wants unhappy employees. I used to use Intuit Online Payroll for my clients but after suffering through other glitches and terrible customer support, I stopped using it years ago. Since then, I have been using Gusto and my clients and I have never been happier. I haven’t experienced any problems and have hardly ever needed to call support. Even so, their support is US-based and they answer the phone pretty quickly, not to mention that they are very knowledgeable and extremely friendly. I also praise their modern and fun website. It even integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks.