What is Deluxe Payroll?

Deluxe Payroll is a full-service payroll system aimed at the entire business spectrum, whether small to medium-sized, enterprise, or multinational organizations. The company behind Deluxe Payroll is Deluxe Corporation, a large US multinational founded in 1915 and headquartered in Minneapolis. Deluxe Corporation is a multi-billion dollar business technology and payments company, employing over 6,500 people and processing more than $2.8 trillion in annual payments. The company’s product offerings are diverse, including web-hosting, marketing services, online printing, and even a reality television show for small businesses. However, its four core streams of business offer products for operations, digital marketing, payments, and brand marketing.

The payroll services manage the payroll and tax compliance across all states, allowing you to pay hourly, weekly, monthly, or twice a month. Your annual W-2s and 1099s are taken care of, as is your new employee onboarding process, with a streamlined process offering electronic onboarding, new hire checklists, and electronic offer letters complete with electronic signatures. Your employees can choose how they wish to be paid, with Deluxe offering direct deposits, paycards, or paper checks. If you choose the higher-level plan, you gain unlimited workflow automation, cross-company collaboration via digitization, and a range of custom reporting fields and document templates.

Given the size of Deluxe Corporation, it’s not surprising that many add-on products are available to your basic plans. Benefits administration is an option to automate and streamline your benefits compliance, offering paperless benefits management, from plan negotiation to enrollment and full administration. You can bring your own broker or use one through the Deluxe system. The time and attendance add-on is most suited to hourly employees, shift workers, seasonal or part-timers, and those jobs that need tracking at different rates. It incorporates a drag-and-drop schedule builder, automates time tracking, and keeps you compliant with labor laws. Digital recruiting is an add-on to optimize the worker hiring system, with one-click posting to over 25 job sites, a choice of candidate questionnaires, texting, and self-scheduling.

What popular features do you get with Deluxe Payroll?


  • Single sign-on email integration
  • Clean, intuitive user interface
  • Employee choice payment methods
  • W-4 and new hire filing

  • Major accounting system integrations
  • Digital new-hire onboarding
  • W-2 and 1099 filing
  • Employee self-service online portal

  • Compensation and garnishment management
  • Syncs timesheets, vacations, and leave

Customer Support is available at Deluxe Payroll

Unsurprisingly for a business the size of Deluxe, you can access trained customer service staff by web chat, email, or phone. A real customer service standout, however, is the Deluxe resource center. This web-based service is a huge repository of how-to articles, blogs, whitepapers, and interactive tools. Nicely organized, the resource lets you step through every stage of your HR and payroll questions, explaining best practices and answering frequently asked questions. This area has been an opportunity for improvement by Deluxe for some years, so it’s nice to see such a clean, well-organized data repository. Kudos to them!

 

What kind of business is Deluxe Payroll ideal for?

The Deluxe payroll solution can be used by any sized business, with price per employee being the only determining factor. Deluxe has built an impressive collection of HR and payroll tools, with add-ons for larger organizations or those seeking extra support in specific areas, such as benefits or time-and-attendance. The limiting factor for a small business is the monthly fee and price per employee. Other payroll providers offer similar core services, which work out at a lower price per worker for businesses with less than five employees. However, Deluxe payroll is a great, integrated offering with an unlimited ability to scale for those organizations with five or more employees.

Pros and Cons

  • Huge scalability options due to the Deluxe business services
  • Backed by a solid business with over 100 years in operation
  • Simple plan pricing
  • Considerable automation capability to streamline your payroll
  • Comprehensive payroll reporting
  • Access to a large online HR resource
  • Knowledgeable customer service assistants
  • Intuitive and clean user interface
  • Workers’ compensation and garnishment management
  • Compliant tax filings included


  • Add-on pricing is not transparent, requiring you to ring for a quote
  • No free trial

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How much does Deluxe Payroll cost?

*based on information provided by the vendor. Actual cost may vary.

Deluxe offers an entry-level plan for those needing basic payroll, tax filing, and hiring requirements. This entry-level plan is called Payroll + Essentials, with a subscription starting at $45 per month, plus an additional $7 per employee.

The higher-level plan offers online payroll and tax filing, with a more comprehensive HR service that automates worker hiring, management, and retention. This plan is the Payroll + HR Enhanced option and starts at the same $45 per month subscription, plus an additional $14 per employee.

Final thoughts...

We’re impressed with Deluxe’s payroll product, as much by the company’s gravitas and experience as the software’s quality. Once you research the many products Deluxe can offer your business, you’ll realize that this payroll solution gains you entry to an extensive business support ecosystem. Yet, if you only want a competent payroll service with good customer support, you get that too. For a small business with only a few employees, you need to balance the slightly higher per head monthly cost against the opportunity to scale and automate as you grow.

Organizations with larger employee numbers will appreciate the huge potential to automate their processes and manage their shift, seasonal, and multi-pay rate employees while staying compliant with labor laws. Multi-location organizations will appreciate the chance to completely digitize their HR system to make it accessible across the company. There’s a lot to like about the Deluxe payroll offer, and we believe you should consider this product seriously.