You can set up reimbursements for employees and contractors in your Gusto admin profile.
If you have a Plus or Premium plan with Gusto, you can also now add expenses in the Expenses feature by following the steps below. For all other plans, add one-time expenses for reimbursement following the below, or upgrade your plan at any time. At this time, expenses for contractors is not supported.
Keep in mind that reimbursements and expense reimbursements are not taxed, and therefore not reported as regular wages.
If you're an employee, head to this article to learn how to submit reimbursement requests for expenses.
For employees
For contractors
Once processed, this amount will be seen as a separate line item on your employee's or contractor's paystub. If you'd like to leave a note about what the reimbursement, add a personal note on the paystub.
Note: If you have AutoPilot activated for your payroll, you’ll need to run payroll manually to add a one-time reimbursement and following the instructions above, OR approve all expenses before your Autopilot runs.
At this time, recurring reimbursements for contractors is not supported. You'll need to follow the steps to give a one-time reimbursement when paying your contractors.
Set up a recurring reimbursement
The next time you run payroll, this amount will appear in the reimbursement field. You can edit the amount if needed before processing the payroll.
Once processed, the amount will be seen as a separate line item on your employee's paystub. You can also run a payroll journal report to review totals for all of your recurring reimbursements.
Edit a recurring reimbursement
The next time you run payroll, the update will appear in the reimbursement field. You can edit the amount if needed before processing the payroll.
Once processed, the amount will be seen as a separate line item on your employee's paystub. You can also run a payroll journal report to review totals for all of your recurring reimbursements.
Delete a recurring reimbursement
Plus and Premium customers can reimburse employees for expenses using the Expenses feature. If you do not see this feature, you can upgrade your plan at any time.
Through the Expenses feature, payroll administrators with permission to run payroll can add one-time expense reimbursements for employees, approve submitted expenses, or decline expense requests with a note. Keep in mind that expense reimbursements are not taxed, and therefore not reported as regular wages. If you’d like to set up a recurring expense reimbursement (rather than a one-time approval) follow these instructions.
At this time, expenses for contractors is not supported.
To enable Expenses
To reimburse employees for a one-time expense
Once submitted, all pending expenses (whether submitted by an employer or employee) will show up on your Expenses home page until approved. When you run your next payroll, you’ll see the amount as a separate line item on your employee's paystub. If you'd like to leave a note about the expense reimbursement for your employee, you can add a personal note on the paystub.
Note: If you have AutoPilot activated for your payroll, you’ll need to run payroll manually to add a one-time reimbursement and following the instructions above, OR approve all expenses the day before your Autopilot runs.
Customize Expense Categories
To add custom expense categories, follow these steps:
To edit a previously created custom expense category, follow these steps:
To delete a previously created custom expense category, follow these steps:
To disable any expense category (custom or default)
Filtering Expenses
Now you can filter your list of expenses by employee name and/or categories.
Filtering by category
On the expenses page, you can now filter expenses by custom and/or default categories. To filter by categories, follow these steps:
Filtering by Employee
Bulk Actions
You can perform bulk actions on a list of expenses. This works in a filtered or unfiltered list of expenses (see Filtering Expenses on how to filter).
Selecting a group of expenses
Performing a bulk action
Ministers may be given an official housing allowance that is excluded from taxable gross wages. To set up a housing allowance in Gusto:
Ministers may be exempt from certain taxes such as Social Security and Medicare. Please refer to the Topic 417 - Earnings for Clergy for more details on how to request these tax exemptions with the IRS.
Once you've confirmed that the minister is exempt from these taxes, set up the tax exemption in Gusto in the People section.
Gusto connects to Aplos Accounting and can automatically track your payroll and tax payments. We also support the W-2 requirements and unique church payroll needs for pastor housing allowances and tax exemptions.