Benefits and tax prep with Gusto’s Will Lopez

Show Notes

Joining Paul on this episode of “The Building Code” is Will Lopez, head of the accountant community at Gusto. Before joining Gusto, where he’s been for a year and a half, Will owned a small accounting firm. He has a passion for his industry and is dedicated to helping small businesses with the dream of changing the game in the accounting profession.

Listen to the full episode to learn more about Gusto and how they help small construction businesses provide payroll, benefits and HR services for their teams.

Why do companies need more than just payroll?

“When people are looking for new career opportunities, they’re switching jobs or they’re looking for their first job, they’re looking at more than just a paycheck, right? Some recent research said that eight out of 10 times they’re also looking at health benefits that a company offers. And that sways their decision one way or the other. They’re also looking at whether or not they can save for retirement, that sways their decisions. So, it’s much more than a paycheck. They could say no to great money because all the other benefits are missing.”

Wow should companies prepare for filing taxes in 2021?

  • Keep processes simple
  • Don’t wait until the last minute to collect documents
  • Make a checklist of the documents you need
  • As soon as you receive documents, pass the ball to your accountant

Want to learn more? Check out Gusto’s website.

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Transcript

Paul Wurth:

You are listening to “The Building Code,” a podcast by Buildertrend where we talk all things technology and construction. Be sure to stick around to the end of the episode, where you can find out how to be a part of The Building Code crew. Let’s get it.

Hello, everybody. My name is Paul Wurth, and you are listening to “The Building Code.” Today, we have a very special episode I’m really excited about. We have Will Lopez from Gusto. Why don’t we start by first telling people about yourself and then we’ll talk about what is Gusto.

Will Lopez:

Yeah, sure. Thanks. Well, thanks for having me, really excited to do this. So, been at Gusto for about 17 months. I’m actually an accountant by day and night, believe it or not. Been in the accounting profession my entire career. Came over to Gusto mid last year to oversee their accountant community, basically their partner program. County professionals from all across the U.S. partner with Gusto, service clients on Gusto, construction clients on Gusto. And I empower that side of the business. And love business, love entrepreneurship, love owning a business, owned my own small business prior to coming to Gusto for about seven, eight years. It was an accounting practice, of course. But yeah, excited to be here. And that’s a little bit about my background without getting too boring with debits and credits.

Paul Wurth:

So, accounting, we don’t do video yet. Teaser for all the listeners, we’re trying to get some YouTube like live videos of our podcast once we doll up our studio. But I guess my point is …

Will Lopez:

Where the future is.

Paul Wurth:

Yes, where the future is. Yeah. But, you’re a young guy. And you got a t-shirt on says Gusto, you’re kind of hip, and you decided to be an accountant. Are you trying to change the game there?

Will Lopez:

Well, somebody had to change the game, and I thought it might as well be me. What’s funny, Paul, is I had this grand dream of mine where I wanted to end up on like “Entrepreneur Magazine” as like the not your mom and dad’s accounting firm kind of thing.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. I like it.

Will Lopez:

I mean, for me, I think my profession needs a lot of upgrading. It’s very archaic in a lot of different ways. And I love my profession. I think what we do for a living and what we do day in and day out, caring for business owners and caring for their teams and stuff like that has always persuaded me. My parents were small business owners their entire careers, both out of passion and out of necessity, they had to be business owners. They didn’t graduate from high school. So, a lot of that really inspired me early on, and that led me down the accounting path. But, I think there are a lot of people like me that just need to like put their hand on the plow and not look back and change the profession a little.

Paul Wurth:

I love that. I love that. And you bring up a great point because, as a business owner, having a great accountant, that sort of blind spot of your business for most people in construction because they don’t get into owning their own business for being a custom home builder, remodeler, construction company to do the books, by any means. Right? So, it’s a definitely a blind spot for them, and they need somebody they can trust. And there’s a lot of problems both in saving money and just getting yourself in trouble that a good accountant can help an owner avoid. Right?

Will Lopez:

Oh yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I’ve always looked at people like myself as the ultimate non-equity business partner, right?

Paul Wurth:

For sure.

Will Lopez:

I’m there to fill in the gaps where you’re there to do exactly what you’re passionate about and leaving that other tidy administrative work to me.

Paul Wurth:

I love that. We actually used that term since the beginning of Buildertrend chat, and one of our co-founders, Dan, always talked about being a non-equity business partner. So, we definitely share that same thought. All right. So, you were on your own, you had your own business, you’re into accounting and then you come to Gusto. Why and what is Gusto?

Will Lopez:

Like I said, I have a deep passion for my industry. I love my profession. I’m not ever going to leave it. I want to continue to invest into it. And what really struck me about Gusto’s heart is their mission is to create a world of work empowers a better life. And we do that through three things. We call them three pillars. And it’s creating a great place to work, a more resilient place to work, having personal prosperity and building a great culture. So, for me, that really aligned me with Gusto’s values overall, that I felt like I could still be a pro. I could still empower my profession and my peers at Gusto, while Gusto also has a heart for my profession and for small businesses. So, I felt like I could have a bigger impact through Gusto, which we are.

Gusto has always been here for small businesses since they opened the front doors and even more so during 2020 with the pandemic hitting. We’ve worked really hard to create a lot of resourcing for small businesses, especially those in the construction industry, opening up features and avenues to access all the relief that has hit us this year. 50 product features. We’re able to help secure like $280 million of PPP loans, stuff like that. So, my heart and Gusto’s heart aligned, so that’s why I’m here.

Paul Wurth:

It seems like really lofty goals for … I think when you go to the website, you look right at the website, and I actually logged in to the demo, which is really cool by the way. So, if you want to learn more about Gusto, and I’m sure we’ll close the show with how you can do that, but you offer like a demo. And on the face, it’s a payroll HR, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth. That’s sort of like the nuts and bolts of it. But when I got in there, so much more. Like you said, resources, helpful things for you to do, what to be on the lookout for, right?

Will Lopez:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Gusto prides itself on being the people platform of choice, and supporting people in a team of people is much more than payroll. And I think my profession also has a little to do with that. I think we’ve always bucketed people or individuals either as a payroll bucket or a benefits bucket or an HR bucket. And they’re are anything but, right? An employee walks into the door and says, I’m an employee of this company. And yeah, I expect a paycheck. I expect some benefits, and I expect some help with HR issues if I’m having issues. So, being an employee of a company is a very comprehensive and holistic experience, and Gusto builds its product and prides itself on delivering on that holistic experience. So, we’re known as a payroll, but we’re much more than that. We offer benefits, HR, financial wellness tools. This year we’ve really stepped up as an entire company to deliver much more than just those core experiences, like things on COVID-19 for both the employee and the employer, and so much additional resources for the accounting partners that they work with.

Paul Wurth:

That’s great. I love how you’ve sort of put that. It’s like, you’re not just a software for payroll, and then you can go find another software for HR and another software for benefits. It’s like, that’s not how you should look at your employees, so don’t look at your provider of software the same way

Will Lopez:

As a business owner, almost my entire career, I learned pretty early on that a disjointed people experience was not going to be great for a happier, productive team. Right? And the truth is, is that employees really want to be cared for, and that comes in a variety of ways. That comes with, yeah, getting a paycheck, but it also comes with peace of mind around their health and wellness. It comes around making sure that their workplace is safe.

I mean, there’s just so much nuance to working somewhere that to just simply think that all you need is just payroll is anything but from the reality of what’s going on. And I think if anybody needs any proof point, just look at the past 12 months of 2020. Right?

Paul Wurth:

Right.

Will Lopez:

And it’s just like, as a society, we care for employees and we care for teams. And over the last a hundred years, we’ve done a lot of advancements as far as employee rights and advancing representation of employees. But, when you look at a team as just payroll, they’re are anything but that. They’re much more than that.

Paul Wurth:

A lot of business owners talk to us, as Buildertrend. We have conversations with our clients, obviously, and they’re all small business owners in construction and they talk about, how do I build a culture? How do I have a company that attracts younger millennial talent? And a lot of what you just said is the key to that. Right? Where we’re not just looking at them as we’ve got to do payroll for them and go talk to the benefits’ person from this other company, then, when we do benefits. It’s like, it needs to be much more holistic. And I think that definitely speaks to what you were just talking about.

Will Lopez:

Well, yeah. I mean, when people either look for new career opportunities or switching jobs or looking for their first job, I mean, they’re looking at more than just a paycheck. Right? And I think some recent research said that eight out of 10 times, they’re also looking at health benefits that a company offers and that that sways their decision one way or the other. Right? They’re also looking at whether or not they can save for retirement, that sways their decision. So, it’s much more than a paycheck. And if a company threw a bunch of money at someone, but didn’t offer benefits and didn’t offer the ability to save or didn’t offer the ability to save for your child’s, let’s say, college through a five 29 plan or anything like that, that really impacts someone’s decision making. And they could say no to great money just because all the other benefits are missing.

Paul Wurth:

Right. And in this industry specifically, Will, construction has a huge labor shortage problem. And in that, the opposite side of attracting labor is keeping the good people that you have from going somewhere else. And that’s the same thing. It’s like, you need to give them the correct holistic sort of experience to make them feel like they’re a part of this that’ll help them from looking somewhere else.

Will Lopez:

Yeah. I mean, if you give people a ton of reasons to leave, they’ll leave, right? Or, at least not come. And so, building a nice comprehensive package or something like that, to really entice someone to stay and endure and build a career with a company really goes a long way.

Paul Wurth:

Am I right? And again, I’m not just setting this up. I’m generally curious. Gusto is typically small businesses. Is that your target market? Is that who you guys built this platform for?

Will Lopez:

Yeah, so we have built our platform for up to a hundred employees. So, any company of just about any industry up to 100 employees. We are working right now to actually expand that 100 employee mark. We obviously understand that there are bigger companies and larger companies. There are actually a lot of large companies that use Gusto that are above that 100 employee threshold.

But based on our current experience, that’s not where the majority of difficulty is out in the marketplace. 98% of businesses in America are under a hundred employees. When you look at monthly jobs reports and you actually go into the details towards the middle half of those job reports, you’ll see that almost all their statistical data is below the 100 employee mark. So, we solve for that segment of the market because it’s the most underserved. So, we’re here to serve the underserved. And a lot of payroll companies get enticed by going up to the bigger companies. Right? So, why service 100,000 plus small businesses, when you can land, let’s say, 10,000 500 employee businesses? But that’s not where we want to be. We want to serve the underserved. And we want to really lean into that and give business owners the competitive advantage that they deserve, that they generally don’t get when they partner with a payroll provider.

Paul Wurth:

I love that. It totally aligns with Buildertrend because we’re the same way, small businesses. We don’t go after the top 10 builders. It’s everybody else. The great thing about this day and age is that you can utilize platforms like Gusto and Buildertrend to get the advantages that these huge companies have always had in terms of systems and data and just resources. So, that’s really cool.

Speaking about that, let’s give somebody a little tip here. Alright? We’re going to give them something for listening to this far. When you talk about 2020, I think some people would say, thankfully, it’s coming to an end. It’s been definitely an uphill trudge for everybody. But what should be on our customers’ 2020 end of the year checklist stuff?

Will Lopez:

I think the construction industry’s notorious for contractors and subcontractors. Right?

Paul Wurth:

Mm-hmm.

Will Lopez:

I’ve been in the profession long enough to know that that’s quite the common trend. So, I think keep it simple is my recommendation. I know they have the KISS out there, the keep it simple, stupid, which is like, look, you got end of your approaching. I’m sure you’ve been working with a lot of people that may have not given you their form W-9, which gives you all that official information that you need to kick out a 1099, or a W-2 if they become an employee. So, don’t wait to the last minute. Definitely don’t wait till like January 20 or 31, when those things are due to start collecting this information, just do it now. And if you do it through like Gusto, we actually have an easy outreach feature where we kick out that W-9 and automate it through technology. Right? No more paper. Obviously, socially distance when you’re using tech. Remote, when you’re using tech. But keep that really top of mind. It’s the one that creeps up on just about everybody.

Paul Wurth:

Okay. Love that. So, start doing that thing now.

Will Lopez:

Yeah, just be proactive.

Paul Wurth:

And that’s a pretty good general piece of advice. Like December hits, let’s just get your checklist and start working on it. Don’t wait until the last minute. Speaking of that, when it comes to organizing tax information by the end of the year, in your past life, or your current life, what’s some of your advice to people on that?

Will Lopez:

A few things here. I think what’s a little unique about this year is, I think everyone’s scrambled to organize their tax information because the PPP required it. They wanted your financials up to date. So, hopefully you’ve been maintaining it. And so, I would say keep on top of it from when you fetched it, maybe three months ago to grab that PPP loan. The tax stuff doesn’t start rolling in till like the end of January. Right? So when the year closes a lot of the 1099’s and W-2’s, and all the personal and corporate stuff start flowing in, it generally happens around January, late January, early February. So, what I would do is I would just kind of look at what you put together last year, just kind of make a short list of it. It could be like 10 documents, 15 documents. Just create a checklist, keep an eye out for it in the mail. And then once you get it, just kind of folder it away.

What I used to do with my clients was the moment you get it, just scan it, give it to your accountant, and just put the ball in their court. Always just keep tossing the ball back to them. They have no reason to be sitting on this kind of stuff, especially with all of us adopting new technology now, and they’re able to do it. So, just look at last year, put a quick punch list together, and just kind of keep an eye out for it.

Paul Wurth:

I like how you’re speaking our people’s language by using punch list instead of checklists. I appreciate that, Will.

Will Lopez:

There you go.

Paul Wurth:

They know that stuff now. Although, people don’t really like …

Will Lopez:

Throw a couple nails in it.

Paul Wurth:

There you go. Alright. I love that. So, you were talking about closing the year. I’m just firing questions at you.

Will Lopez:

Oh, go for it.

Paul Wurth:

I feel like it’s a free consultation for our team, which is great.

Will Lopez:

I know. Well, I figured. I’ll send the invoice later.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, there you go. Send it to Danielle, our producer. What are some big mistakes companies make when they are doing that closeout of the financial year? What should we be avoiding?

Will Lopez:

Gosh, I think I’ve been in the profession long enough to say that I think tardiness or just absolute waiting to the last minute is the ultimate culprit. I mean, I think that’s just such the huge mistake, and here’s why. I understand it’s a lot of work to close out your books or your financials, or to pull things together. But, I ran a really progressive practice. And what that basically meant was I used a lot of technology to advance the livelihood and the administrative work of my clients. Right? I future-proofed them is what I used to say. I’m here to future-proof you and consult you. And when you close everything out early, or you’re just running things in real time, because you’re working with a pro, let’s say similar to me, who’s using modern technology, integrating it with Buildertrend, integrating it with Gusto. They have that information in real time.

And what’s really crucial about certain moments in business life is being able to forecast out tax ramifications, forecast out great business performance or losses. So, that way people like me can give you the right information at the right time, so you can make the decision. So, sometimes tax planning is big. And I would ask your accountant to tax plan for you. We used to do tax plan for our clients all the time, twice a year, once in May, once in October. And all of that required a lot of just real time constant maintenance. So, that way, if you were having a bang out year, another pun intended, and you were just crushing it out there, I could tell you within literally like a 1% margin of error, what your tax bill was. Now, would you rather me tell you 10 months in advance what your tax bill is? Or like 30 days before it was due, right? It’s always like 10 months in advance.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah, for sure.

Will Lopez:

So, that only happens when you are either keeping things up to date or closing things out real quickly.

Paul Wurth:

So, just staying on top of your real-time job costing and your QuickBooks and making sure everything’s accurate throughout the year, super important. But, also don’t wait till the last minute. I’ll throw you on the spot here. Are there sort of target dates? October 1, November 1, December 1, they should be doing certain things? Or is it just general stay on top of it?

Will Lopez:

Obviously, best practice is to stay on top of it, every month close it out. Every quarter would be a great opportunity to look back and just look for anything kind of glaring or big. And then once a year you can take that really top side approach and just run through the financials, because when you’re on top of it and you do, let’s say, some of that mid check point on the monthlies and then a little bit of a heavier checkpoint on the quarterlies, it makes the year closeout a lot less worrisome. You don’t have to bring out the big guns at the year end because you’ve been doing it all throughout the year. So, there are those traditional milestones. And then I normally would encourage a lot of business owners to take those conventional milestones, let’s say quarterly, kick it out to your pro and say, hey, tell me what my tax bill is this year. And just kick it out to them every quarter.

Like, hey, I closed it out. Here’s what I think I’m going to make for the year. Tell me what you think I owe. And try to combine that work, that is that double-check work, with a little bit of proactive, what’s in it for me? kind of work because then you’ll be encouraged. You’ll be heavily encouraged to keep it up. Because generally people think that by doing it every quarter, it’s just an administrative task. But, when you combine it with, what’s in it for me? It keeps that momentum going.

Paul Wurth:

Love that. So, if you have a pro who’s helping you with accounting, young hip person who gets it, the exciting world of accounting …

Will Lopez:

I’m no longer in, I’m at Gusto now, but yeah.

Paul Wurth:

Lean on those people because you’re paying them. So, that’s really good. All right. I mean, I thought that was some really great advice for business owners just in general, but bringing it back to Gusto and payroll services and things like that. Obviously, you guys have a great platform. We’re actually going to be doing an integration with Gusto.

Will Lopez:

Yeah, exciting.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. We’re super excited because, again, I think it was very obvious in this short podcast that our two businesses are super aligned with what we’re trying to do. And so I think, after looking at everybody out there in the market, we hands down picked Gusto. It’s coming to the end of the year. Let’s say somebody’s not using a payroll service at all, or they’re using something different. Why is sort of the end of the year … I’m a novice to this, but I can already understand from what you just talked about, year-end checklist, why is the end of the year a good time to possibly look into changing your payroll service?

Will Lopez:

I would encourage anyone that you can change your payroll service at any point in time of the year with Gusto because Gusto has all the technology and the capability to help you transfer any kind of situation over to Gusto at any time. But where people make probably the largest transition is at end of year because it’s just cleaner and there’s a cut-off period. Right?

Paul Wurth:

Right.

Will Lopez:

And so, when you look at anybody’s, let’s say, calendar year, January to December, that’s how people generally do business. And January starts a brand new year and so does, many times, using a lot of new resourcing, using payroll. So, I would encourage you. It’s a great time to transition your payroll, great time to actually get your team introduced into some greater resourcing through payroll at the beginning of the year. Gusto offers a lot of things that not only can help the employer help your small business, or business, manage its team, but it also helps you track a lot of things like PTO or holiday pay or time off.

And so, those are the more payroll-related things. Right? And then there’s things that are just every day working at a company. Like Gusto has the ability to give you the ability to have new hire welcome cards. Which is kind of like, has nothing to do with Gusto, but have everything to do with the payroll moment. It’s like, oh, somebody got hired. Yeah. Send them a card, say welcome. Introduce them. There’s a little checklist that says, hey, put balloons or now virtual balloons on their desk, as far as I’m concerned. And you could do all these things that are very kind of company culture feature like. So, now’s a great time to really think through that because things are so questionable within an employer. Right? And we’re all working remotely, we’re all working at a distance. We kind of still see that on the front lines for at least another six months until the vaccines rollout. But you’ll need every resource from both payroll management, but then team management as well.

Paul Wurth:

Yeah. If you had any blind spots as relates to how you were managing employees face-to-face, going virtual really made those things very glaring for people. And so, if you feel like you still have sort of a blind spot in your business, obviously, Will does, but I obviously recommend as well, Gusto. Go to gusto.com. You were mentioning the end of the year. According to your website, we have 15 days, eight hours, 54 minutes, 35 seconds will January 1, so they make it very clear on the website that end of the year is coming up. You can check out everything, I assume, unless you want to plug something else, the website gives you a ton of information.

Will Lopez:

Yeah, yeah. So, you can go to gusto.com, check it out. And I’ll tell you right now, there are probably three major blind spots to almost every business. And a lot of it is around new hire, which is one major one. So, think about the new hire experience. You go into an office, right? You get hired, and what do they have you do? You fill out a ton of paperwork, right?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Will Lopez:

The W-4, the I-9, like all the stuff. Employee policy manuals, all of that kind of stuff. And through Gusto, you can actually automate that entire experience. And we actually improved our onboarding employee experience for all of that. So, now they can do that all digital.

And then the next thing is generally the introduction of that employee to the team like, hey, congrats, Paul is here. Will, meet Paul. Gusto can help personalize a lot of that through the platform and give you that next best. Nothing beats in person, of course. Right? Like there’s always a great, high five kind of great moment. But next best is pretty much what Gusto has built, which is giving you the ability to send out those e-cards to welcome new EE’s, introduce them to their teams, so on and so forth. So, those are the two or three major blind spots that I see many companies have is just that in-person onboarding or welcoming back from furlough. And then just the introduction and the teamwork that happens.

Paul Wurth:

I love that. And I love you guys have so many resources in there that are outside of your core subscription and feature set. It’s like, great. Use us to get these tasks done, but here’s everything else you get. And these are super important things that business owners either aren’t thinking about, or they’re Googling how to do best practices stuff or asking friends. It’s all right there on one platform for them.

Will Lopez:

Yeah. I mean, look, I think the truth is, like I said, we’re here to serve the underserved, and I think small businesses and business owners for the broad majority of them have just gone without. Right?

Paul Wurth:

Yeah.

Will Lopez:

And a lot of the resources that Fortune 500s, Fortune 1000s have, many business owners don’t have. So, we’re here to make sure that they do have it. So, we look at payroll benefits and HR as much more than just what they are. Yes, we’ll do all those key things, but there’s so many other moments that payroll benefits and HR is just riff of that we are trying to deliver as well.

Paul Wurth:

Love that. Super excited to look forward to our partnership in 2021, the integrations that we have working with our teams right now. There’s no way Will and I are going to give you an exact date in which that is. We’re just going to tell you that it’s coming in 2021, like many, many good things. So, we’re excited to have you guys as a partner.

Will Lopez:

Yeah. Keep an eye out. It’s going to be a good time. We’re really excited. It’s going to be a good relationship, obviously all for great things.

Paul Wurth:

Alright, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Again, if you want to learn more about Will and Gusto, head out to gusto.com. We’ll throw some links on the show notes page, buildertrend.com/podcast. Thanks again, Will, and to everybody listening, I very much appreciate you.

Will Lopez:

Thanks for having me.

Paul Wurth:

Thank you again for tuning into this episode of “The Building Code.” Make sure you subscribe and like wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, head out to Facebook and join The Building Code crew, and finally drop me a line at podcast@buildertrend.com. We want to hear from you, suggestions on guests or topics, anything. Thanks so much for joining and appreciate you.

Will Lopez

Will Lopez | Gusto


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