Let’s be honest: choosing the right time and attendance system for your business is a nightmare. Every set of features seems meticulously marketed as being equal to (yet somehow greater than) the competition. Business owners don’t know what to believe, but they all want the same thing: to walk away from their decision feeling like they’ve made the right choice.
Lift HCM has provided human capital management (HCM) services to businesses like yours for three generations and counting (did we mention we’re family-owned?). In that time, we’ve gotten to know the ins and outs of our fair share of timekeeping systems. Today, we’ll compare the time kiosk, scheduling, and leave management features of two of the most popular HCM platforms, ADP and Gusto, in hopes of giving you a stronger sense of what to weigh and consider when choosing a provider for your business.
Time Kiosk
Gusto’s Time Tracking Tools: Time Kiosk and the Gusto Wallet App
While both Gusto and ADP will tell you they both offer a physical timekeeping kiosk, it appears as though ADP is the only one who’ll sell you a device. However, Gusto claims its Time Kiosk software is capable of turning any internet-connected device into a functioning timekeeping portal (similar to what ADP Time Kiosk does on iOS and Android).
Employers may also choose to allow employees to clock in and out using the Gusto Wallet app (available on Android and iOS). The app serves as a central hub for their payroll, benefits, and scheduling needs and, like ADP’s mobile app, includes geo-fencing capabilities. The timekeeping software syncs with its payroll offering and applies to contract, hourly, and salaried employees. Gusto’s timekeeping solution also includes project-based tracking, workforce cost reports, calendar syncing, as well as a leave request and approval system.
ADP’s Timekeeping Options: Kiosk and the Time Kiosk App
ADP gives its customers two options for timekeeping. ADP Kiosk is a piece of proprietary hardware designed and distributed to run ADP time and attendance programs. The device supports biometric functions such as fingerprint scanning and facial recognition.
The ADP Time Kiosk app can be downloaded on any Android or iOS device, the idea being that companies establish a shared tablet for clocking in and out. The Time Kiosk app also offers biometric login features (adding voice commands for users on iOS devices).
The ADP Mobile app allows employees to view their schedules, request time off; and clock into or out of their shifts from their own devices. Employers are allowed to set geo-fencing limits to validate employees’ location relative to their worksite at the time they clock in or out (meaning they can’t clock into their shifts while they’re still waiting for the bus).
Scheduling
Gusto Offers Limited Options for Shift Scheduling
Gusto’s scheduling capabilities allow employees to set their availability for a given pay or scheduling period and carry those same hours from one period into the next for the sake of convenience. Alternatively, they may choose to set their standing availability on an ongoing basis. Beyond that, however, their scheduling features appear to be extremely limited.
As a provider, Gusto is inconsistent in how it communicates its shortcomings with scheduling. One area of their website includes verbiage that acknowledges their offering lacks features like automated shift scheduling. Another states that their payroll software is built with compliance in mind and reiterates that they integrate with robust scheduling apps that take compliance into account when scheduling shifts while stopping short of claiming to enforce compliance-based scheduling restraints in their software.
ADP's Feature-Rich Scheduling is Perfect for Some, Overkill for Others
Their software allows employees to transfer a shift to another employee, facilitates the swapping of shifts between coworkers, and ensures all the middle-party communications (such as manager approvals and reassignments) take place along the way. Unlike Gusto’s scheduling features, ADP allows employers to maintain compliance by enforcing criteria like a minimum number of hours between shifts or daily or weekly maximums on the number of hours or consecutive days an employee works.
One area in which ADP’s scheduling features stand out is their cost control. As managers draft schedules, their software calculates the estimated cost of covering shifts. It also helps them adjust the schedule to zero in on a specific coverage cost or range. Their calculations take overtime into account and the software offers granular search functionality to identify the best available employee to fill any given shift. Their scheduling features are fully available on mobile devices and have recently been updated to more thoroughly integrate AI for forecasting and decision-making.
Leave Management
Gusto's Paid Leave Tools Cover the Basics
Gusto claims its time and attendance tools support complex vacation and paid leave plans. Their software automatically calculates the accrual of paid leave and sends alerts to notify managers of team members who may need some time to rest. Their platform also makes it easy to approve time off requests and syncs approved leave time with your payroll and company calendars.
The one area that still has us a little worried is the extent to which their software can monitor and enforce limits on employee scheduling to comply with local labor laws. This ability has never been more important than in 2024 as groundbreaking new paid leave legislation takes effect in states like Illinois, Nevada, and Maine.
ADP Feature-Rich Leave Management Tools
ADP lets employers set complex rules for paid leave and notably takes local labor laws into account. Their platform tracks concurrent, intermittent, paid, and unpaid leave. The “Total Absence Management” offering for large businesses includes several forms of paid leave, including military leave, jury duty, bereavement, maternity or paternity leave, short- and long-term disability, leave taken by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), and sabbaticals. They also provide forecasted insights to help employers get ahead of upcoming leave periods rather than react to requests as they crop up.
How Do You Make Your Verdict Without a Distinct Winner?
While ADP appears to offer a slightly more robust feature set, Gusto’s self-service platform may prove to be a far more cost-effective option for growing businesses. That being said, the clear distinctions between the two offerings are few and far between. But with no clear winner in the bunch, how do you select the right time and attendance solution for your business?
Consider that the best option for your business may be neither. If you were wondering where we were going to plug our service into an article about our competition, here it is. While both ADP and Gusto are fantastic options for companies whose workforce, leave, and scheduling structures fit snugly into the constraints of either provider, managing time and attendance services from Lift HCM can remove the headache of learning how to configure self-service software like Gusto or a feature-saturated platform like ADP.
Lift HCM licenses out a human capital management platform called iSolved the same way your accountant might license QuickBooks. Our software offers an adaptive employee experience to keep your focus on the features that matter. Competing in the same market as both ADP and Gusto, we set ourselves apart with our service. You will not find a more responsive and dedicated team of client experience managers anywhere. Period.
While our team is always just a phone call away, you’ll rarely be the one calling us. From payroll to paid leave; from hire to retire, we’re more than just your provider. We’re your partner and we’re here to see you succeed. You can visit our Learning Center to learn more about our services and read more thought leadership on time and attendance practices.
