Employ
Recruit
Let Remote People handle payroll, compliance, and HR admin worldwide so you can focus on building your team.
Square Review Summary
Score 8 out of 10
Currency
USD only
Monthly fees
By custom quote
Payment options
ACH and SWIFT/Wire Transfer
Square is a leading US payments infrastructure service with a well-known payroll solution. Here I look at the pros, cons and pricing of Square Payroll.
- Time & Attendance: This program lets you track employees’ hours, work days, and days off. It automatically produces time sheets that can be imported directly into Zoho Payroll for processing. It also includes a shift scheduling feature and time off management so employers always know who’s working when.
- Performance Management: Performance management features let you set goals and track your key result areas (KRAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure employee performance. It also enables continuous reviews and performance appraisals to monitor who is performing well and who needs help.
- Learning Management System: This feature is an add-on that can help employers create and manage courses for their employees with quizzes and tests and virtual classroom learning. It enables training and skill development as well as courses to help produce and track management employees.
- Talent Management: Zoho People includes an applicant tracking system (ATS) to help clients keep track of applicants and manage their interactions with them. It connects to lots of popular job sites and also lets users create career websites to post detailed information about their openings.
Square Payroll Company Overview
Does the name Square sound familiar? It should. This company is the leading point-of-sale (POS) systems provider in the US, with millions of clients and hundreds of billions of dollars passing through its system annually. Chances are good that you’ve used a Square system to pay for something this week.
Did you also know, however, that Square offers more than just payment systems? Though this was its central function when it was launched in 2009, Square has since added numerous services to help its target small and medium business (SMB) clients. These business-to-business services include email and text message marketing, invoicing, online store hosting and online checkouts, loyalty programs, and a customer directory. Square also provides services directly to consumers, focusing on financial services like offering loans, payment plans, savings accounts, and debit cards.
Square also provides services for payroll, team communication, HR administration, and employee management. It also publishes most of its prices clearly online making it easy to calculate the cost of subscriptions for its different services. In this review, we’ll focus directly on these services to help you understand how you can use them to effectively manage your staff-related needs.
Square Payroll Key Features
While Square is primarily a POS systems provider, we’re focused here on its features as a payroll and HR services provider. Square’s key services in this regard include:
1. Square Payroll
Since Square was built as a payments platform, it’s no surprise that it can also be used for payroll. Square’s system is perhaps a bit basic and not well-suited for larger enterprises, but for SMBs, it could be ideal.
Starting with basic data, Square lets employers track their employees’ time and attendance either through a POS system subscription or through its Square Team App. Using this app, your employees can clock in and out of work and also manage their own paid time off (PTO) requests and schedules. The app or POS data links directly into payroll and forms the basis for each employee’s salary calculation. From this, taxes and benefits contributions are also calculated and subtracted, as well as any court-ordered garnishments that may apply. This leaves each employee’s net salary which can be paid to them by direct deposit into their bank account, check, or through Cash App.
All of the features of payroll we’ve listed so far are available with Square’s Full-Service Payroll, which costs $35/month plus $6/person paid per month. You can also run payroll for contractors only for just $6/person paid per month, and no base fee, but taxes, benefits, and automatic payroll calculations are not included. Square lets you have unlimited payroll runs monthly and lets you cancel your service at any time without a penalty. While Square services are available in the US and seven other countries, it doesn’t currently offer global payroll for companies that own entities in multiple countries.
Square Payroll service supports off-cycle payments, multiple pay rates, and multistate-compliant payroll. Square will automatically calculate, pay, and file your state and federal taxes for W-2 employees. It also handles new-hire reporting and produces all W-2 and 1099 forms for employees and contractors. While payroll processing normally takes four days, you can set up two-day processing or pre-load your Square account to provide employees with next-day payments. There’s also a special advantage when using this system. When you use Square Payroll, your data can also be synced automatically with Quickbooks, allowing you to import payroll data easily into your bookkeeping app.
2. Square Payroll Human Resources
Aside from payroll, the other big area in which Square supports businesses is HR. Square has multiple tools to help you manage your staff, which can be used separately or combined to cover all of your needs. Let’s take a look at these tools individually:
- Square Shifts: This tool is designed to pull scheduling, shift management, time and attendance tracking, labor cost reporting, payroll prep, and compensation management together into a single package. It’s actually free for small teams of up to five members, and after that, a Plus version can be used monthly for just $4/team member. The Shifts App lets team members clock in and out of work, manage their breaks, swap shifts, request PTO, and get schedule changes. Shifts is tied into Payroll but can also integrate with other third-party payroll providers.
- Square Team Communication: This tool is managed through the Square Team App which is priced at just $2/50/month per team member using it. It lets you communicate with your team through instant messaging, announcements, and file sharing. This tool integrates with Payroll and Shifts so that communications about things like pay and schedules are always made clear.
- HR Expert: Square’s last direct HR tool is also the most comprehensive because it’s a whole suite of tools in one. HR Experts help your team through access to law alerts (to keep your business compliant), HR document templates (for things like handbooks and policies), and a library of HR resources. You can also get unlimited advice from HR experts by phone and email on topics like hiring, termination, policies, employee relations, and compliance with regulations. This service costs $60/location per month or $45/ location per month with a year’s subscription.
Together, Square’s HR tools can be highly effective, especially for small businesses with small HR teams or no HR staff at all.
3. Square Payroll Benefits and Compliance
Square Payroll allows clients to manage employee benefits as an extra add-on service. This allows employers to offer both health and retirement savings benefits to their employees. The benefits on offer include those required by state and federal laws and other additional benefits that can help employers attract talent to their organizations.
Square partners with SimplyInsured, a California-based insurance agency specializing in health insurance for small businesses. Through this provider, clients can choose from hundreds of providers and plans for medical, vision, and dental insurance. They can also select health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible savings accounts (FSAs), and dependent care flexible savings accounts (DCFSAs). All of these benefits can aid clients in compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which requires businesses to provide health insurance for their workers if they employ 50 or more people. Employees can log into their Square accounts and choose their own plans through SimplyInsured, and their employers must pay at least 50% of their premiums.
Square also lets clients offer financial benefits. By partnering with Guideline, Square helps employers offer 401(K), Roth 401(K), 403(B), Roth 403(B), 457(B) deferred compensation, and both IRA and Roth IRA plans. With these plans, Square handles all plan admin and employee onboarding, compliance and reporting and automatically connects benefits data to payroll. It’s important to note that all of these plans are available only to W-2 employees. Square doesn’t currently support benefit deductions for 1099 workers (contractors).
Finally, Square partners with NEXT to provide workers’ compensation coverage, which is currently required in every state except Texas. This insurance helps compensate employees injured or made sick on the job and protects employers from job site accident-related lawsuits.
4. Square Payroll Recruitment
Square doesn’t offer any direct or indirect recruitment services at present. It doesn’t include an applicant tracking system (ATS), automated applicant screening, or interview support and scheduling in its software offerings. It also doesn’t provide businesses with active recruiters or even access to talent pools so they’re really left to their own devices when it comes to recruiting.
5. Square Payroll Platform
Square differs from a lot of competitors in the payroll and HR service space in that it doesn’t focus all of its services around a single platform. While this can be seen as a weakness, its various tools all integrate with one another so they essentially work all together.
Still, it can be confusing for some users to have to open Payroll for some uses, HR Expert for others, and Shifts for others. At the same time, Square has done a good job at managing the look and functionality of these separate pieces of software so they have a unified, user-friendly feel.
The other benefit is that if your business is one of millions of Square POS clients, you can integrate your POS with these other software packages.
External integrations are also useful and Square offers dozens of these connections with useful HR, finance, and communication apps like Fomo, WooCommerce, Quickbooks, and Wix. It also integrates with Zapier and through this automation engine, it can connect with over 7000 other tools. This makes Square software a lot more powerful than it may at first seem.
- Square’s software solutions are cloud-based and can be accessed and updated in real time. To add to this convenience, Square also has mobile apps for Shift, Team Communications, and Payroll. These apps allow employees to keep in contact, get involved, see their schedules and benefits, and manage their own time. All of this, of course, saves you time as an employer.
- Square’s POS software ran into criticism in 2012 for having poor security and since then, it has made great strides towards protecting its clients’ data. Square software uses encryption for all financial transactions including salary payments. It also complies with SOC 1 and SOC 2 standards and has ISO 27001 certification to show its commitment to privacy and data protectio
Square Pricing
| Plan | Price per Month | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 + processing fees | Includes basic website tools, online ordering, and Square payment processing with a Square-branded site. |
| Plus | $29 + processing fees | Adds custom domains, advanced site customization, marketing tools, and more powerful eCommerce features. |
| Premium | Custom + processing fees | Customized plan tailored to your business’s unique needs. Eligible businesses may qualify for personalized processing rates. |
REMOTE PEOPLE FURTHER READING
Get a detailed breakdown of Square’s pricing plans—understand exactly what each tier offers, what it costs, and what’s included beyond the basics.
Square Payroll Reviews
The average scores (as of the time of writing) were:
- Square Payroll Capterra = 4.7/5 (611 reviews)
- Square Payroll Trustpilot = 4.2/5 (5383 reviews)
- Square Payroll G2 = 4.2/5 (30 reviews)
Square Payroll Pros and Cons
Like all providers in the HR and payroll service space, Square has its own distinct strengths and weaknesses. These include:
- Pros
Multiple individual solutions
Square divides its services into small suites of related tools. This is very useful in helping smaller businesses with tight budgets access a wide variety of tools while only paying for the services they need.
Free trials
Square lets users try most of its different HR and payroll tools for free through 30-day trials. This gives clients the opportunity to get familiar with these products and ensure they’re the right tools for their needs.
Integrations
Square’s software solutions can integrate directly with dozens of popular apps and also with Zapier which connects it with over 7000 useful tools.
- Cons
No recruitment
Unlike some service providers, Square doesn’t do any active recruiting. It also doesn’t offer any software tools to help clients manage their recruitment function.
No global payroll services
Square provides access to its platform and services in the US and seven other countries. However, it doesn’t support global payroll services for companies that own entities in several different countries.
Multiple solutions
It can be confusing for many users to have different interfaces for different Square software. While their look and usability is fairly unified, it can still be inconvenient to use multiple applications instead of a single platform.
Square Payroll Unique Selling Point
Square’s unique selling point is the integration it offers between its payroll and HR services and its POS systems. This gives clients the ability to link their staff-based expenditures to their income and keep excellent accounts covering all aspects of their businesses’ finances.
Square is also renowned for its excellent contractor payment services.
RemotePeople Score for Square Payroll
8.5/10
Our expert score for Square Payroll
Our team came to this score by considering the following components in the following weightings:
Payroll features
25%
Benefits admin features
10%
HR features
10%
Compliance features
10%
Platform features
10%
Pricing
20%
User reviews
15%
For each component, Square Payroll received the following score:
Payroll features
20/25
Benefits admin features
8/10
HR features
7/10
Compliance features
8/10
Platform features
9/10
Pricing
18/20
User reviews
15/15
Square 2026 Service Update
In 2026, Square continues refining Square Payroll with expanded automation and improved compliance workflows. The latest updates further streamline U.S. tax document management, introducing smarter filtering, consolidated federal and state reporting views, and enhanced self-service access to W-2 and 1099 forms directly within employee profiles—reducing admin time and improving transparency.
Square has also deepened integration across the Square Dashboard, POS, and Square Checking ecosystem, with tighter cash-flow visibility, embedded lending insights, and more customizable reporting. For small businesses, payroll now operates as a fully integrated component of a unified financial and operations platform—simpler, faster, and more connected.
Overall Assessment: Square
Square makes a good choice for SMBs that have limited budgets but want to access high-quality payroll and HR services. By letting clients pick and choose different modules, all of which can integrate with one another, Square helps every business get what it needs.
Scaling clients that don’t have HR departments or have not yet grown them can use these tools and expert advice from HR professionals to maintain compliance with all relevant state and federal laws and keep their employees happy while they do it.
To learn more about the top payroll platforms, read our guide to the best payroll platforms in 2026.
