If you run a cleaning, janitorial, or security company with hourly field crews, the honest answer to the payroll-provider question is less dramatic than most comparison articles suggest. Gusto publishes its prices (from $49 per month plus $6 per person as of August 2026) and includes unlimited payroll runs on every tier. QuickBooks Payroll publishes prices too, now sold bundled with QuickBooks Online accounting. ADP RUN and Paychex Flex do not publish prices: both sell by custom quote with modular add-ons, which rewards companies that negotiate and punishes companies that sign the first proposal. All four will calculate, file, and pay employment taxes correctly.
What actually separates a smooth payroll week from a painful one is not the processor — it is everything that happens before the processor sees a number. Three things matter more than the logo on the payroll report.
First, pay frequency. In New York, cleaners and most other manual workers must be paid weekly under Labor Law section 191, which makes unlimited-run pricing a hard requirement rather than a nice-to-have: weekly payroll means 52 runs a year, and per-run fees multiply fast.
Second, multiple pay rates. When one worker earns different rates at different buildings or job types, federal law prescribes a specific weighted-average overtime formula — and your timekeeping system, not your payroll processor, is what makes that formula computable.
Third, the hours pipeline. Every major processor accepts imported hours from an outside time-tracking system. None of them verifies that the person who punched in was the person actually on site. That verification happens upstream, or it does not happen at all.
The real payroll problem is upstream of the processor
Payroll mistakes at field-service companies rarely come from the tax engine. Gusto, ADP, Paychex, and QuickBooks all compute withholding from the same federal and state tables, and all four offer full-service tax filing. The mistakes come from the inputs: paper timesheets filled in from memory on Thursday night, forgotten punch-outs that turn a 6-hour shift into a 14-hour one, hours recorded against the wrong building or the wrong rate, and punches made by someone other than the worker being paid.
A payroll processor is a calculator. It multiplies whatever hours you give it by whatever rates you configured, and it does so flawlessly even when the hours are fiction. That is why the practical advice in this article runs in an unusual order: choose the processor on price, service model, and scale fit — the differences are real but manageable — and spend your real attention on the system that produces the hours.
How do Gusto, ADP RUN, Paychex Flex, and QuickBooks Payroll actually differ?
Gusto is the transparency benchmark. As of August 2026 its published pricing runs $49 per month plus $6 per person for the Simple plan (single-state payroll, unlimited runs, full tax filing), $80 plus $12 for Plus (multi-state payroll, next-day direct deposit, built-in time tracking), and $180 plus $22 for Premium (dedicated support, HR advisory). A contractor-only plan is $6 per contractor with the base fee currently waived. Every tier includes unlimited payroll runs, which is exactly what a weekly-pay shop needs. The trade-off: support at the lower tiers is self-serve, and there is no dedicated rep until Premium.
ADP RUN is the incumbent, and it does not publish prices. Industry reporting such as PayrollDetective's 2026 pricing guide describes the structure consistently: a monthly base fee plus a per-employee fee, quoted per company, with time and attendance sold as a separate add-on, garnishment payment service gated to higher packages, and year-end W-2 and 1099 forms often billed separately. First-year promotional rates can rise at renewal, so get renewal terms in writing. What you are buying is scale and ecosystem: ADP files taxes in every state, connects to benefits and workers-comp products, and is familiar to nearly every accountant in America.
Paychex Flex sits in the same quote-based world. Its two payroll plans, Flex Select and Flex Pro, have no public pricing, and the platform is aggressively modular — garnishment services, screening, handbook tools, and enhanced support are all separately priced add-ons, per reporting like Tech.co's Paychex pricing guide. The draw is the dedicated payroll specialist model: a named human who runs your account. The risk is add-on creep, where the quoted price and the invoice twelve months later are different documents.
QuickBooks Payroll is now sold bundled with QuickBooks Online accounting under the Workforce name. As of August 2026 the published list prices run from $88 per month plus $6.50 per employee for the entry bundle to $203 plus $10 for the Premium bundle, which adds built-in time tracking and same-day direct deposit; promotional discounts of 50 percent for the first three months are typical. If your books already live in QuickBooks — true for a large share of cleaning and security companies — the general-ledger integration is the strongest argument anyone will make for it.
Prices and packaging change; treat the numbers above as a snapshot verified in August 2026 and check the linked vendor pages before signing anything.
What does payroll actually cost for a 25-person crew?
Here is the math for a hypothetical 25-worker cleaning company running weekly payroll, using list prices as of August 2026. On Gusto Simple: $49 base plus 25 workers at $6 each is $199 per month, about $2,390 per year, with all 52 weekly runs included. On Gusto Plus: $80 plus $300 is $380 per month. On the QuickBooks entry bundle: $88 plus $162.50 is roughly $250 per month at list — and that includes the accounting subscription you may already be paying for separately. ADP RUN and Paychex Flex have no list price to quote, but companies this size are the core of their small-business segments, and quotes are negotiable.
When you take a quote-based vendor to the table, ask six questions and get the answers in the proposal. Is the price a flat monthly fee or per payroll run? At 52 runs a year, per-run pricing changes everything for a weekly-pay company. What do year-end W-2s and 1099s cost per form? Is time and attendance included, and if not, what does the add-on cost? What is the renewal escalator after the first-year rate? What is the contract term and the exit cost? And finally: what file formats does the platform accept for importing hours from an outside time system?
Do you have to run payroll weekly in New York?
For most field-service workers in New York, yes. Labor Law section 191 requires manual workers to be paid weekly, no later than seven calendar days after the end of the week in which the wages were earned. The statute defines a manual worker as a mechanic, workingman, or laborer, and the New York State Department of Labor has long interpreted that to cover employees who spend more than a quarter of their time in physical labor — which describes cleaning and janitorial crews squarely, and can reach security guards depending on their actual duties. Employers who meet certain criteria can apply to the Department of Labor for authorization to pay manual workers biweekly, and the department maintains a public list of authorized employers; absent that authorization, weekly is the rule.
Getting this wrong was, until recently, one of the most expensive mistakes in New York employment law: after a 2019 appellate decision, workers paid in full but on a biweekly schedule could sue for liquidated damages on the delayed wages. A May 2025 amendment softened that exposure — for a first violation by an employer paying at least semi-monthly on regular paydays, damages are now limited to the lost interest on the delayed payment, with full liquidated damages reserved for repeat violations, as firms including Morgan Lewis have detailed. Reduced exposure is not zero exposure, and the weekly-pay obligation itself did not change.
The payroll-shopping consequence is concrete: if your crews are manual workers in New York, you will run payroll 52 times a year, so unlimited-run pricing (or a negotiated flat monthly fee) is non-negotiable, and any quote priced per run should be rejected or reworked. Weekly payroll also means new hires and rate changes hit paper fast — New York separately requires written notice of pay rates and payday at hire, covered in our guide to New York wage notice requirements.
How do you calculate overtime when one worker has two pay rates?
This is the payroll mechanic that field-service companies get wrong most often, because it is genuinely unintuitive. Under federal law, when an employee works a single workweek at two or more rates — say, general office cleaning at one rate and floor care at a higher rate — overtime is not simply time-and-a-half on whichever rate was in effect during the overtime hours. The default rule in 29 CFR 778.115 is the weighted average: the regular rate for the week is total straight-time earnings from all rates divided by total hours worked, and the overtime premium is half that blended rate for each hour over 40.
A labeled hypothetical: a worker cleans offices for 30 hours at $18 and does floor care for 15 hours at $22 in the same week — 45 hours total. Straight-time earnings are $540 plus $330, or $870. The regular rate is $870 divided by 45 hours, or $19.33. The 5 overtime hours each earn an additional half-time premium of $9.67, adding $48.33, for a total of $918.33. Paying time-and-a-half on the $18 rate alone would underpay this worker — and underpayments like that, repeated weekly across a crew, are how wage claims are built.
Federal law does allow an alternative — paying overtime at the rate in effect during the overtime hours under FLSA section 7(g)(2) — but only with an agreement made with the employee in advance, and the details are covered in the Department of Labor's overtime fact sheet. Either way, the calculation is only as good as the hours behind it: you need to know, per worker per week, how many hours were worked at each rate. For the broader rules — including the state wrinkles that catch field-service owners — see our guide to overtime for field crews in 2026.
How should hours flow into payroll?
The pipeline that prevents both overpayment and wage claims has four steps. Workers punch in and out at the job site, with the punch verified at the moment it happens — who (a PIN plus a selfie check beats a shared login), where (GPS geofencing confirms the punch came from the site), and when. A supervisor reviews exceptions — missed punches, short shifts, unexpected locations — before approval, not after payday. Approved hours, already split by site and pay rate, export to the payroll processor in its import format instead of being retyped. And the same verified hours drive customer invoices, so billing and payroll never disagree about what happened.
Every processor in this comparison accepts outside hours: Gusto documents time-tracking syncs and CSV imports, ADP RUN accepts paydata imports, and QuickBooks and Paychex both support third-party time data. StockPoint was built for exactly this handoff — its verified time clock (PIN plus selfie check plus geofencing) produces punches you can defend, and it exports approved hours to Gusto, ADP, QuickBooks, and Paychex. See how the verified time clock works if the upstream half of your payroll is the part that hurts.
Which payroll provider should a cleaning or security company pick?
A decision framework rather than a single winner. If you have under about 20 workers in one state and want predictable cost, Gusto Simple is the cleanest published deal going. If your books already live in QuickBooks Online, the bundled QuickBooks Payroll keeps payroll, job costing, and the general ledger in one place and is priced mid-pack. If you are 50-plus workers, multi-state, dealing with garnishments, or you want a named human who runs your account, ADP RUN and Paychex Flex are built for you — but treat the quote as an opening bid, ask the six questions above, and get renewal terms in writing. If your crews are manual workers in New York, strike any option that cannot do unlimited weekly runs at a flat price.
And whichever processor you choose, remember what it cannot do: it cannot tell you whether the hours were real. Pair it with timekeeping that verifies identity and location at the punch, and the processor comparison becomes what it should be — a pricing decision, not a compliance one.
Can you pay cleaners or guards as 1099 contractors?
Usually not. If you set the schedule, assign the buildings, supply the equipment and chemicals, and the workers earn an hourly rate working only for you, both the IRS and the U.S. Department of Labor will almost certainly view them as W-2 employees regardless of what the paperwork says. Misclassification exposure includes back employment taxes, unpaid overtime, and penalties — and it forfeits the workers-compensation and unemployment coverage that protect you when something goes wrong. Genuine 1099 relationships exist in field service (a specialty subcontractor with its own crew, equipment, and other clients), but an hourly cleaner on your schedule is not one. When in doubt, classify conservatively and ask your accountant or attorney.
Does running payroll weekly cost more than biweekly?
Only if your pricing makes it cost more. On providers with unlimited payroll runs — Gusto on every tier, and QuickBooks bundles — 52 weekly runs cost exactly what 26 biweekly runs cost. Weekly payroll does add administrative touchpoints: hours must be approved every week, and corrections have half the runway. That is an argument for automating the approval-and-export pipeline, not for violating a weekly-pay obligation. If a quote-based provider prices per run, weekly payroll doubles that line item versus biweekly — which is why the per-run question belongs in every sales conversation.
This article is general information, not legal or tax advice; pay frequency, worker classification, and overtime decisions for your company should be reviewed with your attorney or accountant.