Introduction

A developer's best friend

Welcome to Gusto's App Integrations API documentation! If you're looking for Gusto Embedded documentation, please click here.

This site serves as both a technical reference for the endpoints available and a general overview of payroll. We designed the objects and their properties to require as little domain-specific payroll knowledge as possible. We are dedicated to developer success by offering robust APIs, detailed documentation, self-service tools, and hands-on support, so you can focus on building payroll products that solve customer problems.

Note: We currently do not support API access for Gusto customers looking to connect their own company systems directly to their Gusto account using the API. We hope to offer this in the future and appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Developing with Gusto: What to expect

Onboard

To get started, sign up for a Developer Portal account, onboard to our sandbox environment, and fill out a Production Pre-Approval application.

You must have a Developer Portal account in order to complete the Production Pre-Approval application. Information collected during our pre-approval process will be handled in accordance with our Developer Terms.

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Please Note

A Developer Portal account, approved Production Pre-Approval and Security Review, information for which is collected in the Production Pre-Approval application, is required to go through QA and gain production access.

Once you’ve created an account and completed your Organization setup, you will have access to your unique API token from the Organizations tab. This is used for provisioning new Gusto accounts.

Next, create an application to obtain API credentials - or “keys” - to access our demo environment. To create an application, you will need to provide at least one(1) redirect URI. You can enter multiple redirects for a single application - please do this instead of creating multiple applications for each one. OAuth2 does not support wildcard URIs or URIs with fragments (e.g #).

The application will generate a unique client_id and secret to be used for authentication.

Then create a demo company so that you can explore our product and successfully connect your application to Gusto via OAuth2 to begin making calls to the API. Demo companies are automatically generated with company info, employees, and previous payrolls so you can begin testing right away. The Authentication Example has everything you need to get started.

Once you have your API Token, client_id, secret, and a demo company, you’re ready to begin building your integration. Check out this short video tutorial for an introduction on testing the Gusto API (in demo).

You can invite team members to join your developer account, too. This is done from the Organizations tab under Team.

This developer portal is new. If you already have demo access to Gusto’s API or a live Gusto integration, we’ve transferred your account details over to this dev portal and you can reset your password to then login from here.

Build

The API keys initially accessible from Gusto's Developer Portal are for our sandbox environment only (https://api.gusto-demo.com). Use these in tandem with your Gusto demo accounts to build your application.

If you are an app developer, please request viewing access to the Partner Checklist. Once granted, make a copy for your company and use this to scope your build and ultimately submit it to Gusto for review.

Review

Gusto requires a quality review (“QA”) and an approved Production Pre-Approval application for all builds using our API before we issue production keys. This ensures everything will function properly and provide a best-in-class customer experience once live.

The review process for an Integrated App requires the partner checklist created in the previous stage to be completed and emailed to [email protected].

The review process for a Gusto Embedded Payroll product is different and you will be working directly with our Partnerships team through this process.

During review, all applications will be assigned API scopes based on your integration use-case. These scopes must be tested in our demo environment and will be enforced in our production environment upon approval. Any API call made outside of your assigned scope in production will be rejected. You'll be able to request additional scopes or request changes to your scopes by contacting [email protected] after releasing to production.

Once your integration is approved, Gusto’s Developer Relations team will issue your production keys to your developer account to access at any time.

Launch

Move your build to production and make it available to customers. You’ll want to update your website or marketplace and publish support content for visibility. Once you train your sales team, it’s time to get the word out.

Optimize

Performance starts with promotion — send press releases, post on social, and email your customers. You can track API usage and review feedback and errors to improve overtime.