ADP (RUN)
The incumbent, with anomaly flags built into the pay run and a quote process built to out-negotiate you
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ADP has been running other people's payroll since 1949, and RUN is its product for the 1-to-49-employee crowd. The fraud-relevant part isn't a bolted-on module, it's baked into the workflow: RUN's payroll preview flags entries that look wrong against history, an hourly employee suddenly at 70 hours, a paycheck double its usual size, a new direct-deposit destination, before the money moves. That preview step is exactly where padded timesheets and quiet rate edits get caught, and most small businesses running payroll off a spreadsheet have nothing like it.
The rest of the fraud posture comes from being a 75-year-old payroll bureau: role-based permissions so the person keying hours isn't the person approving them, audit trails on every change, and a time-tracking add-on with geofenced mobile punch and kiosk options that feeds hours in without manual re-entry. None of it is exotic. All of it closes the specific gaps that small-company payroll fraud walks through.
The catch is the buying experience. Pricing is quote-only, reported at roughly $79 a month plus $4 per employee for the Essential tier, but your actual number depends on payroll frequency, state count, add-ons, and how hard you push back, and most businesses report real costs of $100-$300 a month once the extras land. Renewal-time price creep is a running theme in reviews. Budget the negotiation like a phone-plan renewal, every year, forever.
Pricing
Quote-only. Essential tier reportedly starts around $79/mo + $4 per employee; Enhanced, Complete, and HR Pro tiers stack on more HR features. Most small businesses report $100–$300/mo all-in. Time tracking, retirement, and workers' comp are separately priced add-ons, and first-year discounts fade at renewal.
| Essential | ~$79/mo + $4/employee reported, not published; payroll + tax filing |
| Enhanced | Custom adds garnishment service, SUI management, check signing |
| Complete / HR Pro | Custom adds HR support, handbooks, training |
Features
- Payroll preview that flags anomalous hours, pay amounts, and account changes before processing
- Role-based permissions separating who enters, approves, and pays
- Full audit trail on payroll edits
- Time-tracking add-on with geofenced mobile punch and shared kiosk
- Automatic tax filing with penalty responsibility for ADP-caused errors
- Employee self-service portal with multi-factor authentication
- Anomaly flagging at payroll preview catches padded hours and rate edits where they're cheapest to fix, before the money leaves
- Separation-of-duties permissions are genuinely hard to find in small-business payroll tools
- It will still exist in ten years, which matters when your payroll history is your fraud evidence
- Quote-only pricing with well-documented renewal creep, the sticker price is a starting bid
- Everything beyond core payroll is an add-on, and the add-ons are where the invoice grows
- The platform feels its age in places, and support quality varies wildly by rep
Small businesses that want payroll fraud controls as a side effect of buying the most established payroll processor, and are willing to negotiate for it.
Price-sensitive teams that want published pricing and a modern interface, Gusto does 80% of this with none of the sales process.
Screenshots
Supported countries
RUN is US-only. ADP's enterprise products (Workforce Now, GlobalView) cover 140+ countries, priced and sold separately.
Integrations
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