Turn Gusto payroll data into R&D tax credit numbers
Claimship reads salary data from Gusto to build wage expense numbers, then pushes the elected credit back in and tracks it each quarter.
What Claimship reads from Gusto
Claimship reads payroll data from Gusto: employee salaries, pay periods, and how each employee's time is allocated across projects, where that allocation is available.
This wage data becomes the largest single input for most companies' qualified research expenses. Claimship uses it alongside the engineering evidence from GitHub, Linear, and similar tools to figure out what portion of an engineer's salary counts as research pay.
Gusto is also one of two integrations where Claimship writes data back, with your approval. After you elect a credit amount, Claimship pushes it into Gusto so it can be applied against payroll taxes, then tracks the offset each quarter until it fully lands.
The evidence it extracts
Salary data builds the wage expense number
Gross pay by employee and pay period is the base number Claimship uses to calculate qualified research expenses for engineering staff.
Time allocation refines who counts and how much
Where Gusto has allocation data, Claimship uses it to scope wages to the portion of time spent on qualifying work.
Quarterly tracking confirms the credit landed
After the elected credit is pushed into Gusto, Claimship checks each quarter that it's showing up as lower payroll tax liability, not just a paper credit.
Permissions
Read-only by design
Claimship can read your data. It cannot write, change, or delete anything in your tools. The one exception is the payroll credit push, which you approve first.
You choose the scope
Pick the repos, projects, and channels we can see. Skip anything sensitive. The study only uses what you share.
Revoke anytime
Disconnect a tool in one click from your dashboard or from the tool itself. Syncing stops immediately.
- Gusto is one of two tools where Claimship writes data, and only one thing: the elected credit amount, and only after you approve it.
- Every other action on Gusto data is read-only. Claimship reads salary and allocation data but never changes an employee's pay, benefits, or personal information.
- Revoke access anytime from Gusto or your Claimship dashboard. The one exception is a credit already pushed and approved, which stays applied until it's fully used.
Setup
- 1Open the Integrations tab in your Claimship dashboard.
- 2Click Connect on Gusto and sign in with your Gusto admin account.
- 3Authorize read access to payroll and employee data.
- 4Review and approve the elected credit amount when your study is ready. Claimship pushes it into Gusto and tracks it from there.
Common questions
Setup in 15 minutes. First estimate the same week.