Case Study: Ceterus scales to 750 clients and cuts payroll & onboarding time with Gusto

Ceterus - Customer Case Study

Ceterus is an accounting-as-a-service firm in Charleston that serves franchise and not‑for‑profit organizations, providing bookkeeping, reporting and optional payroll, bill-processing and tax support to 750 clients (up from 250 in two years). The firm struggled to scale because payroll was manual and fragmented across multiple providers with outdated interfaces—requiring, for one client, manual submission and payment of state and local payroll taxes across 38 states—and onboarding for high-turnover clients consumed a full-time employee.

By joining the Gusto Partner Program and leveraging features like QuickBooks Online integration, employee self‑onboarding and 2‑day ACH, Ceterus automated payroll and HR tasks. The change cut payroll work by 50% (about 10 hours/week for one client), reduced onboarding time by 75%, allowed Ceterus to lower fees and serve more entrepreneurs, and freed staff to focus on higher‑value work and analytics.

Ceterus

Levi Morehouse

Founder