Making Payroll Easy for Small Business

By Robert Green Atlanta Trend

• Sep 30, 2026

OnPay CEO Jesse Burgess has been providing payroll services to small businesses since 2015. The company is now processing nearly $15 billion in payroll per year, providing vital, compliant services to over 30,000 companies along with their hundreds of thousands of employees.

“It’s been an interesting journey,” says Jesse. “We basically started from scratch.”

An entrepreneur, he previously ran small businesses and personally knew the pain of doing payroll and keeping up with HR tasks. At one time he was the youngest franchisee for ADT. Hurt by the great recession, Jesse folded up that business and then joined his accountant grandfather in a small payroll business that he was running.

“It was a very analog business at the time,” he says. “I knew that it needed to adapt to new technology.  It was a great way to learn everything there was to know about doing payroll.”

With the manual, do it by hand payroll business slowly drying up, Jesse decided to build an internet-based payroll system that would provide transparent pricing, be fully compliant, and focus on businesses with fewer than 100 employees. 

“I knew that there were millions of small businesses in the US struggling with payroll,” says Jesse, “and I believed that by using technology that I could provide them with the same level of expertise and professionalism that large payroll companies provide to the large companies.”

OnPay gets its name from combining “online payroll”, and several trends occurred at the company’s start to aid in its growth. Employers did not want to print checks anymore as their employees wanted a move to direct deposit. And both employers and employees wanted to interact with software rather than calling in hours and waiting for processing.   

The company’s intuitive, easy to use software serves small businesses of all types from personal and professional services to construction, healthcare and retail. “We also have a lot of nonprofits and restaurants as clients,” he says.

A well-funded company, Jesse’s goal for OnPay is to provide the highest possible value for his shareholders, employees and customers. “It takes an enormous amount of conviction to get employees to go on the journey with you, but it’s a great joy when they do,” says Jesse. “We are constantly working to improve our technology and processes.” The company is located in Ponce City Market – right on the Beltline.

Their customer service is award winning and derives from the investment of time and effort spent on teaching all the nuances of payroll and HR to customer service team members. “We also have extended hours for customer support,” says Jesse. “As you would expect, many small business founders or leaders have to deal with business administration – like payroll – after regular business hours.”

Expert support is available by phone, chat or email. New clients receive onboarding support. Setup and data migration are free. Company support is rated 9.5 out of 10 by clients on G2, the software review company. The company has also been rated as the best value for 2026 by PCMag and best for comprehensive features by CNBC. Forbes also rates them, as of 2026, as the best for multistate payroll.

Many additional services are available to small business owners through OnPay as well as it’s partnerships and integrations with other vendors and associations – HR tools, insurance, workers’ comp coverage, 401(k) retirement plans, etc.    

“We also have extensive partnerships with accounting and bookkeeping firms,” says Jesse. “OnPay is a great solution for their clients in need of payroll, and we offer several flexible options for the firms partnering with us.”

OnPay integrates easily with QuickBooks, which has an over 82% market share of small businesses in the US, as well as Xero.  AI on Google regularly lists the company as the number 1, 2 or 3 payroll company to use along with Gusto and ADP.

All in all, Jesse believes that he and the company have a lot to celebrate and a lot to be proud of. “There’s a lot more that we can do,” he says. “After all, there millions more small businesses out there that need our help.”