Employee reimbursements that work with Gusto

How do reimbursements get into Gusto?

Vergo writes approved reimbursements into Gusto pay runs through the API the vendor documents — per Gusto's developer documentation. The write goes through Employees — object names from the vendor's own documentation, not an inferred path. The pay run is the natural place for a reimbursement to land: the employee is paid back with their pay, on the schedule they already know, and the payment carries the coding and approval it picked up in Vergo. The vendor grants API access at signup; Vergo handles the connection from there. The spec lives on the Gusto integration page.

What does the employee actually do?

Employees handle everything by text message — no app to download, no portal login — and Vergo chases missing receipts itself instead of waiting for a report. The whole flow, from the employee's side:

• Spend your own money and text Vergo a photo of the receipt.
• Vergo reads the receipt line by line and proposes the coding from what was actually bought.
• Anything missing — a receipt, a detail — Vergo chases by text itself.
• Approval runs the way the business already controls spend.
• The approved amount lands in the next Gusto pay run, with the rest of pay.

That matters most for the people least likely to install anything: someone who will never open an expense app will reply to a text.

Is the coding AI or rules?

Rules engines file what matches a pattern and queue what does not — and a reimbursement is exactly the kind of spend that does not match, because it comes from whichever shop was nearest. Vergo reads the receipt itself, line by line, and predicts the GL account from what was actually bought, not just the vendor name on the header, and every coding shows why it was chosen, so a reviewer confirms in seconds instead of re-coding by hand. So by the time a reimbursement is handed to Gusto, it is already coded, already reviewed, and already explained. More on the category in reimbursements and expense reports.

Does mileage work the same way?

Yes. Mileage runs through the same coding model as receipts, so a drive and a receipt from the same trip are coded the same way and reconcile together — and both reach Gusto together. No separate mileage app, no second submission flow, no spreadsheet of odometer readings for someone to re-key.

Who runs Gusto?

Gusto is run by small and mid-sized businesses in the United States. If payroll lives in it, reimbursements should meet it there — on its own terms, through the write path its vendor documents — rather than asking the payroll team to re-key what another system already approved.