15Five vs. APS

We love the ability to recognize peers and align the High Fives with core values (and having it integrate with Slack creates visibility which encourages use of the feature) The Performance Review features are quite customizable and do most of what we'd like. The goal setting function is robust, however I wish that area was a bit less complicated as we'd like to be able to zoom out for company milestones, it just looks busy. In terms of managing an employee's lifecycle from hire on past their 30/60/90 day goals, that piece is customizable however I'd love it if check-ins were completely custom.

Incentivized

APS Payroll is an easy to use payroll system, and integrates well with some things such as the APS Hire feature, which handles onboarding, and the eSelfServe timeclock feature. It exports well to Quickbooks, but is only ok with NetSuite. (It works but is a completely manual process and takes a lot of setup.) Our tax registration and filing has been fine and we're always apprised of any tax discrepancies such as small Unemployment overages/underages when filed compared to what was withheld.

Incentivized

• The Pulse Check feature is both easy to use and allows staff and management to gauge how team health is.
• The metric and key performance tools are very well designed.
• Automated reminders and reporting are great features.
• I find the customer services to be best in class.

Incentivized

• It's fast and intuitive. Our previous contractors were ADP and Paychex and neither were intuitive. Our payroll runs have less errors now than with previous vendors. Payroll prep time is down from 5 hours with ADP to 2 hours with APS for the HR Manager.
• The limiters are great. I'm always afraid of that error that no one caught. Let's assume that you add a $200 limiter to overtime. Any time that a staff member is about to receive more than $200 in overtime for that pay period, a red flag goes up for the HR manager to double check.
• We have 3 programs in public schools that block certain ports. APS has a 2nd feature using GPS so that staff can only check in for their shift while they are in the designated GPS range. Great for someone who has to report to a remote location. Just add the GPS coordinates and they can't check until they get to the project.

• I think 15Five dashboards can be quite clunky and difficult to use
• I think their One-on-one management feature makes it difficult to track action items or search histories across time or multiple employees--a simple Google Doc is much more effective or Notion if you want even more functionality
• In my opinion, 15Five's customer service is among the worst I have experienced from a software company. They will nickel and dime you and use hidden fine print to wring as much money as they can from you.

• Reporting - We have six different business units and the reporting is separate for all three. Most reporting I do requires information from all business units so am running six reports and then copying and pasting to get the report I need.
• Multi-state taxes - We have a number of employees who live in New York and work in New Jersey. APS OnLine is designed to accommodate one state withholding so ability to have "worked in" state and "lived in" state taxes withheld went away. This was a shortfall.
• The Carrier connection setup took much longer than expected. After a year, we are still having some issues with some items transferring over to the GL.
• The CA overtime calculation does not calculate after 8 hours per day, only on the 40 per week so we override each week.
• Reporting - when running Benefit reports, it recognizes employees who formerly carried the plan but may have dropped it. To get around this, we have to delete off the employee's record so the history is not readily available.

Incentivized

This program is the absolute best I've ever used in 30 years with organizations. Not only do I enjoy being a user and "filling it out" every week- but I would personally buy it if available for goal tracking in my personal life I love it that much!

Incentivized

I have been using the system for over a year now and feel more comfortable with the functionality of it. I have just recently implemented the benefit administration portion.

Incentivized

The platform is too easy for use, you will find by hand all the main tools and the interface put in front of you what you need without enter to define or open complex options to add things.

No, you just need to open a new report and start to type things, the system automatically will start to add fields or show the desired options based on your current context.

Incentivized

The APS Payroll software is very easy to use, and it is easy to train new employees on it. The APS Payroll support team is very helpful and response time is quick. It is easy to enter/change employee information, adjust salaries and benefits, etc. New features have also been added that makes it even better, such as being able to set up your own income/deduction items.

Incentivized

I haven't had any outages

Incentivized

Very quick

Incentivized

15Five support is quick and helpful. We work with other vendors in the people management space and performance tracking/management who offshore their support or force us into long queues to chat for support and it just doesn't support our needs very well. 15Five is responsive and speedy. We constantly evaluate our vendors for their support and have switched vendors in the past in other areas because of limited support capabilities

Incentivized

I had to learn APS on my own, and the support team held my hand. They are still there when I have an occasional question. Anytime I need support, I can call my rep or send an email and help is on the way, without failure. The support team is awesome

Incentivized

Even if it wasn't in-person on location, we felt like we had our trainer in the room with us.

Incentivized

Very helpful webinar training. They answer questions, the slides are all very helpful, and they send you the presentation once the webinar is complete so that you can share with your team.

Incentivized

We had great webinars.

Incentivized

It was very easy and support was super helpful!

Incentivized

It would have been helpful to understand the phases of the implementation up front so I could have prepared differently for enrollments, billing, and transfer of information to payroll. At the end of the day, I'm happy with the selection and the system and anticipate I will like it better as we go along. We have done a number of other system implementations in the past few years, and this has been pretty painless, however, I've had a few surprises.

Incentivized

Visually 15Five blows Yammer out of the water! Yammer was easy to use as well, but it felt very difficult to get on to and was not single sign-on when we were using it. 15Five allows for easy login with single sing on feature and has less "clicks" to get to where I need to be on the program. I also love the app way more than Yammer!

Incentivized

We had used ADP for years and had always struggled with their customer service. With over 20 locations (20+ W2s, quarterly filings, etc) we had a lot of questions. We would have to call and sit on hold for long periods of time to talk to someone who couldn't always answer our questions. Then we would get different answers from different people or have to re-explain our issue. It was a major time suck for my employees and they dreaded having to call all of the time. For us - the final straws for us to switch providers were: +Numerous year end filings with incorrect names and addresses (they couldn't keep our 20+ locations separate even though our paperwork was completed correctly) +Incorrect SUI rates for several locations that resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in overpayments which was a lot of money for small hotels. We had sent in numerous requests for them to fix this but it never happened +Lack of care - even though we were having all of these issues, nobody would work with us to get them all resolved and make sure to remedy the situation. We had to seek out a manager to get them resolved but even after this, we still had more issues. Overall - DON'T stick with ADP or even think about switching to them. They might be able to slash prices but their poor customer service and lack of care will cost you in the end. It's not worth it. APS does everything ADP had the capability of but we don't have the errors or headaches we did before. I am really looking forward to this year end!

Incentivized

I've never had a problem with the system nor in finding the right information.

Incentivized

• It holds each employee to a certain standard by having them select their own list
• Gives them the opportunity to reach their list of goals
• Being able to accomplish each set goal and/or priority gives a sense of pride in each person's work as they are able to check off what has been done
• On the negative, it can also show what the employee is not being done and may show poorly if there is a consistent pattern of not completing tasks

• We were able to transition quickly and continue to successfully hire and onboard new hires for several Clubs that opened within weeks of moving to APS.
• We do struggle a bit with the ease of reporting simply because our locations are all under separate EIN and that can make it difficult to easily combine data queried under custom reports, so the volume of reporting that I might wish to be able to push through weekly in order to help address 'real time' trends is not always available.
• The lack of effective dating for position and wage changes does mean that HR and available APS data is not 'real time' accurate and that HR does need to return to the system to update changes well after-the-fact, which is not ideal.

Incentivized