ADP is best if you have a really knowledgeable client rep that has been your contact for multiple sessions. Otherwise, you are forced to reiterate the problems to multiple parties. If you have a dedicated staff member who is knowledgeable of your processes, then ADP is a good resource for payroll needs.
I believe that the only thing more broken than Guideline's product is their customer support. From initial contribution dates to the disastrous account closure that cost us personally thousands of dollars, this has been by far the worst SaaS and customer experience I've ever had in my career. If only 1) Guideline's product or 2) customer support had individually been broken, we would not have ended up in this state. I sent dozens and dozens of emails inquiring about oddities I was seeing in the product, but Guideline's reps only gave more conflicting and what ended up being grossly inaccurate feedback and status updates. I hope this review reaches anyone who is thinking of closing their Guideline account. Be extremely wary of what Guideline says and does in the account closure process and exact for detailed and exact timelines (you'll have to follow up many times...). For those of you who haven't yet selected a 401k provider, I'd recommend staying as far away from Guideline as possible.
It is very simple to process payroll, even from home if needed. I once processed the payroll from Japan.
I love that I can balance the payroll and send it knowing it is 100% correct.
I can process payroll as late as 6pm and have it back the next day.
I really like my ADP representative. I have had 2 and they are very knowledgeable and pleasant to work with.
Speaking of the ADP representative.......No matter who answers the phone, if my rep is not available, they are all knowledgeable and even through they are not my assigned rep, they are all pleasant to work with.
I feel that the customer support was abysmal - In my experience, we were consistently given conflicting advice and statuses as we closed our account with Guideline. Despite many, many follow-ups attempting to clarify our current status and remaining steps to close the account, Guideline's reps continued to provide, I believe, misleading and inaccurate steps. This cost us thousands and thousands of dollars given Guideline was not able to appropriately pull the funds before closing the account.
Guideline's integrations - I believe there is clearly a broken pipeline between Guideline and Rippling. In my experience, contributions were not funded as expected when we first opened the account, and when we closed our account, there was no communication between Guideline and Rippling. Guideline continued to expect contributions into perpetuity despite closure of the account
I feel that Guideline's product itself is just broken in critical places - most importantly, statuses of contributions were reflected incorrectly in the software (Guideline thought funds were transferred, but they were not and Guideline never attempted to pull the funds from our bank). This, combined with the terrible customer support, cost us thousands and thousands of dollars after we closed our account. There are many absolutely critical features that are broken -> to give just one of many examples, it was not possible to update the bank account information and no error message was thrown. I was told that our account ended up in an exceptional state given our last payroll contribution date and account closure, but these seem like very basic things a 401k provider has to get right if there are going to manage people's money.
I have a lot of experience and trust in this software package - actually any software package from ADP. The training that I have gotten over the years has always been complete and the representatives that I have had over the years are all EXCEPTIONAL! Looking back in the 20 plus years of experience, I can say truthfully there are only 1-3 persons who I would rather not have worked with at ADP. I find their customer service, and phone reps do their best to get the job done. This makes my job easier in the process.
Really.....I hate to keep repeating my self but I am very confident in any ADP software. They are worldwide and have proven their capabilities throughout the world
The few questions that we've had have been answered quickly and helpfully. The implementation was a breeze and the onboarding contacts were really helpful. There was some stuff I had to learn about 401(k)s in making the decision to implement Guideline, but the Guideline team was helpful in pointing me in the right direction.
ADP is just a well known brand and is fairly affordable. Compared to other software such as Workday, it was a more affordable price point for our budget. However, if we had more resources and time to examine, Workday seems to offer a strong alternative to ADP in terms of payroll, HR, and financial systems. Overall though, there are more consultants knowledgeable about ADP which made it an easier choice for us
We selected Guideline due to their relationship with Gusto, our payroll service. However, we did review alternative options for our 401k program and found them very competitive as to price and quality. We were thinking about going with one of the bigger companies like Schwab, E*TRADE, Ally, etc., but found Guideline to be the best choice for us based on price and ease of use.
Definitely better customer service. When someone called in about their account, I was able to easily access the information and make any changes at a click of a button.
