RUN powered by ADP is a benefits administration and payroll platform for small businesses with light additional HR features. It runs on a cloud-based platform with mobile accessibility.
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Guideline
Score 7.5 out of 10
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Guideline headquartered in San Mateo offers a cloud-based 401k management software for businesses priced on a per employee basis.
When we hire remote workers, living in other states, RUN Powered by ADP has been supportive and an excellent resource. We know we can contact them with questions and they will set us in the right direction. From how to get set up in other states (with specific contact information) to general questions, they've been great.
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.
Being a small company and as a designated owner, the employee who processes payroll is the only person that gets the notification that payroll is submitted. As the "Owner," it would be best if the "owner" could also get a copy of the processing of payroll. I have to log in to review what was actually submitted...so if incorrect and I miss checking immediately, an employee could be paid incorrectly.
The PTO / vacation accrual product does not have the ability to provide a "liability" report of what the accrual balances owed are. I started using the product only to find out that a liability report was not available, nor could it be created.
Employee change form is only available after payroll is submitted. It would be more helpful to have the change form available before submission so any potential incorrect changes could be identified before running a final payroll.
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.
It is much better than the payroll system I used previously. The integrations that RUN has for on-boarding new hires are very convenient when they work properly. It saves a tremendous amount of time being able to email a link to new employees that allows them to enter much of their own demographic information. Payroll feature alerts me when someone's pay is significantly less or more than usual.
I have been using this system for years and they have actually made it easier and easier. The system is always making great upgrades that don't necessarily require any additional information or training. I love when I log in and see a new feature or button that I get to use to make my life easier!
I have never had an instance of an outage. It is always available as I have added data while travelling, on weekends, and in after work hours. Retrieving pdf's is also available at any time for employees and benefit participants.
ADP Run loads a bit slowly at times, once I put in my credentials. However, that said, I think my perception of the time it takes is impacted by our "instant gratification" expectation of being able to get into everything quickly.
At times it takes a few minutes to reach someone and sometimes the ADP automated voice prompt does not recognize my name when I say it. Also, sometimes I am forwarded to different departments and I have to explain my issue 2 or 3 times. It is hard to know whether it is an ADP Run/payroll processing issue versus an ADP Time and Attendance issue. Over the last year or so that I have called ADP, sometimes I am left on hold for a very long time.
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.
While Paychex Flex was a decent payroll processing product, the customer service support was terrible. We were unable to reach our assigned payroll support team member constantly. If we had issues that were not pressing, we would send a quick email to get insight or to be addressed and it would go unanswered for WEEKS. This was extremely frustration as while it may not have been pressing at the time, but due to the length of time, it can grow into a snowballing effect.
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.
Every summer, we hire three new college interns who have to be entered into the system. They can enter their information themselves, which takes a load off me. The onboarding is quite straightforward, and today's college kids are techy enough to be able to understand it.
Our client list tripled in less than two years because current clients spoke positively of ADP
Since our client list tripled, so did our revenue which was a tremendous increase
ADP is one of the best in the market so when we're selling the payroll package to potential clients, they usually know who ADP is and they already have positive ideas about it
