ADP WorkForce Suite vs. Jolt vs. Posist

Functionality is lacking for anything beyond basic clock in/clock out features. Job costing, scheduling, etc. is clunky and requires high level configuration, and still does not always work as intended. The number of steps required to get data from one location to another is over complicated - should be more streamlined and simple

Incentivized

Jolt has allowed us to save thousands of dollars in food by identifying issues early. This has been accomplished from both the standpoint of trend analysis and identification of catastrophic failures. Our employees have saves hundreds of hours of labor by not having to write out each individual date label used during the day.

POSist is designed keeping fine-dine in mind and it shows. There are multiple options to configure the system as per the operations and shifts, which helps in managing light and heavy hours effectively. Capabilities need to be further improved for managing cloud kitchens through integrating more online delivery aggregator platforms

Incentivized

• Scheduling can be made simple with pre-made templates
• Tracking time off balances accurately
• If a mistake is made, fixing timesheets is simple

Incentivized

• Timely reminders of when checklists need to be executed; The team is alerted audibly and visually when checklists are coming due or when they are past due.
• Customized text message confirmations when audits are completed/incomplete; This feedback closes the loop with the Management Team confirming the status of the required daily checklists/audits.
• Documented proof of completion through photos; Checklist questions/items can be setup to require photos to be taken as visual evidence that a task was completed. This adds a check-and-balance feature that deters pencil whipping tasks and eases the burden on the Management Team when it comes to auditing compliance and driving accountability.
• Remote printing from any device setup with Jolt; We have iPads throughout the restaurant communicating real-time information with various functions within the store. It is very convenient when a Team Member in one department can print on the device in front of them, while calling out to another Team Member to retrieve labels from the printer when on their way to assist with a job function.

• Well integrated with online ordering platforms
• Intuitive built in CRM
• Nice layout to quickly select items and proceed towards billing

Incentivized

• EmpCenter's report features need improvement. While it is nice that the user has several options for the format to receive the report in and with a recent update reports can be scheduled to run and be printed or emailed to the user or someone else of their choosing on a regular basis, daily, weekly, monthly. The reports never seem to have all of the information you need on one report and need a lot of manipulating to get the results you actually need. For example we have reports with employees names that show total hours worked, but don't include rates of pay or the job title. When employees have more than one job or rate for the work they are preforming you don't get that breakdown of information with their total hours worked. Another report includes three ways of reporting the same total hours but don't all round the same so, for example the total clocked hours may show 34.3 hours and the work study hours on the same report that should match round to 34.2. We have asked for certain data to be added to certain reports such as a supervisor name and it seems to be such a task for that to be provided and a high cost we are not getting these request met.
• Management of time sheets when a supervisor has many employees is difficult. EmpCenter only allows for one manager to be named for each employee. In most settings this may make sense but in our environment in particular with student employees we often have more than one person who oversee different aspects of that employees work and both need access to their records. In our Housing and Dining department we have three managers who are together overseeing several hundred student employees. One manager may be primarily responsible for the employees pay rates and evaluations while another scheduling and they may not all be working at the same time. Because only one of them can have access to an employee’s time sheet if that person is not in and an employee needs assistance with something in EmpCenter the other managers can't help them. Also the display only shows up to 500 employees or assignments. We have some units who have up to eight different assignments for one employee. These areas will have several employees each with several different assignments which means several individual time sheets. This all will result in more than 500 and the supervisor has to use a search feature to get to the employees who do not display in their more user friendly list. Also this many assignments results in many time sheets and the clock times report separately for each and do not combine into one larger complete time sheet so each must be managed separately. It would be nice if there was a view that combined all hours into one time sheet view. Finally on this note when a supervisor is approving time they can only approve one time sheet per employee at a time so they have to do mass amounts of approvals and ultimately simply don't approve time sheets when they are dealing with so many.
• Probably our largest problem is that when we do have programming that is not working properly or aspects of the system that we would like improved it is difficult to get those corrections made and made in a timely manner. I do not work directly with the company, but it has taken a few payroll cycles to get programming fixed for some things causing a lot of manual work in my area to pay employees correctly. If anyone is looking at purchasing this product I advise that they be very clear and detailed upfront with what they are getting and what is included in the cost they are being quoted. Because this is a customizable program you buy an off the shelf basic and the company works with you to price what programming will be done from there. Things we thought were covered we are finding are not and it is very costly to add other programming to our contract. I often feel it is not a high priority for them to resolve problems we are experiencing however it is very important for us and the work we are trying to do.
• We also have problems with access to the system in different ways and needing more roles. EmpCenter has a role for a user who only has access to certain activity such as reporting their time and requesting time off, a role as a manager who can approve time off and time sheets and see their employees records, and a super user role who has more administrative access to override things and handle some of the errors and issue we may experience. in my role I am an administrator for several different areas of the campus and need to access the system at a higher level to assist employees and managers but can only have the manager role but with wider access granted. So by this I mean that I see the features a manager sees but am seen as a manager of all employees in several areas on campus where the other manager role is restricted to just that managers employees alone. In this sense I suppose this is a fourth role the system allows, but I can't do any more actions than a manager can i can just see more people. The super user role is not granted because it is at such a higher level that they can actually effect programming and this role is highly restricted so that users don't inadvertently corrupt the program. I feel there needs to be one more layer in between the super user level and the manager level. I would like to be able to delete time when employees have clocked in by mistake and simply want that removed or when there are more minor problems with a record that I can't correct. Also when a manager is out and has not delegated their employees to someone else to manage I would like to be able to make that delegation so that someone in the unit can review, correct and approve time in place of that supervisor who is gone.
• Overall we have had many problems with things not working right and trying to get the system to calculate properly, finding ways to get information we need from it, and managing and using it. I am sure these are general growing pains anyone would have when transitioning an entire university to a new electronic system, but it has been a difficult first year. If you are thinking of implementing this program have a good communication plan, someone who is the lead and will get things taken care of when they need to be, and clear roles and responsibilities lined out so that everyone knows who does what and who to go to when there is a problem.

• Development Sprints: They are always improving, but the speed to the deployment of features could be faster.
• Customization: The Dashboard is solid, but being able to brand the back end to look more like my company would help me gain buy-in from all department heads and help integrate Jolt further into the company.

• More payment partner integrations needed
• Alerts and notifications should be improved for better remote monitoring of restaurants
• Option to optimize table setting as per floor plan of restaurants is not there

Incentivized

After spending close to 5 years to decide on which payroll product to acquire for our University, I cannot image we would switch now that we have it in use.

Jolt is very user friendly and offers a lot of solutions to my companies needs. If it offered a Payroll piece and a Point of Sale piece it would make it a complete system that would solve 99% of my companies needs.

The system itself is very user friendly and every one of our team members is able to use it easily. The only difficulty that we have occasionally run into is a lack of connectivity between the Bluetooth printer and the iPAD. There are only two or three of us on staff that are well versed enough with the product to be able to fix it when there is this kind of issue.

Extremely knowledgeable staff that truly care about our business processes

When I have had questions or needed technical support, I have received a very prompt response to my emails. The answers are concise and if there are instructions they are easy to follow and implement. All interactions I have had with the Jolt team have been a very positive experience.

Jolt is user-friendly and was an easy implementation. Held a couple of training classes for our management on how to use the product.

I did not make the decision to select EmpCenter and only know our university also considered Kronos although I assume there were other products considered. My use of Kronos was only at an employee level and I am not sure how it all stacks up for sure. What I do think is that EmpCenter is more customizable than other products and was seen to be able to adapt to fit all of our needs so it was a system that could be used by everyone. I think it is good we have one time keeping system and don't have some employees using paper or a different system because the one could not meet our needs, but as I said this also makes it more difficult to network with other users and to get improvements made quickly.

Before this, we used Namely for our training and Paper for Cleaning Lists. Moving to digital was difficult at first but has been well worth the effort put in the beginning. With our other system, there was no one to reach out to for help. Any time I have a question, our Jolt Representative will hop on a call and assist us in fixing the issue, or just to talk through how we can improve what we already have!

POSist is easier to use and has quite an intuitive interface so training staff on system is quite easy. Local integrations with delivery aggregators helped in reducing manual efforts in logging online orders in the system. Inventory and recipe management is more detailed in POSist that it's competitors. Analytics on varience and month on month wastage report is superb.

Incentivized

• Employees can now better track their hours and ensure they are paid accurately by payroll.
• Timekeeping is faster and smoother for most administrators.
• The system does need to be slightly more compatible in translating its data from the home software to another software.

• Increased accountability and cohesiveness of how all staff members are expected to clean our facility has allowed our facility to decrease the number of respiratory illness and communicable diseases that are passed around our dog pack. We feel this is a direct result of everyone being required to do jobs to the same cleaning standards and or ability to track when employees are not meeting that standard.
• Barcode scanning has increased our ability to trust employees are getting the jobs done independently thus reducing the need for continual management oversight. We've been able to reduce the number of hours our managers work, allowing them to trust the staff more and utilize Jolt reporting to identify poor performance and spend their time addressing concerns and re-training verses just babysitting the staff on shift.

Incentivized

• Effective inventory management reduced wastage & pilferages in kitchen
• Maintaining customer database helped in attracting repeat customers
• Communication between waiter, cashier and kitchen staff improved a lot due to multi level access

Incentivized