Likelihood to Recommend I think that APS Online is scalable to any organization. It's a wonderful product and I have had so many managers that work with me that feel the same way. We haven't been with them quite a year yet but since we've started it has made a world of difference for us. Things to ask about- 1- Do they specialize in or can they accommodate states that you are working in and their various rules? 2- What type of customer service? Do they have a call center or do they have a designated person like APS? 3- How long do your reports stay in the system? (ADP "archived" theirs after a year so we couldn't reach them)
Read full review We don't use the clock in and clock out feature so I can't speak to that. It works best for our exempt employees and is a little harder for our non-exempt employees. We allow employees to enter their start and stop times but some of our non-exempt employees have trouble logging their meals properly. If they did it incorrectly, they can't always fix it and it has to be fixed by an admin (often by deleting all the time entered for that day).
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Reporting on employee time and attendance data. Stratustime offers biometric clock in and clock out options. Employees have the ability to view and confirm their hours before payroll is completed. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review While you can future date many changes in an employee profile, you can't change all of them. A big one that I wish you could future date is manager changes. There is not a way to have the project codes/cost centers automatically accessible for employees. New employees have to go in and activate them. It's a small thing but people just don't pay much attention. They could really improve their training materials. Some short videos to share with employees on entering time would be really helpful. They don't have a mobile app. They have a mobile website but it isn't great and our employees really want an app. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability In general, it's a great system to use. We were looking for simplicity and ease of use and have received raves from our employees in their ability to access and make use of the system. There is still so much more that we have yet to gain as we continue working through each of the modules.
Read full review Reliability and Availability I haven't had any outages
Read full review Performance Very quick
Read full review Support Rating 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
Read full review In-Person Training Even if it wasn't in-person on location, we felt like we had our trainer in the room with us.
Read full review Online Training We had great webinars.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have used ADP for many years and always found the system to be restrictive in ADP's resistance to building rules that matched the organization's needs rather than asking the organization to modify its policies to match 'canned' rules already built within ADP. Bamboo and several other newer systems really cannot support the many separate EINs under the corporate umbrella. And, finally, the other products are simply too costly for this organization.
Read full review Stratustime's GUI is better, but Kronos seemed more stable
Read full review Scalability I've never had a problem with the system nor in finding the right information.
Read full review Return on Investment APS OnLine has helped us streamline the payroll process by freeing up our time of not having to personally cut and sign weekly paychecks. We don't have to rely on check signers to be present which has helped our timeliness as well. Read full review Overall, it has really helped us streamline our timekeeping process by allowing managers and employees to approve their time electronically from anywhere with an internet connection. The ability to reconcile time sheets in a timely manner as also allowed us to process payroll a few days earlier than we were able to with our previous system. Read full review ScreenShots