Likelihood to Recommend In working with Ascentis in payroll, the program makes my job so much easier. I am new to this position and the learning process has been so much easier with this product than those in the past. I appreciate the patience I am given when I call in for assistance as well.
Read full review syncHR is designed for mid to large size companies, typically 200-2000 employees. Any organization that has a strong reporting need and/or a complicated payroll process could benefit from the unique features built into the platform
Read full review Pros Easy to use software. I have had several new HR employees comment on how easy the system is to learn! Problem Solving- Ascentis is always problem solving! When we were in the process of selecting a new payroll company, we needed unemployment claims management assistance for our locations, something Ascentis did not currently offer. The sales rep went out of his way to find a unemployment claims management company that would work with Ascentis and us. That company has helped us keep an 80% win rate for our claims! User conference- Engage is an awesome way to learn more about the products Ascentis has available as well and meet up with the staff you work with every day! Read full review Automated retroactive change processing and mid-period rate changes – completely automated with no manual intervention needed - If you ever need to give someone a merit increase and make it retroactive or if an employee is entitled to enroll in health benefits on their first day employment but has 30 days to enroll, syncHR will automatically handles these retro changes. A single application designed from the ground up that gives equal weight to HR, payroll, and benefit functions - syncHR is designed as a true unified solution with no back-end mainframes or separate front-ends vs backends. Everything is processed real-time in the cloud which has eliminated all discrepancies. Customer Service - syncHR provides a designated account manager as your single point of contact. Since the The StaffWell Group is a 24/7 business, I needed a company that was available when I needed them. syncHR delivered with 24/7 emergency support. Event-driven employee self service - Other systems we have used rely on employees to make the correct choices as to what is required when completing an employee initiated transaction. With syncHR, the system always directs the employee to the next step reducing both errors and calls to our support staff. I believe this is also the reason why we had a 40% increase in the adoption of ESS. Dynamic Security & Workflows - syncHR has no static pages which allows security and workflows to be updated automatically whenever a change is made. This has virtually eliminated the time and effort required from HR to manually update workflows to the correct personnel. Read full review Cons Updating the system so it is one platform and not two. Create changes to the benefit enrollment process and upgrade the system so hire dates do not need to be changed to trigger benefits for status changes. Focus updates on HR Admin, mobile application, ATS and transitioning to one platform. Larger areas of focus have been on the payroll portion of the system with a few updates to other areas. When something is broken, quicker turn time on fixing the issue. System needs updates to support AAP reporting. Read full review Learning Management System- syncHR currently does not offer an LMS system. They only track and report training dates, licenses and certifications. Although syncHR is a global solution it is somewhat limited to tracking employee headcount, HR documents, paperless on boarding and benefit information. There is no international payroll option like the one they provide for domestic employees. Although the system can handle multiple languages and currencies, I would like to see a global payroll option. Succession Planning - syncHR provides little functionality for succession planning. The system can track budgets vs actuals, goals and ratings but does not offer a true succession planning module Read full review Likelihood to Renew This rating would be a 10 if it were not for some issues we have been having recently with the benefit carrier connections. The carrier connections are critical for us so how these issues are resolved will be key in our renewal decision.
Read full review Usability I'd give it a 7.5. If the modules were easier to access and not so buried (or placed in left field to find), I would give it a higher rating. As I said, as the potential to be great if ACCESS to other modules was easier.
Read full review Overall the system is very easy to navigate but more importantly my employees find it so easy to use. The percentage of employees who now use ESS went up by 40%
Read full review Reliability and Availability They normally give you notice when an update will affect the use of the system. Otherwise, when we have an error , we send a message to the support team. Sometimes someone will get right back with you and sometimes it takes a while.
Read full review Performance Yes, this pages do load pretty good but there are times when things are slow and I believe that's because they are sometimes trying to do updates.
Read full review Support Rating Support is attentive and quick to answer the call and get the answer for you. If they for any reason cannot answer right then, they are back to you within a day and always seem to have a sense of urgency. You truly get the impression that they are aiming to make you happy.
Read full review Whenever we need support our designated account manager is there to provide answers for us. If she doesn't have or know the answer, additional support is provided via a service matter expert in that field. Support hours are 24/7
Read full review In-Person Training First, to clarify our "in-person" training was done mainly through Web-X meetings and conference calls. It was the closest thing we got to as far as an "in-person" training for this software. However, for the large majority of it, this type of training worked out well. We were able to share our screens and the trainer was able to share his/her screen. We could follow along with what we were doing in our database in real time and see how different functions worked and how manipulating our information could produce different results. It was also nice in that it provided for real-time results if something hadn't been coded correctly or we were having issues as to why something wasn't working the way we thought it should be. However, it did have some downsides in that we often had to rely on a conference phone and that made it difficult to hear people on both sides. Also, sometimes the trainers had internet difficulties when working from home and that caused issues with the WebX meetings.
Read full review Online Training Ascentis HR has a number of online training videos to watch on a number of different topics. I gave it a lower rating because there is not much interactivity with the videos and it seems to cater to really only one or two learning styles. Plus, one has to be pretty motivated to go to a separate area to access the videos and then pull up a specific one to watch it and then learn. From my experience, people know that they are there, many just don't take the time and effort to go find them and actually watch them - especially since the username and password are different from their normal username and password.
Read full review Training was very well done and thorough
Read full review Implementation Rating It was very easy to implement, but the customization pieces should really be fleshed out in order to determine the full need of an organization at the time of implementation. I believe if a little more time was spent on the requirements, the recruiting module would not have to be customized again at a cost at a later date.
Read full review During the first few weeks of implementation it is important to have all key members participate in meetings. Finance, HR, Payroll and Benefits should be involved from the early stages to ensure that the solution is designed to meet your specific requirements. Since syncHR personalizes their solution for each company a few wrong steps early on regarding the design we wanted caused us to spend extra time later. The more info you provide syncHR upfront the better they can take all of your rules and needs into account from day one. In our case, finance did not get involved right away and therefore some of the items that we needed for our GL needed to be re-done. SyncHR was very accommodating though as they spent extra time with us to update some of the allocations so that finance got what they needed
Read full review Alternatives Considered Ascentis has far better customer service and the implementation experience was also better. The ability to do a lot of customization is also easier with Ascentis as it's smaller organization. The payroll has positive and negatives compared to ADP but the accuracy is the same in both. Ascentis just started their community site which doesn't have a lot of traffic but hopefully can become more like ADP's community site, which was extremely helpful to me as an administrator.
Read full review As I mentioned I have used UltiPro, ADP, Ceridian as well as several others and none of them seem to offer half of the functionality and service that syncHR provides. Although we had some problems from time to time, I hold companies in high regard by how they resolve these problems. It's a comfort knowing that my HCM provider truly cares about me and my business so if for no other reason than this, I feel syncHR is far and away the best system I have used. The system works as advertised which is all I could ask for
Read full review Scalability Large acquisition would be very complicated, seems more appropriate for companies under 100
Read full review Return on Investment HR DPT. is much more effective, as we can assess any employee information no matter where we are, etc. This helps to provide information immediately when requested! Employees have access to Ascentis, and therefore to their timecard, open enrollment, etc., from anywhere at any time! Time, PTO requests, employee goals, and evaluations can be approved from anywhere at any time! Recruiting can be accessed any where at any time, and this helps with hiring, internal communication, etc. Read full review Due to complexity of our payroll, it would typically take us almost 3 full days to verify hours and perform retro changes before actually running payroll. With so many retroactive changes and manual calculations it was a time consuming and error prone process. With syncHR, the accuracy of payroll has increased tremendously and the amount of time we now spend preparing to process payroll decreased to less than 4 hours per week. All approved time seamlessly moves from the T&A module into payroll and all retro transactions are automatically processed. When I initially selected syncHR I was a little hesitant because I never heard of them before and was concerned about their viability as a company and customer service. Several years later I'm happy to say that syncHR has provided better support than any of the better know competitors ever did. Although no system is ever perfect, overall syncHR has exceeded most of my expectations. The sales and implementation process was wonderful, the salesperson was responsive and did not oversell what the system could do. Training & Implementation - syncHR spent a considerable amount of time learning my business rules in order to build the system to meet my requirements. Training was provided on all aspects of the system until my team felt comfortable enough to handle things on their own. I never felt as though we had a set number of hours of training or that our questions, no matter how redundant or simple were a bother to them. Read full review ScreenShots Ascentis (discontinued) Screenshots