Ascentis (discontinued) vs. Mitratech TalentReef vs. Paycor

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.

Incentivized

I rarely give 10/10, mainly because I have learned that that we can always learn new things and to grow. Thus, I feel that same applies to Talent Reef. While I struggled a bit in the beginning to use this application, It is probably that struggle that has made me a better user for being so persistent at using it. Now that I have more than just the basics I think for any size company the functionality of the program will work for them.

Incentivized

The Open enrollment tool is excellent. They need to improve the reporting tool and speed up the use of AI. I've seen other system demos and their integration of AI seems sophisticated in comparision to Paycor's. Paycor has integrated some AI into analytics but it lacking in terms of what it can do

Incentivized

• 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!

Incentivized

• As an Administrator of the talentReef system, I have access to all applicants for every store across our system all in one location.
• It is a one-stop function for virtually all of our new hire paperwork.
• We have not gone entirely paperless with our employee files, but talentReef would be of great benefit to us if/when we choose to move in that direction.
• The system is relatively easy to learn for store users with all levels of digital expertise.
• The cost to the organization is extremely reasonable.

Incentivized

• Onboarding works very well for us with a lot of Self-Service for employees it gives us time back and ensures data accuracy is in the employees control.
• Recruiting works well because it links to specific jobs and automatically posts jobs when an employee is separated from service.
• Tax filings work fairly well for us and have always been accurate.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Applicant flow is terrible. You can post jobs on Indeed for free, and receive a better applicant flow than posting through TalentReef. TalentReef was unable to provide any reasoning for this to happen
• If you want to change/edit your onboarding documents, you need to e-mail them to support. This can sometimes take more than 48 hours to accomplish, and more often than not, was not done as requested
• Customer Support is terrible. When they respond to you, they do not answer the question fully or provide any alternative solutions
• Pricing is very high. There are numerous other alternatives in the market that provide better services for half the price

• Administrative/C-Suite level of canned reports and dashboards
• Displaying company reminders or documents to sign that are urgent in a way that doesn’t allow an employee to clock out until they have completed the task.
• More options to build an org chart

Incentivized

If I were given the opportunity to select a new system, Ascentis would definitely be a strong contender. It links together the functions much more seamlessly than other systems I have used. By far the best part though is the customer support after implementation, this is where many companies fail. It was very appreciated that even after every module went live the service level was still high.

The product is really good overall. The customer service is not the best and the benefits administration is kind of painful. However, the good outweighs the bad. We might get a different benefit admin system that can be integrated into Paycor. My controller doesn't want to switch anything for a [long] time.

Incentivized

Employees and Management all love this product, as the ease of use is great! The app makes it very user friendly, as things can be done from cell phones anywhere at any time! Our Field Service Technicians love that they can clock in and out, etc., from any location, and that their time can be approved accordingly.

Incentivized

Glitches. So many glitches. The customer service number provides basic troubleshooting, which doesn’t help; some issues take weeks to resolve, with no apparent reason why they occur. The system does not work on Safari. We have dealt with Payroll not working, which has caused a manual payroll to be run. Paycor representatives do not provide any assistance.

Incentivized

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.

I feel like Paycor is always up and running! If they are planning downtime, they communicate it clearly. Every once in a while, I get something that says the system isn't working but it is usually back up within the hour. I typically find by the time that the employees complain about it, that it is resolved within the system.

Incentivized

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.

For the most part, everything moves super fast. There are a few sections (Expense Management) that sometimes take a bit to load correctly. Or if they are interesting, it takes a minute to talk to each other! But reports are quickly downloaded and available! Even data heavy reports run fairly fast!

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We have had very few issues with talentReef, but when we did they were resolved quickly and in a timely manner.

Incentivized

I feel like support will transfer you back and forth between departments and put you on hold forever. I believe it is very difficult to see the status of an open ticket. During my experience, it feels like the client has to push all communication and request updates from support regularly.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The training was helpful and covered the basic functionality of the system, but it did not stand out as exceptional. The presenter was knowledgeable and answered questions appropriately, but much of the content felt focused on standard product features rather than our specific business processes and use cases. I would have liked to see more hands-on exercises, deeper workflow examples, and practical demonstrations tied to real-world scenarios. Overall, the training was good and provided value, but there is opportunity to make it more engaging, more customized to our organization, and more impactful for long-term user adoption.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The online training was adequate and covered the core functionality of the platform, but it felt similar to many standard software training libraries available today. The content was easy to access and generally well organized, but it lacked the depth, interactivity, and real-world application needed to make it particularly memorable or impactful. I would have liked to see more role-based learning paths, practical business scenarios, hands-on exercises, and guidance tailored to different user groups. Overall, the training met basic expectations and provided useful information, but it did not differentiate itself from typical web-based training programs offered by most HCM providers.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I've been through a payroll software implementation multiple times in my career, ranging from upgrades to an existing platform to complete replacement of providers. This implementation was the easiest from the standpoint of confidence in my implementation personnel. The implementation consultants at Paycor were AMAZINGLY knowledgeable about the software and offered us advice at every step of the way. We never had any concerns that they didn't know what we wanted or needed.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We came from Info PeopleAnswers and used their ATS for years. Prior to going to talentReef, we looked at CareerBuilder's ATS and at Snagajob's ATS. At the time, neither had the integrated onboarding and exporting data components. I also like the feature of the posi-fit questions.

The sales team was much better in terms of handling our needs, the products were overall better, and they have an extremely competitive price. We thought that Paycor was the best fit even though they were not the cheapest due to our needs and how they addressed them. It was a tossup between Paylocity and Paycor

Incentivized

Large acquisition would be very complicated, seems more appropriate for companies under 100

Incentivized

I gave it a 10 because we only use it across one organization. However, it has allowed us to break it into multiple departments and layers of management. It is also easy for us to utilize across different locations but still under one master company. They have always provided us support when we decide to change something on an organizational level

Incentivized

• It has been great to have all of our employee information in one central location, easy access and that the modules communicate/link together. If I change something here, it gets "pushed" to all other modules.
• I do not maximize ESS, particularly posting information on the home page because it is so TEDIOUS.
• LOVE the app, would love for it to be easier for employees to reset their password to whatever they want vs. the system generated password.

Incentivized

• Our initial ROI was having the ability for our applicants to apply online and move away from paper. This was a must, so we can compete for employees in our area.
• Our next ROI was improving our onboarding process. The TalentReef onboarding process protects us from having incomplete files and it also saves us labor due to the process being quicker and efficient.

• By streamlining job postings and candidate tracking Paycor Recruiting has helped shorten the average time to fill for our job postings from an average of 45 days days to 32 days (for certain job postings). This is due to the efficiency of the system when moving candidates through the pipeline.
• Recruiting costs have lowered due to the systems ability to post openings to multiple job board from one central location. This takes a lot of the administrative burden off recruiters and saves us time on manual follow ups and agency fees.
• Higher quality candidates! The tools Paycor Recruiting offers has provided the recruiters with a more effective form of evaluation. This leads to more informed decisions which results in better quality hires. When people stay longer this reduces turnover related costs.