Ascentis vs UKG Ready | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 7.7 out of 10

Based on 320 reviews and ratings

Score 7.8 out of 10

Based on 281 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Employee demographic data

Employment history

Job profiles and administration

Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.

Organizational charting

Organization and location management

Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Pay calculation

Support for external payroll vendors

Off-cycle/On-Demand payment

Benefit plan administration

Direct deposit files

Salary revision and increment management

Reimbursement management

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Approval workflow

Balance details

Annual carry-forward and encashment

Ascentis

UKG Ready

View and generate pay and benefit information

Update personal information

View company policy documentation

Employee recognition

View job history

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Tracking of all physical assets

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Report builder

Pre-built reports

Ability to combine HR data with external data

Ascentis

UKG Ready

New hire portal

Manager tracking tools

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Corporate goal setting

Individual goal setting

Line-of sight-visibility

Performance tracking

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Performance plans

Performance improvement plans

Review status tracking

Review reminders

Multiple review frequency

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Create succession plans/pools

Candidate ranking

Candidate search

Candidate development

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Job Requisition Management

Company Website Posting

Publish to Social Media

Job Search Site Posting

Duplicate Candidate Prevention

Applicant Tracking

Notifications and Alerts

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!

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Verified User

Director in Human Resources

Hospital & Health Care Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Streamlines the process between HR and payroll. Each team can quickly see and share information.
Our entire hospital team can use the system and it's easy to provide trouble shooting support to our teams.
Appearance -The system is easy to use and attractive for users.
The payroll process specifically is very well laid out.
Communication! UKG has really stepped up on communication and training especially around tax related deadlines.

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Verified User

Employee in Finance and Accounting

Hospital & Health Care Company, 501-1000 employees

View all 139 answers on this topic

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.

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Verified User

Director in Human Resources

Civil Engineering Company, 501-1000 employees

View all 164 answers on this topic

Customer support. I do not like the idea of not being able to call someone with a quick question without adding a case. Waiting for someone to call you back is not helpful at all. Chat line is mostly off-line
SMA is relatively new to Kronos's Platform. I really felt like we were not fully trained on the system. We were not able to train our staff well either. I would really like to see short clip videos that we are able to share with new employees. I don't have time to read long documents which I find is a lot of what is on the training portal.

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HR Manager

Sumitomo Machinery Corp. of AmericaMachinery, 201-500 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Ascentis 6.3

Based on 13 answers

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.

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Kelly C. Neill, SPHR

Human Resources Manager

San Juan Construction, Inc.Construction, 201-500 employees

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UKG Ready 9.0

Based on 9 answers

We plan to renew our support and use of UKG Ready each year unless it becomes unavailable or the district seeks another vendor. As of now, there are no plans to changes vendors. The district staff is now familiar with using UKG. Another vendor will need to meet the same expectations we have come to enjoy with using UKG

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Technology Director

Union Parish School DistrictPrimary/Secondary Education, 201-500 employees

View all 9 answers on this topic

Usability

Ascentis 7.5

Based on 45 answers

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.

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Verified User

Director in Human Resources

Building Materials Company, 51-200 employees

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UKG Ready 8.0

Based on 23 answers

Somethings are very easy to do, however somethings are very clunky. For many things such as time change requests and approvals it would be nice to see the timesheet as you are making the request rather than having to remember what was on there. It does require a general technical base that some of our bus and custodial staff do not have.

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Verified User

Director in Finance and Accounting

Education Management Company, 201-500 employees

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Reliability and Availability

Ascentis 6.3

Based on 5 answers

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Human Resources

Government Administration Company, 51-200 employees

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UKG Ready 9.1

Based on 4 answers

The system seems very stable. Being hosted in the cloud, we are vulnerable to internet speeds and busy times. The system has been down a couple times over the 3 months we have been live, but Kronos resolved the issues very quickly. To have access from a desktop, tablet, time clock, or phone app is one of the best features....users have almost NO REASON they can't clock in.

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Programmer Analyst

Wicomico County Public SchoolsPrimary/Secondary Education, 1001-5000 employees

View all 4 answers on this topic

Performance

Ascentis 6.7

Based on 4 answers

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Human Resources

Government Administration Company, 51-200 employees

View all 4 answers on this topic

UKG Ready 8.7

Based on 14 answers

We were always told that Kronos was the best, but there are reports that we got out of ADP and other payroll providers that we cannot get out of Kronos. One example is a report of Productive/Non-productive hours by department. We also need the dollar amount associated with the hours. This is information that is required on our cost report and we were told that that report is unavailable. It is very frustrating when I can't get what I need.

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Human Resources Director

Markesan Resident Home, Inc.Hospital & Health Care, 51-200 employees

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Support Rating

Ascentis 8.0

Based on 157 answers

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.

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Verified User

Strategist in Marketing

Oil & Energy Company, 201-500 employees

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UKG Ready 7.9

Based on 121 answers

The support received varies. In most instances, I have been contacted same day by support to get the issue resolved, but there was one instance where I was not contacted for over a week and then when I was finally contacted, the assistance received was lacking.

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Verified User

Administrator in Human Resources

Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employees

View all 121 answers on this topic

In-Person Training

Ascentis 8.0

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Jennifer Steffens

IT & Marketing Coordinator

Howry Residential ServicesMental Health Care, 201-500 employees

View all 1 answers on this topic

UKG Ready 6.0

Based on 2 answers

Our in-person training was a hybrid. Live online training with an instructor. They were very knowledgeable of the product & the area they were training on. I asked several specific questions and if they didn't know the answer immediately they followed up after class.

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Programmer Analyst

Wicomico County Public SchoolsPrimary/Secondary Education, 1001-5000 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Online Training

Ascentis 8.0

Based on 4 answers

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.

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Jennifer Steffens

IT & Marketing Coordinator

Howry Residential ServicesMental Health Care, 201-500 employees

View all 4 answers on this topic

UKG Ready 8.1

Based on 2 answers

Lots & lots of training available. Timing was wrong for our organization. We had lengthy down time in the beginning while the implementation consultant setup our system. We did online training then. Difficult to train on a generic system setup that isn't your industry and hard to understand what you are learning how to do w/o actually being in your system. Online training was well documented and the instructors were very knowledgeable.

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Programmer Analyst

Wicomico County Public SchoolsPrimary/Secondary Education, 1001-5000 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

Implementation Rating

Ascentis 8.0

Based on 6 answers

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.

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Human Resources Manager

MultiLingual Solutions, Inc.Government Administration, 201-500 employees

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UKG Ready 6.2

Based on 8 answers

Make sure the people who are doing the build have extensive knowledge on employment law and asking the right questions. I would bet that the people who helped with our builds did not read any of our employment contracts or ordinances; and when I asked questions about how other companies handled certain basic dictates from federal employment laws, they didn't have any idea what FMLA, FLSA, etc were.

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Verified User

Contributor in Human Resources

Government Administration Company, 201-500 employees

View all 8 answers on this topic

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.

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Verified User

Manager in Human Resources

Logistics & Supply Chain Company, 201-500 employees

View all 164 answers on this topic

Kronos definitely beats out the competition in terms of user-friendly features and simple "it works" functionality. We tried using several other payroll suites including Paychex and found they were lacking in a number of areas especially in terms of user interface. Our employees literally groan when they remember using these older systems, they absolutely love Kronos in comparison.

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Senior Analyst, Operations

Aurora Health CareHospital & Health Care, 10,001+ employees

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Scalability

Ascentis 6.0

Based on 4 answers

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

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Christina Miyamoto, PHR®

Human Resources Manager

N/AEntertainment, 51-200 employees

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UKG Ready 9.1

Based on 2 answers

Thus far we are able to add as many users as necessary, implement 3 different bargaining units, 5 different types of user groups. Very flexible.

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Programmer Analyst

Wicomico County Public SchoolsPrimary/Secondary Education, 1001-5000 employees

View all 2 answers on this topic

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Human Resources

Mechanical Or Industrial Engineering Company, 201-500 employees

View all 164 answers on this topic

Managers have easy access to people/hours/earnings to better manage budgets - once we implement Scheduler, we'll take it to the next level.
Managers and employees can self-serve in ways not possible before - we eliminated 95% of paper processes during our implementation.

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HRMS Analyst

YMCA OF THE NORTHNon-profit Organization Management, 1001-5000 employees

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Screenshots

See All (7) Ascentis Screenshots

See All (9) UKG Ready Screenshots

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Required

Rating Summary

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

Ascentis

UKG Ready

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