Auris vs. BambooHR® vs. Namely

We changed payroll companies from Paycom to Heartland this year at the recommendation of our insurance agent who insisted they would integrate with the EASE system, which tracks employee benefits and deductions. However, 8 weeks into it, I regret my decision, since the setup hasn't been completed yet. The lack of responsiveness in some cases is astounding and often we have to ask 3, 4, and 5 times for something to be done. I hate to think what will happen after we are "handed off" from the payroll implementation team to the regular schmucks. We still are not able to track PTO and time off and we have been begging for the self-service feature to be turned on for employees so they can change addresses, bank account info, etc. Their training is NONEXISTENT and their manual is abysmal. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!!!! I wish I could go back to Paycom!

Performance management - the prompt questions are really helpful in distilling thoughts! Though it would still be great to have an optional box for additional feedback that might not be directly related to the prompt questions. The clean interface and user friendliness is a definite plus! But some specific features, eg. on TOIL application - it would be helpful to ensure it is intuitive to use, rather than confusing with the input process.

Incentivized

Namely is aesthetically very pleasing and navigates like other social media platforms which can be appealing to potentially a remote workforce who interacts more online than in person. Unfortunately, it did not serve our population well as we are primarily manufacturing where people are not as interested in utilizing the HRIS for interactions when they would rather connect in person.

• White-glove customer support. All employees are in the United States and they must pay them well, because they don't seem to have turnover there.
• Technology is awesome. We have Payroll, HR, T&A, ATS, and onboarding with them.
• Their Tax Credit tech is amazing. I received more money in tax credits last year than payroll cost me. That's a net positive!
• Compliance with their HR team is great, and they don't hit you over the head on the price for it.
• Pricing is fantastic with a 3-year price lock. No BS discounting that jumps back up a year later.

• Recruiting- communications are easy for both the internal team and candidates
• Onboarding- the onboarding tasks are great. I love being able to attach documents as well as delay sending out tasks
• Communication- the employee community is a great tool to keep our communications clean and organized. I love that we now have insight as to who has viewed the comms

• Namely has helped with our COVID sick leave response. It has made a major difference both with the weekly payroll and the 941 tax filing
• Keeping track of our multiple PTO plans. Thank goodness for Namely, I have shredded my old PTO spreadsheets.
• Employees like the convenience of the cell phone app. As a payroll administrator, I like the Geo Tracking tool where I can see where some are when the clock is in or out.
• The flexibility inside of the payroll system both as you are finalizing an employee profile and when you are processing payroll is a major advantage.
• The reports I get out of Namely in Excel format work well for me.

Incentivized

• Sometimes the system (geocode) will not allow me to process address changes by asking for help from our specialist.
• Response for assistance is usually a lot slower when our dedicated specialist is not available.

Incentivized

• The biggest issue is on performance assessments. We are not able to customize the reminder dates so the automated reminder dates shown to people and on the email reminders is often misaligned with our actual internal deadlines. This causes a lot of confusion each review cycle.
• Also on performance management, there is no way to push feedback to a supervisor for their direct report. The only way is if the manager requests the feedback from you. This limits the opportunity for people to give real time feedback throughout the half.
• I wish we had a way to track notes from employee 1:1s in BambooHR® so when we do our performance reviews we can track. That may be a module we didn't purchase but it would facilitate more continuous and comprehensive evaluation of people at review time.

Incentivized

• Limits to custom reporting
• No direct feed for Ohio Workers Comp (now a manual process on our end)
• No option to place an employee on Leave of Absence and exclude them from payroll while they are "inactive"
• No option to suppress certain deductions for certain pay types (i.e. allow 401K for commissions but block remaining deductions - also now a manual process to uncheck the suppress box for 401K for each commission check)

Incentivized

There's nothing wrong with this platform. I would recommend it to any business starting with more than 10 employees. I will continue to use the program for as long as I need to, hoping they continue being tremendous and finding other ways to incorporate more technology.

Incentivized

Administrators and employees love Namely. It is very easy to use and streamlined. Employees stay engaged with news feed updates and enjoy all the self service options. The time cards are very easy to access and clocking in and out for non-exempt employees is a breeze. Namely is part of our family.

Just because there's a little complex with everything that's rolling out and so I have had to walk some people through functionality because there's just so much to click at this point. Another thing is the review process doesn't allow for ratings with a number scale, and I know we're kind of getting away from that as an industry, but with our previous system we have been rating people for their merit percent increase on their wages at the end of the year and it doesn't have the functionality to do that.

Incentivized

It is very simple to use for myself, the HR team, and our employees. I find the payroll process very user-friendly. Reporting is simple to navigate and produce the required information requested. I know our employees enjoy the self-service feature and use it on a regular basis, which saves me time.

Incentivized

Yes, there is a huge team in the back of the online platform or it looks like it because I have never been left without an answer when I have a question or waiting from a response on my chat .... There must be a huge team, this is so great and I always seem to have someone that is very knowledgeable too. So many times in the past I had to leave with customer service that would connect you with someone else because of the expertise, here everyone seems to be some kind of an expert in the HR function.

Incentivized

I love BambooHR. Reports are easy to run and download and it usually covers any types of requests I get from the management team. You get excel or .csv downloads/reports and it is fast and simple, not too crowded so it is easy to read through. We don't integrate the tool yet but again, soon we will. we just did not had the time to utilize it yet but that's the plan.

Incentivized

I never have trouble reaching customer support. They always are able to assist with fixing any problems that arise. There honestly haven't been many issues at all. Only ones I've created :)

Incentivized

I use the chat feature most often and the wait times can be long, but often I do get right in. When they promise to follow up, they always do. It seems the "support hero's" are very well training and knowledgeable. There are lots of resources in the form of print or video, too.

Incentivized

Namely platform has pretty good support: knowledgeable and relatively fast response times. Namely Payroll and Namely Benefits are very much depending on the quality of the support agent or CSM: we have had knowledgeable and attentive ones, but also ones that have provided erroneous information or failed to respond to urgent asks in a timely manner

Incentivized

I didn't have in-person training besides teaching my managers how to use the program. However, I couldn't omit this question (maybe a system glitch).

Incentivized

Overall this training was great and our implementation specialist was wonderful and very helpful. We felt really prepared once our training was completed, But we could get additional help immediately even when we were live. The continuation Support heros after implementation are wonderful and you can always get a LIVE person each time you call into their office.

Incentivized

The Heartland team could care less about how difficult your experience is. In fact, I think they delight in seeing you struggle!

We implemented bambooHR in Fall, 2023 then implemented Payroll 1/1/24. A vital piece of information was not known or missed in that we are exempt from State Unemployment Tax and have a Reimbursement Set-up, so bambooHR did not send Payroll Reports to the State. Those reports need to be sent regardless if we are exempt or not.

Incentivized

Implementation was a bit complicated and our company had to carry most of the weight. It often felt like our implementation manager was giving us extra work that she did not want to do herself. It also took much longer than expected - I believe almost 2 months. I believe our company carried a bit too much of the weight.

Incentivized

I've considered moving payroll over to QuickBooks Online so that everything is in one place, but it would probably take too much work considering that our current system works really well. I think QuickBooks would confuse me, honestly. There are other systems that offer different user interfaces that are neat looking, but I haven't done too much research because Heartland Payroll offered me a really good deal for processing since we are a small company.

Incentivized

Lattice is much more oriented towards performance management. It includes many more advanced performance management features from building actual assessments to also performance development planning. BambooHR® for us was a place to centralize our data and build from within as well as connect to external integrations. PerformYard is what we used prior to BambooHR® for onboarding workflows and performance reviews, but BambooHR® is far superior.

Incentivized

The reason I continued to choose Namely at multiple employers is due to the continuity of employee experience. And the features have continued to grow since I initially onboarded in 2014. Also, through the years, I have had terrific benefits teams. The customer service has been the worst part of the experience outside of the benefits team.

Incentivized

Since my organization has dropped with employees, I always find ways to reduce costs. I thought there would be a cheaper option, but I was glad that my package included a lot for the price, and downgrading would cost more. The rep could have let me downgraded and taken me to a higher package. I am thankful that didn't happen.

Incentivized

There is so much you can do with this platform, it is incredible and so welcoming. We don't utilize it 100% yet just because we are growing and the HR team has not been able to concentrate on other areas offered to us but but we will soon. Which is also why we got the product, specifically because what BambooHR can do to help us meet our growing business needs.

Incentivized

VERY professional!

Incentivized

• We have a net positive using Heartland. We actually bring more money in from their tax credits than the payroll service actually costs.
• I used to have a part-time person handing our payroll/HR needs. Now this is done by me because it's so easy.

• Time Savings: Automating onboarding, payroll, and employee record management has cut HR admin time by up to 30%, allowing teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of paperwork.
• Improved Onboarding: Streamlined workflows have cut onboarding time by nearly 50%, ensuring new hires are productive faster, reducing turnover risk in the critical first months.
• - Enhanced Informational Clarity: Centralized employee data means fewer errors and faster access to essential information, reducing compliance risks and increasing accuracy in reporting.

Incentivized

• We were able to transition to a fully digital onboarding process which saved us hours in time per new hire and made the process smoother for the new hire.
• Namely is our first HRIS and has helped the HR department to find data and information quickly.
• Namely helped us digitize our performance management process which the company undergoes on an annual basis.

Incentivized