Auris vs. Guideline

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!

Guideline is well suited for a comprehensive 401k service to most any business, whether small (10 or fewer employees) or far larger businesses. They can help employees understand how to invest their money and provide options for them. An employee can allow the people at Guideline to invest their money based upon a simple algorithm of conservative/moderate/less moderate risk or the employee can invest as they choose. Guideline is probably not the best suited as far as the type of financial advice one might get from more established investments and financial groups.

Incentivized

• Cheap payroll processing but [in my opinion] you get what you pay for
• [In my experience] great ability to frustrate their customers
• Geat for the economy because [I feel] they hire so many different people and [in my experience] they don't hang around [so] you don't know who your rep is

• Administrate individual 401(k)
• Understand the contributions accumulated in total and per year
• Understand the percentage of salary being contributed per pay period.

Incentivized

• Sometimes I don't receive the email to remind me to process payroll.
• The local rep that helped with the setup is no longer with the company and I don't have anyone to contact locally if needed.
• I wish there was a one click button so that I could just repeat the same payroll as last time.

Incentivized

• I feel that the customer support was abysmal - In my experience, we were consistently given conflicting advice and statuses as we closed our account with Guideline. Despite many, many follow-ups attempting to clarify our current status and remaining steps to close the account, Guideline's reps continued to provide, I believe, misleading and inaccurate steps. This cost us thousands and thousands of dollars given Guideline was not able to appropriately pull the funds before closing the account.
• Guideline's integrations - I believe there is clearly a broken pipeline between Guideline and Rippling. In my experience, contributions were not funded as expected when we first opened the account, and when we closed our account, there was no communication between Guideline and Rippling. Guideline continued to expect contributions into perpetuity despite closure of the account
• I feel that Guideline's product itself is just broken in critical places - most importantly, statuses of contributions were reflected incorrectly in the software (Guideline thought funds were transferred, but they were not and Guideline never attempted to pull the funds from our bank). This, combined with the terrible customer support, cost us thousands and thousands of dollars after we closed our account. There are many absolutely critical features that are broken -> to give just one of many examples, it was not possible to update the bank account information and no error message was thrown. I was told that our account ended up in an exceptional state given our last payroll contribution date and account closure, but these seem like very basic things a 401k provider has to get right if there are going to manage people's money.

Incentivized

Well thought out and intuitive user experience for employees and administrators. Educational documentation has been a plus

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

The few questions that we've had have been answered quickly and helpfully. The implementation was a breeze and the onboarding contacts were really helpful. There was some stuff I had to learn about 401(k)s in making the decision to implement Guideline, but the Guideline team was helpful in pointing me in the right direction.

Incentivized

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

Only Paylocity has comparable technology but costs way more. The customer support at all 3 of these companies is a nightmare. This isn't news to anyone who has been in business for a while. If you're a broker, ADP and Paychex are going to try and steal your clients every day.

We went with Guideline as it was more affordable than alternatives. I believe this ended up being a terrible mistake. Invest in a stronger 401k partner. Human Interest was the other provider we were considering. I don't know if closing an account would have been as complicated with other providers, but I certainly know the support would have been better and more transparent with a provider like Human Interest

Incentivized

• The price has been great. It was much cheaper than the other company we used (starts with an A).
• The onboarding has been a big time-saver. Positive ROI for that!
• Having a separate login for my CPA firm has been another big time-saver! The other company we used didn't offer that.

Incentivized

• Allow small employees to enhance benefit package
• Great recruitment tool for new employees
• Connection with payroll vendor allowed for less manual work

Incentivized