BambooHR vs Paylocity

Overall BambooHr has excelled in satisfying our needs. It performs well as a one-stop-shop for HR challenges. It has benefitted us as an excellent repository for personnel information both in processing prospective and new hires, as well as existing employees. It provides a fairly simple, but [the] straightforward system for managing and using time off. Some areas do need some work, however. There is no ability to set up a default set of time-off types/accruals for a new hire, which means this has to be done manually for each new employee. This creates a lot of opportunities for human error. It also has a very opaque and unhelpful API when it comes to the management of the time data; Whereas the rest of the API is exceptional. Lastly, the ability to request time off only allows for a flat number of hours in a day; it doesn't allow the employee to request specific times. As a result, we rely on the employee and manager to communicate the time successfully in the notes field. There is a big difference between arriving 1 hour late, leaving 1 hour early, and stepping out for an extended lunch.

Overall good product.. just takes a lot of clicks to get something done... 3 approvals for recruiting and sending a job offer. If we approve, another level approves, and yet it doesn't send until we go back again to click again to send the job offer.

• BambooHR has a top-notch electronic onboarding process. It is fully customizable and works very well with applicants of all technological capabilities. Onboarding allows you to add every step the new employee and the business partners must complete through timed, dated, notifications, digital documents, e-signatures, and a back-end administrative ability to follow up.
• BambooHR has good applicant tracking system. They currently integrate with indeed and ZipRecruiter. However, it is easy to create links for other platforms with the ability to distinguish where you are getting recruiting traction. In addition the ability to rate, and communicate about an applicant is confidential between the hiring managers and HR. Also, there is an easy way to create a candidate pool of eligible candidates for later passive recruiting, that is called Talent Pools.
• BambooHR has a unique feature called Announcements. This function allows various announcements to go out via email, through the application, or a combination of both to directed target audiences or the entire company.
• BambooHR also sends out announcements (customizable) on every new hire. This allows folks to see who is starting and learn a bit about them before they meet them.
• BambooHR has a great function for tracking time by the task or job. This is great for tracking productivity gaps for administrative positions or job costing for positions that have billable hours.
• BambooHR also has easy to organize digital documents. You can easily upload documents via drop and drag. Documents can be added to folders and then downloaded later if an employee terminates.
• Goal in performance management are very good, they follow the SMART methodology but there is no way to attach them to a performance review. They do allow the employee to adjust using a slide bar and you can attach people to a goal. In addition it notifies the supervisor but you cannot shut off notifications.

• Integration between modules, so information entered in one place imports into the other modules. The employee & employer don't have to enter duplicate information.
• Company Administrators can override approvals where needed - if a supervisor can't get to something, we're not stuck!
• Tech-first support team constantly welcomes suggestions of things that can be built out on the back end to enhance system capabilities.

• Some edge cases aren't as fleshed out. For example, asset inventory management isn't something BambooHR can really excel at currently.
• Something akin to Google Forms but with the privacy protections of being already in the HRIS would be great for collecting anonymized responses.

• Reporting is okay. It gets you all the information you need, but it's sometimes difficult to navigate their report writing to get exactly what you need and only that.
• Communication of changes could be improved. Sometimes updates are made but aren't communicated to the company admins.

We have tried other software in the last year and have not found it to be comparable to Bamboo HR especially in relation to the HR functionalities such as workflows, onboarding, automation, user-friendly experience, innovation, timekeeping, and ability to integrate with other 3rd party Payroll processing software. In addition, the employee ease of access and navigation of the platform makes this software crucial within our current culture of multi-site and remote work environments.

The transition from my old provider to Paylocity was virtually painless. I always felt well supported by my account rep. I would use Paylocity again, but I'm not in a position to change providers at my current company right now.

Does not have many problems and this ensures all of users are able to use it reliably. There is a free demo available to illustrate the accurate usage of the platform and even customer support. All of these help in improving the usability of the platform and ensure that all users are comfortable with the platform.

Although it is fairly easy to use, there are some processes that just don't make munch sense. For example, if an employee has 2 bank accounts and the funds are returned from one account the process to reissue is TEDIOUS and confusing. Unless you want to PAY for Paylocity to do it for you. I think the manual process should be as easy for us.

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.

Solid network - down for upgrades at late hours during the weekend when I am definitely not in the system to use it. Even if I was, they provide excellent advance notice.

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.

It's so manual, not automated or intuitive.

Support is effective and responsive. During our time with BambooHR we did not experience many issues, but initial support on setup was helpful and allowed for a quick turnaround on getting started. Since then, few needs have arisen for contacting support, but I would not hesitate to do so and would recommend BambooHR based on the quality of their support team.

The frustrations I have with Paylocity customer support are what drove me to leave a review in the first place so I can warn anyone considering purchasing this product. I really like the software and it has a lot of great features, but my complete distrust of their customer service has led me to rue the day I chose Paylocity to be our payroll vendor. For one thing, they are often slow to respond. That alone might be manageable, except even when I do get a response, half the time the answers are incomplete/not helpful, if not completely incorrect! Imagine waiting 90 days and paying thousands of dollars for a corrected W2 only for it to come back more incorrect than it was when you started, and not only that but they also made me question my sanity trying to convince me that they were correct when it was BLATANTLY wrong - and that's just one example! Sometimes you might be lucky to get a decent customer service rep using the chat help feature, but most of the time whoever you talk to does not seem to have any more knowledge of the system than you do. I am a patient person and I have a lot of grace for administrative errors (we're all human) but Paylocity customer service is consistently unreliable and sometimes unprofessional to boot. To their credit, the sales and implementation teams do seem really good. It seems like maybe they just can't retain good customer service reps. We've been through several account managers without ever having a good experience.

The online training team is great. Theis is so well done! very user friendly, very nice to go through. Then you get all those exemples and questions to test you and make sure you understand the training as we go along. This is a great asset from the tool, I don't think I have ever been left without understanding because there is help and additional resources to understand or extra windows that explain terms or answer Q&A.

very knowledgeable presenters for their webinars and very user friendly; you can learn at your own pace

it was very easy to sign up, quick and we could use the site very quickly as well.

I would make sure you have a dedicated team at Paylocity to complete the implementation. We had staff from Paylocity quit and things were not completed properly. They dropped the ball so to speak on that portion of it. we have encountered multiple issues since then and are still not using the Time off tracking to its full capabilities.

I would say they both have a lot of strengths for sure. Workday manages data on a mass scale a little bit better in my opinion, but Bamboo HR is more user friendly and pleasing to the eyes

Both ADP and Paylocity are good programs. However, the personalized service I get from the Support Team with Paylocity far exceeds my expectations. They are quick to answer my call, always helpful, and patience as I learn the processes associated with the functions that my firm uses.

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.

• There has been an excellent rate of profitability in our work season, especially thanks to the optimization of our operations through BambooHR.
• Currently estimated gains appear to be 500%, which leaves our ROI at 4, demonstrating that the platform has a high return on investment.

• Reduce errors in processing our payroll due to the in-depth reports we are ale able to run to audit.
• Improved employee communication throughout the company with the community platform.
• The compensation tool allows for our managers to have more input on the employee's rate increases versus them manually being keyed by our payroll staff.