Basecamp vs. Justworks

Basecamp is a wonderful tool for teams of varying degrees of technical knowledge, teams managing lots of different types of "agifall" and waterfall projects, and teams that are remotely distributed. It's probably less useful for more strictly agile-focused development teams, compared to other more flexible software applications like Jira and Asana.

Incentivized

Justworks is a competitively priced product for small businesses and start-ups and, in my opinion, offers a better product and better customer service than larger PEOs competing in the same small-buisiness space (ex. ADP). I believe Justworks would work well for companies up to 200 employees; after that, I believe a bigger PEO may provide an enterprise solution better suited for a larger company (and their HR reporting needs)

Incentivized

• Task management - It is very easy to add, organize and discuss tasks within Basecamp's interface.
• The "Campfire" function is great for communicating when you just have a quick question for someone on the team.
• Notifications - Basecamp lets you decide how often and about what you'd like to be notified. The ability to respond to messages in Basecamp directly via email saves a lot of time.

Incentivized

• Onboarding employees on their first day. We use Justworks to set up the employee calculate the first payroll, and perform the I9 employment verification. The process is seamless and all can be done electronically and automated which makes it very simple
• Payroll processing. Justworks automatically calculates the payroll earnings, related taxes and withholdings and will automatically withdraw and deposit the funds. This is a seamless experience
• Customer Service. Justworks is incredibly responsive and helpful. HR related issues can be a nightmare but Justworks make it easier and more efficient since they are always on call to answer your questions and make life easier.

Incentivized

• High Learning Curve. It's true that it can be easy to use, but to use well and effectively takes some time to learn. It's recommended to have an agreed-upon system in your team of what tools to use and when.
• Notification Overload. If people aren't careful they could send a notification to everyone when only a couple people were meant to be prompted. And since emails are sent by default, you could have your mailbox overloaded with unnecessary updates. This is where it takes a bit of training in your team to have an agreed-upon system.
• Lack of organization with Archived Projects. I will often need to reference an archived project to make a new one, but there is only a list of archived projects in alphabetical order, with no way to organize by archive date, or even search.

Incentivized

• JustWorks couldn't accurately track our PTO. We use an accrual system that maxes out at 88 hours. We incentivise our employees with additional PTO hours based off of goals met. The JustWorks platform allowed our employees to accrue far more PTO than what was offered. They didn't have a feature that offered a Cap and accrual.
• When using the JustWorks reports for 401K, if not using their integrated 401K provider, the reports give you every employee regardless of whether or not they contribute. This makes it difficult when adding the contributions in separately.
• JustWorks tracks historical data for employees. Whenever there is a salary change made, it keeps track. However, it shows a salary adjustment made on the day they are entered into JustWorks which can be very confusing. We switched from another PEO mid year and it looked like I made salary changes on the beginning date. This made it difficult to differentiate an actual salary adjustment.

Incentivized

When I bring new people onto a project, it's immediately obvious how to use Basecamp. I don't have to worry about teaching them the features or walking them through it, it's just incredibly user-friendly. For this reason, I'll continue to renew my subscription even as new people are brought onto production jobs or the client changes.

It is easy to use, even for clients who have no experience with the platform. It can only get a little cumbersome to ensure that a client can't see certain documents you might want to keep in the Docs & Files folders. And sometimes, getting a client to actually use an unfamiliar platform can be a challenge.

Incentivized

Justworks is a really good platform for payroll and even vendor payments. There are some areas of improvement that Justworks could make in the area of bulk processing, to decrease administrative time as well as reporting. There are no reports we currently use from the Justworks platform as we have not found them useful.

Incentivized

I've never experienced downtime while using Basecamp, or been unable to access it when I needed it. That's not to say they've never had downtime, but I've been lucky enough not to encounter any, and I work odd hours, including late nights when maintenance is often undertaken.

Incentivized

For the many reasons I've given, Basecamp is a very strong program. There are a few features I can imagine that might make it even better, but I don't have a basis for comparison to be able to say that there is definitely a better one out there. I've noticed that Basecamp has evolved a bit from the time I started using it until now, so that makes me think that the producer of this program values it and believes in continuous improvement. If you could use the features offered by Basecamp, I would think you could use it with confidence.

Incentivized

Justworks offers many different options for customer service. You can contact them via email, phone or Slack. They are quick to resolve issues and if your Account Manager is out of office, they have other Managers covering your account who are knowledgable and ready to support. They also have an office in New York, which makes their support even more localized.

Incentivized

Decide the process before implementation - i.e. when it's due 8/9 does that mean 8am, noon, 5pm, 11:59pm? Check your to-do list frequently Set-up templates - just not with the dates (they can be funky)

Pretty good, but [Basecamp] has its drawbacks. Honestly I find the interface non-intuitive and sometimes have trouble figuring out how to change the status of a task. Perhaps it has something to do with the way it was originally set up by the admin, but I'm not sure. I liked Jira's drag and drop obvious functionality, but the project management side of the software was lacking. Smartsheet has excellent project management functionality, but the task management isn't as good.

Incentivized

Justworks is a much simpler platform with better pricing. I remember ADP's cost was tied to a certain percentage of the total payroll, which is not ideal if you have highly compensated employees. Though ADP offered more ancillary benefit options and group employee discounts, we feel Justworks suffices and meets our daily HR needs.

Incentivized

• It has saved me time when having to get the same message out to multiple restaurants
• It has helped us make smarter operational decisions because we can all collaborate on an answer in a shorter amount of time (instead of calling a meeting!!!)
• The calendar function allows us to plot out our marketing agenda for the month and add/change it together as needed. The chef will post his recipe, the managers will cost it out, the social media manager will post pictures on it, and ultimately we will get that information out on an info sheet to the staff by printing the page.

Incentivized

• We're still new to Justworks, but for nearly everyone on our team, this is the dealmaker. Benefits plans are worth more than salaries to the best hires.In fact, part of the process we used to choose Justworks was to send their offering, in advance, to our team to approve of, first.
• Dealmaker for great hires!
• Financial security for their families!
• Compliance management.

Incentivized