Brightly SmartGov™ vs. Paycor

Paycor is well suited for an organization with a strong implementation team or who has the budget to hire a consultant to implement Paycor. Once the system is implemented, Paycor is great. If you are a smaller organization, we suggest starting with just 1-2 modules and working your way up from there as setting up everything takes time and resources

Incentivized

• Open enrollment-their software is user friendly and has good features for end users and administrators
• Onboarding-entering new hires is easy
• Mass Template Upload-you can easily upload mass changes, the system is easy to use.
• Reporting-their reporting tool is improving and AI is incorporated into it.

Incentivized

• The reporting capabilities of Paycor Recruiting are lacking. While there are some great features I would like to see more options for customization. The options to build my own report from SCRATCH with whatever fields I want/need would be a huge improvement. At this time, I have to finagle the reports to try and get what I need and often times I have to pull multiple reports and then do extra work outside of the system to end up with metrics close to what I’m looking for in the data.
• The candidates search feature could use some improvement. In theory, the tagging system is a great idea but it leaves room for inconsistency and trying to search for a previous candidate who interviewed well isn’t always easy. This makes it harder to re-engage with people who could be a strong match for a new job opening.
• Although the platform is very user friendly as far as ease of use and intuitiveness it can be VERY slow at times. There are days where the system moves at a snails pace and when there are multiple clicks to have to get to a specific spot in the system this can be very frustrating. This is especially try for navigating through job postings and candidate details.

Price point is the biggest driving factor. Paycor has made some strides in the customer service area and we've seen enough improvements that renewing our contract has become more a reality than a pipe dream. The system functions well and our employees are familiar with how it works, so to make a change would be a huge lift for our team

Incentivized

Glitches. So many glitches. The customer service number provides basic troubleshooting, which doesn’t help; some issues take weeks to resolve, with no apparent reason why they occur. The system does not work on Safari. We have dealt with Payroll not working, which has caused a manual payroll to be run. Paycor representatives do not provide any assistance.

Incentivized

I feel like Paycor is always up and running! If they are planning downtime, they communicate it clearly. Every once in a while, I get something that says the system isn't working but it is usually back up within the hour. I typically find by the time that the employees complain about it, that it is resolved within the system.

Incentivized

For the most part, everything moves super fast. There are a few sections (Expense Management) that sometimes take a bit to load correctly. Or if they are interesting, it takes a minute to talk to each other! But reports are quickly downloaded and available! Even data heavy reports run fairly fast!

Incentivized

I feel like support will transfer you back and forth between departments and put you on hold forever. I believe it is very difficult to see the status of an open ticket. During my experience, it feels like the client has to push all communication and request updates from support regularly.

Incentivized

The training was helpful and covered the basic functionality of the system, but it did not stand out as exceptional. The presenter was knowledgeable and answered questions appropriately, but much of the content felt focused on standard product features rather than our specific business processes and use cases. I would have liked to see more hands-on exercises, deeper workflow examples, and practical demonstrations tied to real-world scenarios. Overall, the training was good and provided value, but there is opportunity to make it more engaging, more customized to our organization, and more impactful for long-term user adoption.

Incentivized

The online training was adequate and covered the core functionality of the platform, but it felt similar to many standard software training libraries available today. The content was easy to access and generally well organized, but it lacked the depth, interactivity, and real-world application needed to make it particularly memorable or impactful. I would have liked to see more role-based learning paths, practical business scenarios, hands-on exercises, and guidance tailored to different user groups. Overall, the training met basic expectations and provided useful information, but it did not differentiate itself from typical web-based training programs offered by most HCM providers.

Incentivized

Implementation of any new software is going to be challenging, especially if you are maintaining an existing program concurrently. When it is time for dual-processing (both old and new software) prior to going live, be prepared to be stressed. But trust the process and it will be over soon.

Incentivized

They seemed similar but Paycor was cheaper at the time. However, Paycor has so many fees they tack onto every invoice that may not be the case anymore. The support services supposedly were better at ADP but that was an unknown

Incentivized

I gave it a 10 because we only use it across one organization. However, it has allowed us to break it into multiple departments and layers of management. It is also easy for us to utilize across different locations but still under one master company. They have always provided us support when we decide to change something on an organizational level

Incentivized

• We can process Payroll in a 25% of the time that we previously could.
• Scheduling takes 2 or 3 times as much effort as it did before.
• Onboarding allows employees to do self-service but comes with a lot of questions from team members so it is net the same amount of time at the end of the day.

Incentivized