Likelihood to Recommend I believe the ideal scenario is when you are already using the Intuit family of products and the payroll bolts on to your existing QuickBooks infrastructure. Payroll software products have been around a long time, and this is a very competitive niche. Most of the companies do a good job of filing taxes promptly, reporting W-2 items properly, providing good reports, etc. Where you might really get some extra efficiency and benefit is the fact that the payroll is woven into the accounting system, creating one seamless enterprise solution. Also, where it might be less appropriate is in a really simple use case such as a one person company where there aren't complex fringe benefits to deal with. In that scenario, you can set up the ACH debits directly with the state agency and the IRS and possibly file your own 941, 940, W-2/W-3 and state equivalent forms. Of course, if you're willing to do this and are good with details, you can save yourself some money.
Read full review TriNet is perfect for a smaller business or nonprofits that can't get competitive rates for health care. I can't really speak to larger businesses as I don't have comparison data, but even when we used a PEO in the past, we still were paying high rates. The savings were almost enough to offset the cost of having a PEO vs just a
Payroll service, but our employees appreciate the personal savings as well, as we were able to cover a larger portion of the cost due to the price difference. Specifically, our rates for most of our employees were cut in about half
Read full review Pros Integration with QuickBooks Desktop. This is the key strength of IP... it is a complete, native integration and let's you maintain all employee records and time keeping in QuickBooks Job Costing. Another key differentiation -- some payroll outsources say they do true job costing (by work or item code). Don't believe them. If its' not integrated with your accounting system, you will not get "TRUE" job costing. You can get costs ASSIGNED to jobs (which may be fine), but you won't get item level detail in QuickBooks from anyone but Intuit. Variety of Payment options. Use Direct Deposit or manual checks... or whatever you want. Since its in QB, you can make payments any way you want. Cash Flow. This is both good and bad, but IP will not take taxes out of your bank account until they are due. That's different than some other providers that want assurance that you have the tax payments available at the moment you push "SUBMIT." Read full review Extensive variety of benefit program plan designs and partners. Something for everyone. One stop shopping for all health and wellness benefits. Continue to add new offerings, such as access to Salary.com at a discount and access to Carta at a discount to manage employee stock programs. On top of compliance by state. Read full review Cons My biggest issue is that they do continue to raise their prices on a regular basis and it makes people feel stuck when there are so many clients already using the system. They do not support roaming employees, so employees that cross over into various tax jurisdictions in one pay period pose a challenge for calculating taxes and pay. The setup can be a bit daunting still if you are not familiar with the system or the various taxes and requirements for reporting. Read full review a better ATS - the current functionality is very limited. For an organization our size we more "power". I like to be able to run custom reports from the ATS as an example Reporting - there's a stack of standard reports but we need and want custom stop changing the layout. We don't care about the layout its the content that matters. get rid of the turtles or hippos or whatever they are Manager access. Let us give managers access to their employees info without having access to EVERYONE Be honest. If you cant do something, you cant do it. Let us know so we can make other plans and move on "I'll put a ticket in" = this is where your dreams go to fade away. See above Read full review Likelihood to Renew Works perfectly as advertised. Our simple needs are well taken care of.
Read full review This is one stop shopping perse. They provide tools for Benefits and 401k. There reports are easy to read and the support given from Trinet support is awesome. Having everything in one place is best then having multiple places for things. Why change if things are working well? All the information is all there when needed.
Read full review Usability I would rate it a 0. It gets worse and worse all the time. It seems like every time I go into IOP to run a payroll for one of my clients, I have one more problem.
Read full review There is just so much information in the system and sometimes it is attached to other systems in a way that it's hard to know where to find things and a TriNet rep needs to walk you through finding it. Using chat they tend to copy and paste huge strings of instructions into the chat which is challenging to test while scrolling through all that text
Read full review Reliability and Availability They used to be really good at this when I had a dedicated person. Now that it's a general customer service account, it's really gone downhill and I don't get responses at all sometimes
Read full review Performance Pages load at a speed that isn't too fast or too slow. I never have to wait long, but it's not instantaneous
Read full review Support Rating The customer support personnel have always walked me through the steps they need to take to assist me. Never rushed through anything. Always exceptionally thorough, answering all my questions and even sharing my screen visually (I have control, not them). It actually helps me to resolve future issues and questions, if they should arise.
Paula Byrd IRS Registered e-File Provider / Tax Preparer & Consultant
Read full review I like TriNet's multi-layered support. We have dedicated support for payroll and platform, HR, and benefits. We also have an account manager we can contact when we need to escalate an issue or get additional help. The 24/7 chat support is also outstanding for smaller routine issues. All support at TriNet has been extremely responsive. We sometimes have complicated issues like restricted stock vesting, 83(b) elections and other matters and our dedicated support team always helps us do things correctly and on time.
Read full review In-Person Training it's been awhile, but I recall them being helpful. I got through a lot of it and when I needed help, they can walk me through it over the phone. It's also pretty user friendly in general at a platform. I don't really know what else to type, but they came and helped me in person and also when there was something new, they came and talked to me. They have not done that since with the new model that I hate
Read full review Online Training Since this was already implemented. I have another employee briefly train me. Then Trinet rep gave me some training as needed for things that came up. For one payroll preview report I figured it could be done, but I had asked the rep to be sure. One important training was when there was an employee leaving the company.
Read full review Implementation Rating not applicable as I implementation was done 5 years ago and have no recollection of the details of the process. Above it says to skip question if not involved in the process but it will not allow me to skip it as it states explanation requitred thus making this process extremely frustrating.
Read full review Alternatives Considered It's a payroll software with decent customer support readily available and direct integration with my accounting tools. This made it a prime fit for me, and made payment and tax reporting relatively simple, and errors readily correctable. It does not have time tracking, and I still believe that this software is overpriced, but it's the best fit for me right now.
Read full review TriNet worked with our smaller employee headcount and offered coverage for both the US and Canada. And we switched from Insperity because of the cost savings which were significant. I liked Insperity but TriNet has been an excellent firm to work with as well.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model I was not part of the process
Read full review Scalability Cause it can be used as mentioned for sites and departments. Or even if employees work out of state and not at the HQ the the employer. Trinet makes is easy to do for payroll in other states as well.
Read full review Professional Services Not sure it was used or not as the implementation was completed before I started working for the company
Read full review Return on Investment Positive: Less of a learning curve to train payroll accountants, as they are already familiar with using Intuit. Also, in general there are a larger pool of candidates who know this system than many of the other "niche" lesser known payroll products. Positive: More options to choose from depending on the level of service needed. For example, there is a Full Service offering if needed. This might apply to an organization that doesn't have the resources available or an internal person who has the time/bandwidth to handle the entire company's payroll. Thus, it is possible to cherry pick the level of service needed depending on the type of company/situation. Positive: Good audit trail. This can be extremely important and cost efficient when a business is going through an external audit by an outside CPA firm and the payroll accounting function is undergoing testing (ie. less time required by the external auditor would likely lower their bill for their services). Read full review I mainly used the ATS and I had to do a lot of extra work than other ATS's I have used in the past. When hiring a candidate, transferring the information from the ATS to the HRIS is nil, there is a lot you have to manually put in, which can be very frustrating. I like the way how I can upload a candidates resume seamlessly. Read full review ScreenShots