Justworks offers a platform for payroll, benefits, compliance support, with HR tools. As a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), Justworks offers PEO solutions that can bundle payroll, compliance, HR, and benefits under the Justworks umbrella, and help to administer employment-related responsibilities on the user's behalf. With Justworks' group buying power, customers can get access to PEO health insurance and other perks at more affordable rates. The vendor states that as a…
$59
per month per user
Optimum Solutions HRIS (discontinued)
Score 9.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Optimum Solutions, Inc. was a software development company providing Payroll, Human Resources, and Time & Attendance software for both the IBM iSeries (AS/400) and Microsoft Windows platforms or in the cloud. In October 2019 they were acquired by Kronos, Inc (now UKG after merging with Ultimate Software). Former Optimum products are now supported by Kronos / UKG, and are no longer sold available for sale.
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)
Optimum Solutions works very well for all our payroll needs. We run payrolls weekly, semi-monthly, monthly and yearly. The end of year process is lined out very well and webinars are available to go over any new regulations required. We haven't utilized the HR part of the software as much on the iSeries but are planning on changing that once we get converted to the Windows version later this year. The main reason for this is the HR part of the software on the iSeries is separate from payroll.
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.
The setup of Optimum HRIS was intense as the software comes as a basic shell and everything is personalized to our organization. All earnings codes, leave time, employee types, job codes, taxes, etc. are set up for each company. While this was almost overwhelming at the beginning, we have so much control over the set up and better grasp of the inner workings of the system.
Tax updates come quickly and are easily applied. This is especially welcome at year end.
The built-in reporting is robust and offers a lot of options, but the ability to dig in to the database using SQL and Excel allows for very powerful reports that are infinitely personalized.
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.
When exporting reports to Excel I found the formatting to be difficult to work with and having to reformat the reports can be a nightmare. My company's IT department created its own business tools to make the reporting format more user friendly.
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.
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.
We evaluated some payroll services but found the ongoing cost greater than the initial cost of purchasing our own software and keeping the payroll process in house. Other payroll software was generally more expensive and we are satisfied with Optimum Solutions. I would say the main reason we stayed with Optimum Solutions, converting from their iSeries version to their Windows version, was because of their outstanding staff and support.
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.
