Paycom vs. Paylocity

I have used a lot of different HRIS systems over 23 years in HR. Paycom is by far has the most comprehensive suite of options that is easy to use for end users and administrators. Their support is top notch in the industry, from helping you with setup and implementation to troubleshooting issues. Paycom has dedicated staff for you to reach out to at any time that are knowledgeable and work towards resolutions.

Overall, Paylocity is a good platform and the implementation process was great. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to have all of their HR process and employee data in the same platform. I would not recommend it to those wanting to go deep on the recruiting and onboarding process

• Provides easy-to-use payroll software that is structured to help eliminate human error, allowing me to self-manage payroll with complete accuracy.
• Automatically generates the necessary and easy-to-access reports relating to wages and payroll taxes paid.
• Offers exceptional customer service with dedicated representatives who are very professional, responsive, knowledgeable, and courteous.
• Received thorough personal instruction/training on the use of the online software program.

• Customer Support. While I have not and typically don’t speak with our actual account exec. Going through the support line is easy and I’m usually connected very quickly.
• User experience is simple and easy. Employees are able to navigate through the site with little guidance and it’s very intuitive
• Onboarding is easy to navigate and easily automated.

• I would like to see a extra time given for training to employer and employees before going live for the first payroll process without the pressure of a definitive start date. I was told we would be charged additional fees if we could not start on the date we decided on and then was dropped in the middle of my first payroll run because the client service had a pre arranged appointment with another client. The first payroll run was very chaotic and stressful. Please be sure your client is comfortable and ready before processing. And perhaps plan to spend that first entire Payroll day with them.
• Would like to see more long-term client service assigned to our account. We have had ours change several times within the year and it just feels good knowing your going to call and speak with someone that knows you and/or your business well and can give a better educated answer based on your specific business needs.
• We are having an issue with our 2021 taxes and a discrepancy between what was reported to the IRS and the SS admin. I have supplied all the 941 information from our previous payroll provider that was sent to the IRS. I can not seem to get a real good answer about the discrepancy yet. Hoping this will be resolved soon though. I wish we had open access to speak directly to a tax team member. Everything gets communicated between a client service rep and it is difficult when they do not understand the tax situation.

• Payroll implementation was not planned. This should take plenty of time asking questions and understanding needs. Instead, huge misses created additional work, which four months later is still not complete and still causing issues.
• Mid-payroll functionality is a must. Employees start, leave, have babies, get raises, etc., in the middle of the pay period. This is how a business must operate - especially in an environment where labor shortages are common - and your software needs to handle it.
• Time off accrual and tracking are abysmal. This needs to be streamlined, be easier for employees to use, easier for managers to use and must actually calculate the correct amounts. Currently we have to hand-calculate vacation payouts every time an employee leaves because the system is never up to date (by design, for some reason).
• Your service team cannot help with programming errors and implementation issues. Our implementation team is now ghosting us, so we have no useful support. Requests for help correcting errors seemingly go into a black hole.

We've made the mistake of moving away from Paycom to a PEO which had made a lot of promises, that they could not keep. Less than a year after that transition, we returned to Paycom and are happier than ever.

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.

The system is very user friendly. Once you navigate where your information is stored under the forms you are golden. While the training amplified my capabilities and knowledge, I could have jumped into the system without and training and managed just fine. This probably one of my favorite parts about Paycom!

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.

They are very dependable and I have never experience any outages

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.

It is a solid product and was out first payroll software that we have used

It's so manual, not automated or intuitive.

Paycom is the best payroll and HR software I have utilized in my 30 plus years as a CPA working in private industry. I am always confident in the software and my support team. The software is updated on an ongoing basis automatically. Paycom relieves a lot of stress over this vital area of any business.

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.

They were a sales person and not really a good trainer.

All the online training modules were short and straight to the point. Every module teach you how to use the system. If there is one thing they know how to do is training. We did implementation during the pandemic so all had to be done online or via zoom meetings.

They have great training tools!

Not at all satisfied it was a nightmare we spent over 8 months with the implementation team having issues after issues all related to the Puerto Rico regulations (half my employees are in Puerto Rico) and at the end we were moved over from the implementation team to the production team without all the issues being resolved

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.

Paycom blows both Heartland and ADP away. No comparison. I had nothing but issues with the others and no issues to speak of with Paycom. I will recommend Paycom to anyone looking for a truly all-in-one provider.

Our experience with APD was a mass of platforms that did not communicate with each other well, and ADP was much more expensive. There is no comparison between our experience with ADP and Paylocity. Paylocity offers compatibility with exceptional value.

They are not able to meet our current needs

• We no longer have a full-time HR manager. The duties are split between a Controller and another manager-reduced costs-all in an $80,000/year savings.
• Employee self-management of benefits enrollments eliminated manager support for the process. It's completely self-administered by the employee, probably saves 80 hours of administrative work at a minimum and eliminating any chance that management makes an error on the employee's record.

• Paylocity's poor service levels in the development of our PTO policies have INCREASED the time needed to manage the process exponentially and significantly DECREASED HR's credibility in the organization.
• Benefits management is a disaster. We've been working for months on a reimbursement issue with the COBRA team that will result in us changing vendors.
• Payroll processing is efficient and allows for necessary manual adjustments and the need for on-demand payrolls.