ADP WorkForce Now - I Love It!
Updated July 14, 2016
ADP WorkForce Now - I Love It!
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
WorkForce Now 2.01
Modules Used
- Payroll
- Time and Attendance (EZ Labor)
Overall Satisfaction with ADP Workforce Now
We use ADP Workforce Now for the largest sector of our company which totals about 300 employees. We have 6 subsidiaries with 6 different EIN's. We use it for payroll and time and attendance. It allowed our time and attendance to flow easily into the payroll. We still use Business Portal for 2 of our companies, and there is a huge difference in the time to get the time from ADP vs Business Portal. One click with ADP versus a spreadsheet import. Also makes running the payroll very easy and efficient.
- The reporting is very good. It is easy to use, and the Excel output is formatted nicely - with bold headers, and columns and rows that are formatted to fit the output. No need to adjust the height or width. There are many canned reports, but the ability to do ad hoc reports is great.
- The Self-Service portal that allows employees to make changes to their W-4's and their direct deposit saves time for payroll and HR. The option to approve or just notify HR and/or Payroll is a nice option as well.
- The fact that managers can see their employees PTO balances is a plus - employees can see their own balances as well.
- Managers have the ability to run time & attendance reports such as when an employee is approaching overtime as well as the ability to see the real-time entries of their employees.
- I hear of people who have issues with ADP's customer service, but I am not one. I get excellent service 99% of the time. Of course there are times when i have to call back to have them fix a mistake, but the majority of my experiences are of excellent customer service. We have a dedicated team for customer service, so I speak to the same group of people all the time. I have a profile of their experience with ADP (provided by ADP), which is great!
- Customizing the portal could be easier. It is difficult to understand the instructions that are there.
- Since the support center was upgraded, it is a little less user friendly, but still has excellent information. Logs you out of the support center too quickly.
- The tech support for EZlabor and the portal administration is shaky. ADP needs to seriously look at this issue because I can call twice in the same day and get totally different information for the same issue, but the issue is not fixed. This is for tech support, not to be confused with the payroll customer service - they are excellent.
- Does not work well at all with Internet Explorer, but it does work well with Google Chrome.
- It has reduced the time for me to process the payroll by half.
- Reporting and any post audits can be done easily and early enough to catch any errors before the pay day which is definitely good for employee morale.
- The ability for employees to make some changes to their payroll is a great time saver for Payroll and HR as well as for the employee.
- Having all of our subs on ADP makes training the employee on the self service portal more efficient.
Microsoft Dynamics SL is the latest payroll system I used, and it was an absolute NIGHTMARE! We moved our companies out of SL into ADP in Sept of 2013, and the stress level dropped by 100 points! Microsoft SL is very inflexible and unforgiving, so not good for payroll at all. It is not user friendly for the administrator or the employee. I have used various in-house payroll systems - at least 3 with different employers. I prefer ADP.
ADP Workforce Now Feature Ratings
Using ADP Workforce Now
Accounting, Payroll,Time and Attendance are the ones that we use. The services offered for payroll work well for our company. We use the tax services and the wage garnishment service. These two alone are priceless. We were using an in-house system (Microsoft Dynamics SL) for payroll, and had to file all of our taxes and process and submit to A/P any garnishments. Those two processes are very important, and with one person doing the payroll, taxation and garnishments, it was very stressful and time consuming. The Reporting tool is great for employee and management reports.
3 - Basic HRIS skills are needed to get the best use out of WFN, but they are easily learned. Customer Service skills to support employees who may have issues or questions are needed. The Payroll Department (1 person) is the administrator of WFN. The 2 HR employees import HR information into Work Force Now. They also have the ability to reset passwords.
- Efficient Payroll processing
- Reporting for management
- Tax Service
- Garnishment Service
- Time and Attendance
- Employee Self Service
- Linking to our HR self service from the portal.
- Ability for employees to access PTO balances while entering time
- Recurring Schedules in Time and Attendance
- Accessing tax reports such as the 941 and Statements of Deposit to the various agencies
- Online Stop payments and direct deposit cancellations
- GL interface
- Using the portal to put out company announcements. We don't use the complete functionality of the portal.
Evaluating ADP Workforce and Competitors
Yes - Microsoft Dynamics SL Payroll Module is the system that we were using for some of our payrolls. Solomon is very inflexible, and not agile at all. We have 6 companies with 6 different EIN's and thy all have different things going on. Our payroll is not a "one size fits all", so Solomon was definitely not the answer. The reporting is also very bad in SL. We already had companies in ADP WFN, so we migrated the remaining 3 to ADP. It was the best thing we could have done. Payroll runs much smoother, there is less stress, and a much more accurate payroll. The time involved in processing payroll was reduced dramatically when we switched to ADP WFN.
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
- Existing Relationship with the Vendor
- Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
The product usability was key both for the administrator and the employee. The self service feature alone was a big selling point. My experience and relationship with ADP was also instrumental in our decision as well as the reporting feature. The service that I received in the past was enough for me to want to continue the relationship with a vendor that I knew and could trust. So far, it is working out very well.
We had a very quick turn around, so we were not able to really evaluate any comparable vendors.
ADP Workforce Implementation
- Vendor implemented
Yes - The first step was a general overview of expectations. Then I sent a series of reports such as the Master Control and the Hours and Earnings Report for ADP to load into the system. We had many discussions about earnings codes, calculations, PTO and the like to make sure that everything was imported accurately. Lots of long phone calls, and emails. I interacted with the implementation specialist, and then the tax specialist to make sure that all the states and locales were imported correctly. We implemented in the middle of the year, so ADP also balanced the taxes which was great. I had been doing them, so it was great to have a tax specialist look at them before and verify them before moving forward with the tax implementation. They ran a master control report so that i could verify the information that came over. All in all, it went fairly smoothly. We had 3 different implementations. the first one went the smoothest, but there were a few issues with the second one because we were dealing with a lot more employees and states to move.
Change management was a minor issue with the implementation - When implementing a new system, make sure employees and managers are well trained on all aspects of the new system, and that they understand the advantages to the system. We also needed to give ourselves more time do the implementation, but decisions at the top were made quickly, and we wanted to move before quarter end.
- Not enough lead time for the implementation, so unable to double check some of the imports. Even though we moved quickly, there was still enough time to get everything done in an efficient and accurate manner. ADP dropped the ball a lot in that I was not able to reach the Implementation Specialist a lot of the time.
- Implementation Specialist was hard to reach - this became a major issue on the second implementation, but not so much on the first and third ones.
- I think, the issue was that the Specialist had too many clients at once. I found that when I was able to get in touch with her, she was very effective, helpful and knowledgeable.
ADP Workforce Training
ADP Workforce Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes - It is an issue with Internet Explorer. The issue was resolved by using another browser - Google Chrome. No issues at all when using Chrome.
There was a time when I was panicked about finishing a payroll after hours. I sent an email to customer support that night, and the issue was resolved that night. I did a preview that had an error, so it was stuck. This requires a manual correction. I was not expecting a result that night, but lo and behold, the issue was fixed, and I was able to finish the payroll. I still don't know which support member handled the issue, but I was Very Happy!!
Using ADP Workforce
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- Time and Attendance import into payroll
- Running a preview
- Running ad hoc reports
- Customizing the portal to our company particulars
- Mobile app - I need to get more info on this one, but it is not as easy as downloading the app for all of the functions that are supposed to be available,
- Not being able to import position and title information if you don't have the HR module. You have to manually enter job titles/positions. You should absolutely be able to import this information with or without the HR module.
Yes - I can see my check stub and my PTO balance, but I am not able to make changes to my time sheet. That could be user error though.