Item: ADP Workforce Now
Rating: 4
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Specifically only the payroll and HR departments use it. We do give reports out of ADP to others within the company to help with their jobs as well. It is a payroll engine that allows us to pay our employees on a mass scale. When working correctly, it should allow us (payroll) to do our jobs efficiently. This includes General Ledger balancing, paying employees, auto-deducting garnishments, etc.

Pros and Cons

I love that ADP WFN allows you to compare past payrolls with current payrolls. It helps a lot to know that we are on track for about what's "normal" between payrolls.
Their customer support can be really good at times. Sometimes our representative isn't available and we will have to call in and I always worry getting someone random means my problem won't be addressed appropriately but I'm wrong every time. Usually, they even teach me a little tidbit I didn't know about the system as well.

Building reports in ADP is actually way more difficult than originally thought. Like I stated, it's a great idea. However the execution can get messy. I usually have to mess around with a report a lot and try to pull different fields before I get "the one" I was truly wanting. There are fields that are named the same but are found in different areas of ADP that don't always seem to work the same as each other.
As an example of other issues, if I try to pull data like all earnings and hours for a pay period, it works unless I have also posted an additional calendar in the same pay period. It will not pull data from my "main" regularly scheduled calendar so data is missing. This is one example, but there seem to be many quirks of the ADP reporting.
I believe if there was some sort of "advanced" teaching that could be done on the subject I'd be very happy to take it. There is a learning center but all of the tutorials are for the most basic things which are honestly pretty easy to figure out. I know there is a lot of functionality within ADP and it would be nice to know what every little thing is.
For a company like mine, Auto Pays are not an option with ADP. We do not use earnings codes like "regular" or "OT" because so many of our employees fall into special categories like being salaried but exempt from FLSA or salaried and nonexempt. As a result, because ADP doesn't allow you to set up Auto Pays for an earnings code of your choice, it's just not an option at all. Meaning even for folks who get paid salary, we have to hand import them. This also means that we get errors every pay period stating that "auto pays have been canceled" even though we've never had the option to use them in the first place.
Because we have weekly and biweekly folks in the same company code, we run into a lot of strange issues. Every weekly payroll, I get errors on my "Unused Deduction" report because the checking account deduction codes are not being used for my biweekly folks. Obviously, because they are not being paid that week. I just have to sift through the errors to try and find the relevant information I would need to look for.

Return on Investment

Unfortunately I do not have enough information to answer this sufficiently.

Scalability

If by scalability you mean the size of the companies that WFN supports, then I think this is really where the trouble starts. I worry a majority of our problems come because we are bigger AND we have so many special rules. Although we are about five companies, we have individual plants with their own rules/earnings codes/incentive programs/etc. and this is where I feel a majority of our problems come from. We just don't have the flexibility needed with WFN. Maybe if we were smaller we wouldn't have to struggle so much to fit with WFN.

Systems Integrated With

We used to have our own time clocks and getting the times to integrate with ADP meant a LOT of manual manipulation. It took a lot of time each week.
Currently working towards using ADP time clocks.

The depth of integration of the time clocks with all of our rules and issues is a lot to handle. ADP says it takes 6 to 8 weeks to integrate but I would not be surprised if it takes double that time. The sheer amount of HR managers that have to be involved is really what's holding us up, I believe. Again, I just worry we are too big with too many special rules.

Alternatives Considered

Vibe HCM

At least with Vibe, we had been with them long enough to know all of the tricks/quirks of the system. At this point, I'm inclined to believe that no payroll provider is perfect and that's just the way it is. However I am not enjoying having to re-learn new problems and workarounds. I did not pick ADP WFN, but I am hoping that things get easier as time goes on.

Likelihood to Recommend

I truly feel there are a lot of tools at ADP WFN's disposal. I really wish I had more training on the system because I know there is a lot of functionality there. Unfortunately a lot of the things that can be done are just not as intuitive as I would hope. I think the main reason I wouldn't recommend ADP WFN is because of how hard our implementation has been. I feel if there is a roadblock that can be hit, we've hit it and continually do so. We are new and have only been with ADP for 4 months, so I am hoping as time goes on and I get used to the quirks I won't feel as badly as I do. But it also feels a little disappointing that I can be 4 months in and still not feel entirely comfortable with their system yet.

Great Ideas/Not So Great Execution

Overall Satisfaction with ADP Workforce Now