My Ascentis Review
Updated December 23, 2020

My Ascentis Review

Christina Miyamoto, PHR® | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Ascentis

Ascentis is used throughout our entire organization, as our timekeeping, LMS, and HRIS system.
  • Electronic EE filing system
  • Functionality
  • Support is always self directed to Ascentis Community
  • Constant outages and no accountability across the board
  • Not able to keep up with CA compliance in terms of meal-break penalties and final pay requirements.
  • Ad Hoc Reporting feature is extremely antiquated
  • Payroll consulting, should add this
  • Negative ROI
  • Terribly inefficient
ADP is mostly likely the status quo for HRIS systems, their CS and 24/7 support is incomparable to other systems, including Ascentis. There are often manual corrections needed, negative changes to user view, and other very odd things that happen with Ascentis that I have never, ever experiencing with other HRIS systems
All reasons listed above. The payroll “account manager” they assign you with, is truly just a sales person trying to sell you on more features and/or LMS items.

Do you think Ascentis (discontinued) delivers good value for the price?

No

Are you happy with Ascentis (discontinued)'s feature set?

No

Did Ascentis (discontinued) live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Ascentis (discontinued) go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Ascentis (discontinued) again?

No

Usability is an interesting way to describe this rating. The true usability factors in time spent troubleshooting, exchanging many frustrating/unhelpful messages with Support, unintended consequences when errors are reported and Support claims "it has been corrected", but in reality, the fix/workaround has negatively affected something else in the system that we only discover later on.
Ascentis is well suited if you are located in a state where labor laws are relaxed and lean towards favoring the employer. Ascentis struggles in accountability, infrastructure (support tickets are disseminated into secondary and third tickets), 2/10 chance in getting a live person on the phone when you call support.

Ascentis (discontinued) Feature Ratings

Employee demographic data
2
Employment history
1
Job profiles and administration
Not Rated
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.
7
Organizational charting
7
Organization and location management
Not Rated
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)
Not Rated
Pay calculation
8
Support for external payroll vendors
Not Rated
Off-cycle/On-Demand payment
1
Benefit plan administration
Not Rated
Direct deposit files
8
Salary revision and increment management
Not Rated
Reimbursement management
Not Rated
Approval workflow
Not Rated
Balance details
6
Annual carry-forward and encashment
Not Rated
View and generate pay and benefit information
1
Update personal information
1
View job history
Not Rated
View company policy documentation
Not Rated
Employee recognition
Not Rated
Tracking of all physical assets
1
Report builder
1
Pre-built reports
1
Ability to combine HR data with external data
Not Rated
Performance plans
1
Performance improvement plans
Not Rated
Review status tracking
Not Rated
Review reminders
Not Rated
Multiple review frequency
Not Rated
Create succession plans/pools
Not Rated
Candidate ranking
Not Rated
Candidate search
1
Candidate development
Not Rated
New hire portal
3
Manager tracking tools
2
Corporate goal setting
3
Individual goal setting
3
Line-of sight-visibility
Not Rated
Performance tracking
Not Rated
Job Requisition Management
4
Company Website Posting
5
Publish to Social Media
Not Rated
Job Search Site Posting
4
Duplicate Candidate Prevention
Not Rated
Applicant Tracking
4
Notifications and Alerts
Not Rated

Using Ascentis

150 - All departments
2 - HR or Payroll access, Admin access to NovaTime
  • Timekeeper
  • HRIS
  • LMS
  • Payroll
  • Benefits Management
  • Benefits Management
As our organization continues to organically grow in size and HR needs in terms of CA compliance; I am finding that Ascentis is not set up to be the best fit for such a labor forward state

Evaluating Ascentis and Competitors

Yes - ADP Workforce, cost effective. What we spend now in manual man power probably supersedes any cost savings though.
Read other user reviews, more thorough demo with Sales person, asking to see FAQ of most commonly reported issues with other clients.

Ascentis Support

ProsCons
None
Slow Resolution
Poor followup
Problems left unsolved
Not kept informed
Escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Need to explain problems multiple times
Support doesn't seem to care
Slow Initial Response
Yes - No, it was not. Usually, and by that I mean 8/10, whenever we have system wide outages, we send in a support ticket. Support doesn't respond to the ticket until about 24 hours later, stating "they are unsure of any reported outages, and that we should check our internet settings", and by that time, without rhyme, reason, or accountability, the system is working again.

Using Ascentis

ProsCons
None
Do not like to use
Unnecessarily complex
Difficult to use
Requires technical support
Not well integrated
Inconsistent
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
Lots to learn
  • Payroll
  • Benefits Management
  • ESS

Ascentis Reliability

Large acquisition would be very complicated, seems more appropriate for companies under 100
Constant system outages, constant errors, internal errors on ESS, random/mysterious ESS layout changes (links disappearing, verbiage on links changing, with no notice), errors on NovaTme with rule builders also mysteriously changing with no notice, accruals not properly loading for employees.