Save time and eliminates paper! Gives employees ownership too!
May 04, 2018
Save time and eliminates paper! Gives employees ownership too!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Ascentis HR
We use Ascentis HR for our entire organization of around 50 employees. We use it as our electronic HR file which holds employee elections such as benefits enrollment and waivers, w-4 elections, etc. We also store employee documents such as employment agreements, evaluations, and check-ins, or other documentation that is determined to be added to their file. Employees access their files through the Employee Self-service site which allows them to see pay stubs, request time off, update personal information, etc. Supervisors also have access to certain aspects of their direct reports file, such as approving time off and seeing past performance evaluations. This is also where we house internal documents (e.g. employee handbook, benefits information, etc.) so employees can refer there to find them.
- As an employee, having access to my personnel file at any time is great. If there is an update to be made employees can make it themselves rather than fill out some update form, submit, and wait for it to get updated.
- There is a link between our payroll system and Ascentis HR which almost seamlessly connects the two. If an employee updates their direct deposit information our payroll software knows. As administrators, we have to approve any changes, but the employee initiates. So, when the direct deposit comes back as undelivered due to the wrong account, the only person there is to blame is the employee themselves who put in the wrong information.
- The payroll simulator is a great planning tool. It helps employees to get an idea of what the impact of different changes would have on their net check. Examples include: receiving a raise, changing your retirement election percentages, changing from a traditional 401k to a Roth, changing your exemptions, etc.
- There is a fair amount of learning and set-up when getting the system but once it's set up it's easy to run and maintain.
- For administrators, the Employee Manager application can be a little difficult to use at times. Trying to find where a field is, or what particular field is that needs updated (there are a couple different attachment areas with different purposes, but not initially clear what's what)
- For administrators, the report running functionality is pretty good but it can be a bit clunky, and the export doesn't always come across in a useable format. Sometimes it's is a clunky text file, others in excel CSV file that's hard to format. There are several 'wizard' steps to go through to run reports and lots of options as you walk through the steps. It means you can really customize your report, but it also means that it can take you many many tries and time to get the report you are wanting. The good thing is though you can save your wizard settings if you will be rerunning the report.
- For administrators, we have to access the management functions through a remote desktop. Sometimes that connection is slow or has issues. Also, it adds an added step when trying to upload documents to employee files, download report exports, or you just want to open a web browser to look something up while you are in there (there are very few pages you can navigate to). It would be nice if the application was web-based without opening a remote desktop.
- Makes onboarding new staff much more efficient and simplified - vs paper forms
- Allowed less time to be spent on maintaining HR files and documentation - puts ownership of some of that back to the employees
- Saved on payroll processing time due to the linkage between our payroll provider and Ascentis HR.
When we have issues with the software I am not the one to follow up with support. I have had very limited experience with this so I can not adequately rate this category.