Item: UKG Ready
Rating: 8
Author: Sarah Eigel, SPHR

Support Rating

The Kronos support staff is great! They are all very knowledgeable, are thorough when explaining or showing me how to fix something and very friendly to speak with over the phone. The only reason I didn't give it a 10 was because there are times when I just want to pick up the phone and ask a quick question but I have to start a case instead. The online help has been very useful because a lot of times I can find the answer to my question on my own.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We are using Kronos Workforce Ready across our whole organization. Prior to implementing the software, we had no HRIS system, were using a $400 per year software for payroll and processing weekly spreadsheets for our time entries. I was hired to start the HR department and my first task was to implement an HRIS system to encompass payroll, HR, ACA and time keeping.

We have 10 locations across the US and all 10 locations are using the system. We have eliminated a large amount of paper requests and continue to use Kronos for more and more. I am currently implementing the HR side (my last piece) and am extremely excited about using the online forms as opposed to paper forms that get faxed or e-mailed to me.

We are now able to quickly run any report our executives ask for. We can quickly pull attendance data, have automated the birthday and anniversary notifications, we're able to quickly process year-end (including W2 forms and 1095 forms), and much more.
We no longer have to mail out paystubs on a bi-weekly basis, are able to provide our accountant with OT reports, turnover rates, etc.

The employees have really taken to the system and we have employees who don't even own computers. It's easy to use and easy to train employees to use.

Pros and Cons

The notification portion of Kronos is amazing. It completely automates the process of running anniversary and birthday reports and instead you spend a short amount of time (only once) setting up who gets the notifications and what they say and the system then does the rest for you. You can have the notifications sent to a particular person or each employee's managers. I used to have to run monthly reports and figure out who had anniversaries and when they had them and then keep track and manually notify each supervisor. Kronos has taken that and completely automated it.
The reports in Kronos are completely customizable. There are a large number of canned reports but within each of those reports, you have the ability to easily add or remove additional data. You can then save those reports and make them company wide or only for your use. If a manager then runs that report, only the employees who are assigned to that particular manager will show up on the reports.
I have used several other HRIS systems in my career and Kronos' reporting functions are by far the best and easiest to use that I have come across.
The workflow process is great. If you aren't sure how to set up a particular workflow, Kronos support will walk you through it. It's great how you have so many options of what happens during the HR Action or Payroll Action processes. The one we use the most, across the entire organization, is our workflow for vacation requests. Prior to Kronos, we had paper forms that the employee completed, then the manager signed, then they were sent to HR who had to keep track of them and process them during payroll. Now, the employee requests it online, the manager receives and e-mail that the employee requested time off, the manager approves or denies and then the employee receives e-mail notification of the approval or denial. Employees can see their balances which was not the case before we started using Kronos. Everything is automated and doesn't need my attention.

The tax piece of Kronos was the one thing that has made me slightly regret my decision to use Kronos. We have 7 EINs so we have a lot of taxes to file on a quarterly basis. The BSI system we have to use (which is a third party) is terrible. We have had nothing but problems with it. BSI has some agreement with Kronos that doesn't allow us to speak directly with BSI and it's extremely frustrating. We are on our 5th quarter of filing using the BSI system and are still having issues. This is not much of an automated process and the BSI system seems so far behind Kronos' technology. It's not user-friendly and has definitely caused a lot of issues. If there was one thing I would change about Kronos it would be the tax filing portion. Maybe if we didn't have to use BSI it would be different. The systems I have used in the past have processed our quarterly taxes for us so this was a big change for me.
I do not like that the system allows employees to request vacation time that they may not have available. Employees can request time off even if they don't have any vacation available and if their supervisor approves it, it populates in their timecard. I have caught several employees with negative vacation balances in the system. I think it should not allow them to request this time off if they don't have a current balance in the system.
When you terminate an employee, their benefits don't automatically terminate. You have to go into each active benefit and put the termination date in or your reports won't be correct. This should be something that automatically occurs once you terminate that employee.

Return on Investment

The step by step process when running payroll has caught a lot of timecard errors that previously would not have been caught had we been doing it manually.
By implementing Kronos, we save an average of $51,000 per year, both monetary and non-monetary. The time saved with the automated GL imports, payroll processing, paper forms, reporting abilities, etc., is huge.
We use an old school AS400 system for timekeeping, inventory, job costing and more and my CEO was adamant that we continue to use this system. Kronos was able to create a template for automatic import of time punches from our system into their system. This allowed us to continue to use the system we have been using for 35 years but also implement the Kronos system to all employees.

Alternatives Considered

ADP and Paylocity

One of my main concerns was having the ability to continue to use our current AS400 system for job costing and timekeeping and not having our employees have to punch on 2 different systems. Kronos was able to import time directly from our system to their system, without me having to do anything. Paylocity also allowed for this but they used a third party so it wasn't in-house. Kronos was also able to create custom GL reports that were exactly the format our system needed in order to automatically import the GL reports each pay period. Prior to that, we were manually entering this information.
I have used both ADP and Paylocity in the past and do not like the reporting portion of ADP. It is very difficult to create a report. Paylocity has more canned reports than Kronos but it's also difficult to create your own report. Kronos has an awesome reporting system.

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability

This was a huge change for our organization. We do not have employees who sit in front of computers on a daily basis and a lot of them have very little computer experience. Kronos is user friendly and I knew my managers would pick it up quickly. Plus, Kronos offered all for aspects of an HRIS system (including the ACA piece) which was huge for me.

Likelihood to Recommend

We have a large population of employees who don't have access to a computer during the day (and some who don't own one at home). The phone app is great! They can see their paystubs, request vacation, look at their benefits, etc., all on their phones. This is a great feature.
Kronos is very easy to customize which is helpful because every employee and manager has different preferences on what is on their home page, how they use the system, what they want to see in the system and what they don't want to see.
I think it would be very wise of Kronos to find a new partner in regards to taxes. BSI is no where near the kind of company or has the kind of system that Kronos provides. I have been so frustrated at times with BSI that I have thought about switching the entire HRIS system to someone else so I don't have to deal with BSI. The partnership makes Kronos look bad.

Kronos was a gem of a find for me and my company!

Overall Satisfaction with Kronos Workforce Ready