Item: Paychex Flex
Rating: 2
Author: Lawrence Czelusta

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is used across the entire organization for payments and healthcare benefits since COVID. I also believe my employers are paying close to $10,000 dollars to provide health insurance to each of us.

Pros and Cons

Clocking in and out flexibility is the main benefit to employees, especially in the time of COVID.
Visibility of time and attendance is a great feature as it makes it easy to see how many hours you have.
Requesting time off on the calendar is simple and easy, you can also make it visible to your coworkers, which prevents phone calls on off days.

Timeliness on payments, I’ve had many times when paychecks have been have been a day or two late. For people that don’t make a lot of money that is not right.
Several times Paychex has forgotten to take out money for health benefits, and sent the direct deposits through anyway, that adds up then they just take it at a later date without notification.
Their health benefits are EXPENSIVE if you have a family! For single working people they are fine, but add a spouse or heaven forbid children and you’re talking $1800 a month... it’s INSANE!! That’s the 2nd cheapest option, the cheapest was $1600 a month.... what is wrong with them?
They are horribly deceptive if you need to change something involving them. They will lie, or make you do all of the research to find out how to change anything. This includes benefits, bank routing numbers, addresses.... literally everything is met with the laziest behavior I have ever encountered.
Their app is incomplete in listing options and details about them, benefits and features. But that’s par for the course, it seems.

Return on Investment

This isn’t really applicable to our industry, as it’s the non profit sector. All issues have been with impact on employees and confusing information for management.

Just for runaround games that they play if you need to call them. Those games are deceptive and unprofessional. They train their help people to redirect, distract and ask questions back, just like scammers in other industries. I also think they run with a barebones staff, if you call multiple times chances are you’ll talk to the same people. Whether or not it’s these people that are the trouble or not, I’m not sure, but they are the only ones I have ever talked to. For the sheer dishonesty displayed, I give them this rating.

Usability

Paychex does give the ability to clock in anywhere, which is wonderful. It gives the ability to track hours, vacation time and who is available. Again wonderful, but it lacks clear information if employees need to know about their benefits or company policy. They fail in to many areas that are basic to earn a full 10, but for clocking in and tracking hours they are fine, but after that they get messy.

Key Insights

Do you think Paychex Flex delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Paychex Flex's feature set?

Yes

Did Paychex Flex live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Paychex Flex go as expected?

Would you buy Paychex Flex again?

Other Software Used

Duo Security, Bloomerang, Apple ARKit

Likelihood to Recommend

It is appropriate for extremely small companies that do not want to offer benefits, such as corner stores. People that have to travel a lot it’s great for, perhaps small tech startups. It’s not good for any company that needs/wants to provide health benefits, it’s not good for any company larger than 10 people, they will mess up payment at some point, I’ve had them at two jobs now and inevitably made mistakes.

Paychex great for the basics, but falls utterly flat with more features added.

Overall Satisfaction with Paychex Flex