Item: Paycom
Rating: 10
Author: Josh King

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I primarily use Paycom for Payroll, Time Management, and Reporting. I also consult with the HR department on everything else. The largest item for my personal role that Paycom is addressing is our complex pay structure. They were able to create a converter that facilitates the payment of the bulk of our employees, a job that was previously done in a massive spreadsheet by a handful of people over the course of multiple days. Now it only takes a few minutes.

Pros and Cons

The reporting is malleable and just what I need most of the time.
The Tax Profile Audit report is an underappreciated gem. It saves me hours of confirming tax information is set up correctly for our employees all over the country.
The ability to import things is fantastic. We save countless hours of manual labor by importing information easily via spreadsheets.

We do not currently use ATS through Paycom, partially because our recruiters enjoy the platform they use now better. I've used it when working at a previous job and it never felt particularly cohesive, even with constant updates.
Position Management is often confusing. It's repetitive, large sections of it aren't applicable for certain industries, and the work done there is also often duplicated as a part of your Labor Allocations. It's also hard to know what things flow over to employee records and how.
The Garnishments module could use a little work. It takes 3+ days for things to be updated sometimes, and the communication with garnishment specialists is often hard to find/manage. It feels a little messier than most of their products. For example, having to "submit an order" and upload something just to send the team a question is a little awkward. Does it work? Sure, but it's slow and looks/feels less professional.
It would be pretty cool if Paycom got into the POS game. So many companies use a Point of sales system, and if the product was worth using, it would solve a lot of people's problems when deciding to do clock-ins with Paycom or their POS.

Return on Investment

We have saved tons of time with the converter for our payroll. No more crazy spreadsheets!
Being able to import pay changes after overall position increases saves a lot of manual effort.
Getting help from the exact person I want, which is supposed to be part of the Paycom luxury, is sometimes hard without a pre-scheduled call. This can make problems take longer to resolve, wasting time with people who are not as up-to-speed on your issues. And, as they say, time is money.

Key Insights

Do you think Paycom delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Paycom's feature set?

Yes

Did Paycom live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Paycom go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Paycom again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

Paycom is a perfect alternative for a mid-sized to larger company. It's probably a little expensive for a small company (under 50 employees), but well worth it if you have the money. You get what you need, the system is pretty user-friendly, and the functionality feels professional. You can use it for basically any industry and do what you need to do. If I was trying to run a restaurant chain franchise I would be apprehensive because the conflict of really needing to use Paycom Time and Attendance data to fully utilize the system, but needing to also gauge my labor cost versus sales on a minute-by-minute basis to know when to send employees home is very difficult. With the current state of the fast-food industry, it's probably not worth it. Paycom would really need to have a full POS product as well so you could get real-time data. I would also probably looks somewhere else if I was doing business internationally since they only do US payroll that I'm aware of.

The Case of the Wholly Adequate Payroll System - A Study in How Much I Enjoy Paycom

Overall Satisfaction with Paycom