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Paylocity - HRIS automation software that works most of the time.
Updated March 25, 2024

Paylocity - HRIS automation software that works most of the time.

Leslie Carlson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Paylocity

Paylocity is our main HRIS. We use it for payroll, onboarding, performance management, time and labor tracking, benefits enrollment and management, Cobra. We have purchased the recruiting module but do not use that as it is not as user friendly as our prior system so we scrapped it and went back to Trakstar for recruiting. Business problems addressed, all employee data can be stored in paylocity, it combined a lot of systems into one spot for us and can be a "one stop shop" for all employee info. Just wish the recruiting platform functioned better.
  • Payroll process.
  • Performance Management.
  • Onboarding new employees.
  • Benefits Management.
  • Recruiting platform - not user friendly.
  • Errors and glitches with the software and the time it takes to resolve problems.
  • Benefits interface - issues w/ launching new hire benefits are ongoing.
  • Reduced time expenditures by the HR team for Onboarding, good flow from onboarding to HR&PR.
  • Better data-driven decision-making for employees with benefits, and good visibility to costs per paycheck resulting in fewer errors.
  • More consistent processes, although this is still a work in progress as we add more and more data to the system.
It's great to have promotions, levels, and pay updated in one place. Updates to the Org chart are, however, slow; sometimes terminated employees remain on the chart for weeks, which has been a continual problem. Reporting of data-driven statistics like PTO, SICK time, etc., and use of said time, etc., helps to track usage and provide good data for ways to improve benefits to employees. It's nice to be able to run any report you like in Excel and then create pivot tables, etc.
We have not really used this arena much, but it is something to explore moving forward.
I think payroll processing in Paylocity is much simpler than with either ADP or Paychex. Having the pre-process view and the ability to make corrections easily makes processing payroll much more straightforward than with either of the other products I have worked with. The time and labor module also flows better to HR&PR w/ paylocity. I have not used benefits integration or Cobra management w/ either of the other products, but I do appreciate it w/ Paylocity and the EDI file flows so that we can add/delete people from benefits with ease.

Do you think Paylocity delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Paylocity's feature set?

Yes

Did Paylocity live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Paylocity go as expected?

No

Would you buy Paylocity again?

Yes

Employee onboarding is pretty seemless, new hires are able to login, upload all needed info, fill out documents and merge into our systems as a new hire employee. - some glitches with this are the first pay date is often listed inaccurately. I currently have a new hire starting 12/4, and her "first pay date" is listed as 11/22? why? did this even happen. And then it will not let you amend the first pay date. - very cumbersome to fix any errors. Time and Labor - we recently had a glitch where the used hours were not listed correctly in Self service portal and HR&PR, took over a week to get this glitch fixed. - the timing it takes to address some of the issues is a bit excessive and does not garner confidence in the product. Performance Management - we have had no issues with this system and appreciate that we can modify and create our own template to our desired needs.

Paylocity Feature Ratings

9.0
Employee demographic data
10
Employment history
10
Job profiles and administration
10
Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.
7
Organizational charting
7
Organization and location management
9
Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)
10
8.8
Pay calculation
9
Support for external payroll vendors
Not Rated
Off-cycle/On-Demand payment
10
Benefit plan administration
7
Direct deposit files
10
Salary revision and increment management
8
Reimbursement management
Not Rated
6.3
Approval workflow
9
Balance details
4
Annual carry-forward and encashment
6
9.6
View and generate pay and benefit information
10
Update personal information
10
View job history
10
View company policy documentation
10
Employee recognition
8
10.0
Tracking of all physical assets
10
6.0
Report builder
6
Pre-built reports
6
Ability to combine HR data with external data
6
Integration with other HR capabilities ()
Not Rated
9.6
Performance plans
10
Performance improvement plans
8
Review status tracking
10
Review reminders
10
Multiple review frequency
10
Succession Planning ()
Not Rated
10.0
New hire portal
10
Manager tracking tools
10
8.0
Corporate goal setting
8
Individual goal setting
8
Line-of sight-visibility
8
Performance tracking
8
5.0
Job Requisition Management
5
Company Website Posting
5
Publish to Social Media
5
Job Search Site Posting
5
Duplicate Candidate Prevention
5
Applicant Tracking
5
Notifications and Alerts
5

Using Paylocity

114 - all employees use Paylocity to request time off, review paychecks and tax status, and for their benefits and spending accounts.

Managers use paylocity for Performance reviews, approve time off and review employee information.

HR and Finance uses all aspects of Paylocity and processes payroll.
5 - 2 in Accounting (Director of Finance and Assist. Controller)

3 in HR (HRBP, Technical Recruiter and Sr. HR Manager)

Skills - Payroll processing, onboarding, benefits management, HRIS support, reporting, Performance management
  • Payroll
  • Benefits Management, including COBRA Management
  • Time and Labor - Time off tracking
  • Performance Management
  • Various Ad Hoc reporting
  • Compensation Management
  • Identifying and reporting Career path levels
We have had many issues with the way our platform was set up at implementation that still continue to plague us. In addition, our benefits, in particular our FSA, have been mis-managed causing a balance due from an employee (and also a lot of work for our accounting and HR team, as well as stress for the employee). Our service rep continues to answer incorrectly on many fronts (original response is usually check out this paylocity article, vs. helping) and recently our COBRA management was mishandled (not adding Dental to a person on Cobra who had requested it). So- all in all...we are not particularly happy w/ Paylocity.

Evaluating Paylocity and Competitors

Yes - Paychex Flex - functionality, wanted a more robust and ease of use platform as well as cost effective.
  • Cloud Solutions
  • Ease of Use
  • Other
Ease of use and cost were our top considerations. I had worked w/ Paylocity in the past so was familiar with the platform. I had no issues w/ it in the past, but this go round has been plagued by issues.
Do a more in depth research non other users to see what problems they encountered in this platform. Since we have had so many issues, I feel that we could not possibly be alone in the problems w/ the Paylocity platform.

Paylocity Implementation

We were handed off to multiple implementation people, some quit, one went on leave, one left suddenly, one was transfered to a diff dept...all causing a significant amount of disruption for our team. Many had conflicting info on how to properly set things up...hence a complete mess was left for us to figure out.
  • Implemented in-house
Change management was a major issue with the implementation
  • So many I cannot list them all - Time and Labor set up wrong, many aspects of the set up set up wrong...caused years long issue.

Paylocity Support

Initial response from Paylocity generally does not answer the question asked. And when we had a major issue recently on the benefits side, we were tossed around for several weeks before we got to someone who was able to pinpoint what happened and offer assistance.
ProsCons
None
Slow Resolution
Poor followup
Less knowledgeable
Not kept informed
Escalation required
Need to explain problems multiple times
Support doesn't seem to care
Slow Initial Response
Not that i am aware of...seems silly that you do not just support your platform without having to pay additional fees for this.
Yes - No - I have reported multiple times that people completing reviews keep loosing the data when they are logged out or time out. We now have them do all reviews in a word doc, and then drop in the final and save immediately.

Also - in Time and Labor - w/ the payroll lockout, why are they also locked out of approving future time that has nothing to do with the current pay period.
We recently had an issue with Benefits where Paylocity mis-managed our FSA platform, allowing an employee to withdraw considerably more FSA funds then they had contributed (employee changed her FSA contribution mid year, but had already taken out more than she changed it too...Paylocity did not catch this and continued to fund her at the highest level). Collette in your Benefits department was able to finally identify what happened, admit fault on Paylocity end, and resolve the situation. But I have to say it took considerable time on our end to continue to push back when we got unreasonable answers.

Using Paylocity

A lot of things are not user friendly (like very small "save" buttons that are mid screen and hard to locate.).
ProsCons
Technical support not required
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
  • Time and Labor, requesting time off
  • Recruiting platform - we gave up on it
  • Performance Management
Yes - Not too bad