Item: Paylocity
Rating: 7
Author: Janna Murphy

Overall Satisfaction with Paylocity

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Paylocity for our payroll, New hires enrollment, and employee engagement.
It manages our payroll.
It manages our new hire enrollment and gets employees engaged right away. It also links us to our insurance enrollment.
We also use it to communicate fun things going on in the office, remind of anniversary hires and birthdays.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Keeps us connected thru the employee engagement.
They are timely on paychecks! Even when I am not...
I do like their New Hire enrollment, I just enter new hire info and Paylocity does the rest!

Cons

The Customer Service is very slow.
Customer service gives cryptic, not always relevant, answers than closes the ticket. So you always get a new member that does not know what you said before
Help Search is not always user friendly, hard to find what you are looking for
Updates the system, but not good instructions on how to use, or maybe hard to find maybe because the Help Search is not always useful

Return on Investment

Saves me at least 2-3 hours of time on each New Hire enrollment. It makes it very easy to get employees information, organize the information where it needs to be, and get the employee engaged in the site before they even start working!
The information is usually more accurate then relaying to me on a piece of paper that I cannot make our their handwriting. It is the employee that is responsible for putting their information in, so less errors.
Paylocity is great when it is working. But when something unusual is needed so you need help from customer service, they are not always helpful and takes much longer than it should. But it does work great most of the time, so not always an issue.

Paylocity Automated Processes

Starting with New Hires, it says a couple of hours each time! We have not used the scheduling because it is not very flexible that we can tell, so it does not help us in that area.
It does a great job in time tracking! Easy to read, easy to use, easy to see where you on your time for planning vacations, avoiding OT, which saves me time from having to track that for employees, and employees can begin to own their own information.

Paylocity Employee Engagement

It has been a great way to communicate fun things going on around the office, inform employees of important HR deadlines, and remind of employees birthday, someone on a great vacation, etc.
It is nice to publicly give someone recognition, or just a thank you for a job well done!

Usability

Enrollment, time cards are very user friendly, easy to use and understand. Communities is easy and fun to use.
Online support is horrible! Emails are NOT helpful but the only choice for days and days. One response a day, never could get anything done in one day. But when You finally get to speak to someone, and they listen to you, they are amazing! The online/email support team definitely needs better training or a faster way to get to someone who knows how to use the system.

Alternatives Considered

Heartland Payroll+

Paylocity just adds a whole other layer of information and services that Heartland did not do for us.
Heartland did not have the New Hire information, or employee engagement.

Key Insights

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?

Yes

Did implementation of Paylocity go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Paylocity again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Employee Navigator

Likelihood to Recommend

Majority of the time it is great! Has plenty of information, can limit what supervisors see, able to do things quickly when need to adjust payroll. New Hire is easy for employees and it gets them used to using Paylocity.

Customer support is lacking when something is not working right or you need guidance.

Paylocity Feature Ratings

Using Paylocity

Users and Roles

22 - There are the Business Owners, Physicians, Nurse Practitioners, Nursing staff, Medical billers, receptionists, surgery schedulers, Nursing Supervisor and Front Desk Supervisor and Practice Administrator. Some only use for Paychecks and tax documents . The largest portion of employees use the Time Clock, PTO, and paychecks as well as tax documents. Paylocity also provides the easiest way for employees to access the Advanced Benefit sight for HR needs.

Support Headcount Required

1 - As Practice Administrator, I am the one that enrolls new employees, submits payroll, approves PTO and does occasionally post in Communities. Our staff does not use Communities often because we already have a communication piece in our Medical Record program. We also do appreciate that we all get notified of work anniversaries and birthdays.

Business Processes Supported

Payroll
PTO
Tax documents

Innovative Uses

It is nice to be able to have employees log in remotely.

Future Planned Uses

I understand there is some new reports coming that we are looking forward to using
Being able to see PTO in real time

Likelihood to Renew

We most likely will because we are learning how to use it better all the time. It does integrate with our Advanced Benefits. But the customer service is not responsive when needing help. It almost always requires several contacts to get anywhere, and the contacts can be several days apart. Once you actually get to TALK to someone, things are usually resolved fairly quickly, but their email system is not efficient. I get half answers and they close the ticket! But once I can get to someone, it is almost always great service. Very hard to get someone though.

Evaluating Paylocity and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes - Heartland Payroll, because their customer support was terrible. We had a hard time getting reports, it was hard to edit punches, there was some things that management had to do for the emplooyees.

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Integration with Other Systems

We chose Paylocity based on our association with Advanced Benefits for HR that uses Employee Navigator so information could be shared between the two companies. The employee information generally crosses over with open enrollment, pay, and employment.
The employee being responsible for their own information was a huge plus for us. being able to track their own hours and PTO made the system look like a great benefit.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Ask more questions on exactly how the system works. When it does not work perfect, it is hard to figure out where this information may be coming from. Setting up Supervisors would have been instruction I would have asked for. They have a Help Section but it is not always accurate and sometimes I get a message that I need to do something but NO IDEA how to do that. So definitely MORE TRAINING on how to use Paylocity.

Paylocity Implementation

Implementation Rating

More understanding of what we were doing, so when things change, we could go with the flow. When anything changed or it did not work to "push orange button in top right corner" I did not know where to go to work around. If to do it again, I would ask way more questions and want more education on a year long plan for what I would need to do. Literally NONE of this was shown to me, so I assumed Paylocity took care of things. When I found out they did not, it was hard to get support to understand I did speak PAYLOCITY.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a minor issue with the implementation - It was just shown to us how to submit payroll. What steps to take, not an understanding of what each step did. So implementation was very poor. So then when we had an issue, we needed help from the basement up! NO concept of how it worked, how to change anything, what a lot of the terms were that Paylocity used so made the need for support heavy, and help was no where to be found!
We needed an explanation of what we were doing not just click this, click that, submit DONE. Ask more questions, but I did not know what else I needed to know until it was too late.

Implementation Issues

Not enough education, just shown what button to push

Paylocity Training

Training Types Used

Online Training

In-Person Training

Did not have in person training

Online Training

It was virtually, click orange button in top right corner, click run report, hit submit. The training was minimal at best. I did not know what I was doing, so I just wrote down the steps, so when they steps failed I had no idea what to do, where I was in the process, What the terms mean or where to find them. When I had questions it was always the same answers, no understanding for WHAT I was doing when I hit the orange button.

Configuring Paylocity

Product Configurability

It does need some explanation but I don't think it is overly complicated - once you know what you are doing. But it does require training.

Configuration Lessons

I do love the amount of responsibility for time cards that is on the employee to do, Onboarding was easy, once I figured it out on my own.

But you do need an understanding of how each part (Time and Labor vs HR & Payroll) work and how they interact.

UI Customization

No - there is no facility to customize the interface

Extensibility and Customization

No - we have not done any custom code

Additional Customization Considerations

Paylocity Support

Support Rating

It is very hard to get answers to your questions, you cannot speak to someone without days of requesting assistance or answers and then eventually can get a call back and then it is usually resolved fairly quickly. But NOT easy to get that help.

Paylocity Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Knowledgeable team	Slow Resolution Poor followup Problems left unsolved Not kept informed Escalation required Difficult to get immediate help Need to explain problems multiple times Slow Initial Response

Premium Support

I have never heard of premium support. It has never been offered as far as I have found.

Bug Resolution

Yes - Eventually yes, but timely fashion, definitely NOT. Took months and months.

Exceptional Examples of Paylocity Support

Once you actually can speak to someone, and they listen - they do not all listen, they think they already know what you are asking - They have been great!! An example, a few weeks ago, I needed to do a "manual check" but not really print one, we had already cut a check for it, but I need it recorded in payroll system. I had tried for days to get corrected before time to run the NEXT payroll, but was told how to do it, but it would not come up with the options it told me I needed. Day after Day, same thing - Oh, you need to do this. did not work, wait a day or two, someone else respond, No, you need to do this. Finally after several attempts, got to speak to someone on the phone, and fixed in minutes! No idea why I was told all other answers. ONLINE SUPPORT NEEDS TRAINING!

Using Paylocity

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Well integrated	Inconsistent Cumbersome Feel nervous using Lots to learn

Easy Tasks

New Employee Onboarding
Time Cards
PTO
submitting payroll
Punching in and out

Difficult Tasks

Getting support for even simple questions
Paylocity Help is not always correct

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes - Great! Employees are very happy with the ease of use for the app! Easy to see their time, if they missed punch, and see their paychecks.

Paylocity Reliability

Scalability

We are a small office, so not sure how this applies to us. I do feel this would be great for a bigger team.

Reliability and Availability

Online and email support is not available. Very slow to respond and usually give wrong answers. Once you actually get to someone, they have been helpful and usually much easier than email support says.

Performance

It functions pretty quickly, only once have we had a shutdown, and app was great then. Speed is appropriate for needs and functions.

Integrating Paylocity

Systems Integrated With

Employee Navigator

We did very little of it, but it seems to work pretty well with Employee Navigator.

Future Integration Plans

Our HSA plan would be a great one, it is EBC

I have no indication that it is in the works.

Types of Integration

We have not done any! That would be interesting to try.

Integration Lessons Learned

I have really not done much, we are integrated with Employee Navigator and that works well. They are actually the team that recommended Paylocity for us when we were looking into switching our Payroll company.

Relationship with Paylocity

Pre-Sale Experience

They were great when we started! The sales team gave us information of what they could and a couple of things they could not do, explained the process of integration well, and easy to get a hold of when needed. The implementation Team was very rushed. They gave me step by step instructions, I watched them once then they walked me thru one payroll and then support a ticket if you have questions. But the step by step instructions were "click orange button in top right" - did not explain really what I was doing so when any thing did not fit that exactly, I had no idea how to back out, how far I could back out, and it would take 2-4 days to get an answer from a support request which was just a link to show me how to do payroll. It was hard to get help. But when YOU did get to talk to someone -- they were always so helpful!!! explained what, how, and why you did it, and then I would know how to do myself. but the support ticket system was not helpful.

Upgrading Paylocity

Upgrade Process

Yes - Yes, we have had some upgrades this year and they have all been great!! They have definitely improved the usability of Paylocity. Looking forward to future upgrades!