TechRadar Verdict
Paylocity stands out as a powerful payroll system with excellent features for employee engagement. However, its extensive capabilities mean it is best suited for human resources teams with prior experience.
Pros
- Excellent payroll and compliance tools
- Impressive employee experience and engagement features
- Strong automation and scheduling capabilities
Cons
- Lack of pricing transparency
- Can be complex for new users
- Potentially long implementation times
The creators of Paylocity understand that HR teams often wish to achieve more, but are frequently burdened by repetitive administrative tasks.
To address this, Paylocity’s HR and payroll solutions emphasize automation, process streamlining, and straightforward compliance. This approach aims to free up HR professionals to focus on strategic thinking and make a greater impact.
This tool also places significant importance on the employee experience, offering a smart suite of employee engagement features. A recent addition is an AI assistant designed to further simplify the user experience.
Paylocity aims to deliver a comprehensive HR and payroll solution by integrating technology with human-centric design.
Paylocity: Plans and pricing
Similar to many HR solutions, Paylocity’s pricing is customized for each client, with no specific cost information available on its website.
While this allows businesses to select necessary modules and create a tailored package, the absence of clear pricing can complicate initial budgeting and comparisons. Adding numerous modules could also lead to rapid cost increases.
The company indicates that typical pricing ranges from $18 to $32 per employee per month, with potential additional setup fees. These figures align with approximate pricing found on various third-party platforms for Paylocity’s solution.
Paylocity: Features
Given its name and the company’s philosophy that “everything leads back to payroll,” it is no surprise that Paylocity offers robust financial capabilities.
Its payroll options are fully customizable. Once an organization establishes its processes, a complete payroll can be reviewed and run with just a few clicks, significantly reducing manual effort for HR teams.
Data flows directly from the employee database into the payroll system, which automatically flags any discrepancies. Setting up general ledger mapping is both quick and easy.
Paylocity’s Payroll Readiness Dashboard highlights crucial tasks requiring attention before the next payment cycle. A tax geolocation system can audit staff to ensure correct tax payments. The system also supports paying both local and global employees.
For businesses with international operations, Paylocity provides global payroll services, including consulting, compliance, and treasury management. However, these services may incur extra charges as Paylocity is primarily designed for US payroll requirements.
Paylocity’s strong payroll features are complemented by solid core HR functionalities. The platform offers centralized document storage and custom, automated workflows, along with automation templates for easier deployment of these workflows.
Extensive personalization is available, allowing for unlimited custom fields for tracking and reporting to meet specific organizational needs.
Additionally, real-time analytics and dashboards assist in workforce analysis and enable data-driven decision-making. AI-powered tools integrated throughout the application enhance search functionality and answer basic inquiries.
Paylocity’s reporting and analytics are centered around the Modern Workforce Index module. This relatively new insight and benchmarking tool gathers data on sentiment, utilization, and organizational health to assess a business’s standing compared to the broader market.
It tracks how employees use Paylocity to inform discussions about return on investment, suggests areas for improvement, and illustrates progress over time.
The employee self-service module allows staff to access and modify payroll and HR data through web browsers and the Paylocity mobile app.
Paylocity’s time and attendance management tools include automated policy enforcement, real-time notifications, and detailed analytics. These features help users identify trends, plan shifts, monitor budgets, and reduce administrative burdens.
The app provides AI-enhanced shift recommendations, options for claiming open shifts and swapping shifts, and various time capture methods, such as badges, biometrics, apps, kiosks, and smartwatches. Geolocation, fingerprint validation, and facial recognition are all supported.
Paylocity’s integrated social network promotes greater employee collaboration and engagement, also accessible via the mobile app. It includes a company feed, “ask an expert” options, and AI-assisted announcement creation. Users can even follow active colleagues.
The Employee Voice module automatically collects staff feedback for analysis and reporting. Customizable employee recognition programs with budget-linked rewards can be built to strengthen connections across the workforce.
The tool’s community engagement features are particularly impressive, considered a “crown jewel” of the application by Paylocity.
Guided benefits support is available for both providers and employees, simplifying deployment and enrollment. Users receive notifications about eligibility changes and benefit requests.
Paylocity supports a wide array of benefit options, including flexible benefits, and assists with managing benefit compliance. It also helps manage technology assets with an asset management module that tracks hardware assignments and locations, ideal for keeping tabs on laptops, smartphones, and other equipment.
This solution also includes a comprehensive suite of recruitment tools, such as candidate screening, headcount planning, and self-service interview scheduling. HR teams can automate job postings to over 20,000 job boards and integrate with platforms like LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, and Indeed.
Pre-written templates and AI tools expedite job requisition processes. Recruitment can be kept on track by sending emails and text messages directly from the platform. It is also possible to define roles and compensation within Paylocity by reviewing market data, then creating and sending personalized offer packages to candidates.
Once talent is recruited, onboarding is enhanced through automation, built-in compliance tools, background checks, pre-boarding tasks in the mobile app, video welcomes, auto-assigned training, and team introductions.
Employee performance is monitored using straightforward feedback collection, 360-degree reviews, and talent assessment templates. Training is managed through an interactive environment with an extensive course library. Paylocity can also be used to create, define, and manage compensation strategies based on company and market data, supporting annual increases and customized bonus payments.
Paylocity supports hundreds of third-party integrations, including Microsoft 365 and Dynamics, Google Workspace, Dropbox, Slack, HubSpot, and QuickBooks.
Hundreds more integrations are accessible through the Paylocity Marketplace, covering categories such as benefits, finance, compliance, health, and recruiting. The solution also provides API support for custom integrations.
As is common with HR solutions, many of these features are only available if their respective modules are included in a custom package. For Paylocity, it is advisable to verify international payroll capabilities before committing.
Paylocity is primarily a US-focused business. While it offers global payroll services, additional third-party integrations might be necessary to ensure seamless international operations.
While Paylocity provides good analytics, reporting, and customization, other solutions like SAP offer stronger reporting. Some rival products may also provide more in-depth customization, and the mobile app does not have full feature parity with the desktop version.
Paylocity: Ease of use
Paylocity is undoubtedly feature-rich, and its interface is well-designed.
The interface is consistent and intuitive, featuring a navigation pane on the left and a dashboard filled with quick links to common actions. The dashboard displays a wealth of information, including key details about pay, budgeting, timesheets, urgent tasks, and activity.
The dashboard is customizable, allowing users to rearrange or remove widgets, though creating custom widgets is not an option, and the data within each widget is fixed.
Employee and equipment records are well-structured and easy to navigate. The reporting section is comprehensive, offering dozens of readily available options for those who know where to look.
The payroll module effectively presents payroll options and simplifies initiating the next payroll run. The community section is excellent, featuring a social media-style feed, team-specific groups, and easily visible pinned announcements.
The Modern Workforce Index is one of the more visually engaging parts of the application, with a dial that provides a quick indicator of a company’s score. Users can delve deeper into the data to track sentiment, health, and organization across various charts.
While Paylocity’s interface successfully organizes its extensive features, it does have some minor drawbacks.
The data-dense, busy interface might initially feel overwhelming, particularly for users unfamiliar with complex software. For those seeking a highly visually appealing interface, alternative solutions might be more suitable.
Online user feedback suggests varying implementation experiences; some customers report smooth deployments, while others describe lengthy processes due to the software’s complexity.
Paylocity: Support
Paylocity provides live phone support from Monday to Friday, 6 AM to 7:30 PM Central Time. While restricting phone support to weekdays is common for HR solution providers, Paylocity’s extended hours are a notable advantage. Email support is also available and responsive during these hours.
Customers are assigned an account manager and a dedicated support team to assist with implementation and ongoing inquiries.
Like many HR solution providers, Paylocity offers an online knowledge base, an AI assistant for product questions, and a selection of live webinars and on-demand training sessions.
Paylocity: The Competition
Paylocity targets businesses of all sizes, though its traditional focus has been on small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs). This segment of the market is competitive, pitting Paylocity against strong rivals.
Few solutions match Paylocity’s effectiveness in payroll. However, if exploring alternatives, RUN Powered by ADP is a strong option for smaller businesses, while ADP Workforce Now caters to larger organizations.
For those seeking more automation in HR workflows, Rippling is a potential choice. BambooHR is another well-rounded option worth considering. For enterprise-level needs, SAP SuccessFactors should be added to the list of contenders.
Paylocity: Final verdict
Paylocity is among the most feature-rich HR and payroll solutions available. It particularly excels in financial features, automation, and employee engagement, with its community tools being outstanding. The application effectively consolidates extensive data and sentiment into valuable, actionable insights.
However, there are trade-offs. The depth of functionality can be overwhelming, especially for new users, and some reports indicate lengthy implementation processes. Furthermore, pricing lacks transparency.
Nevertheless, for a mid-sized business seeking a powerful HR and payroll solution, Paylocity remains a strong candidate.
