Paychex Reviews – What Exactly Is Paychex?
Paychex is a cloud-based payroll and human resources solution for small, midsize, and large businesses and is a recognized leader in the payroll and human resource industry.
Founded in 1971, Paychex services over half a million businesses today, with a robust catalog of solutions for payroll, HR, and benefits plans.
In addition to Paychex eservices and online payroll solutions, Paychex’s technology platform provides an easy way for businesses to manage additional human capital needs, including retirement and insurance services. These capabilities, coupled with its policy of customized and dedicated service, allow business owners to focus on growing and managing their core business needs instead of on administrative duties.
Image Source: Paychex
As you would expect from a company with 40 years of experience in an industry, Paychex has a strong suite of offerings to address the varying human capital needs of a business and provides an excellent, easy-to-use platform on its online Paychex system, all with a good service model to match.
Overview of Offerings
Paychex has grown its assortment of offerings as business needs have grown increasingly complex over the years. For this Paychex review, we will look at the following breakdown of the top solutions that Paychex offers:
- Paychex Flex: Divided into Paychex Flex for small businesses and Paychex Flex Enterprise for larger companies, Paychex Flex is its payroll administration service – its most well-known and used service.
- Human Resource Services: Mostly intended for small to medium businesses without a robust HR team in place, this Paychex service helps businesses manage current employees and hire new ones with ease.
- Employee Benefit Services: Paychex offers both retirement planning and insurance services for employees, and these can tie into the payroll system for an integrated financial overview.
- Accounting & Finance: Paychex has added a few accounting and financial services to its portfolio, including an online accounting platform, payment processing services, expense management, and even a loan center for small businesses.
Paychex Flex
The Paychex online payroll service is its flagship product and for good reason. The system has a robust suite of offerings that helps streamline the payroll process with an integrated approach. The main features of the Paychex online system include:
- Easy payroll: This is, of course, the main functionality and perk of this tool. It allows business owners to easily submit payroll online through Paychex’s intuitive platform, Paychex Preview. Having seen other online payroll service reviews, it’s clear that Paychex has refined its system to make it very easy to use for both businesses and their employees.
- Paychex Report Center: The report center is pretty robust, giving you access to 140 reports that you can use to make data-driven decisions for your business. You can also give access to your accountant or advisor so that they can go in and pull the data they need without requiring additional assistance from you. The reporting tool comes with pre-programmed packages, or you can create custom reports with the Paychex Report Writer to fit your business needs.
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- Paychex General Ledger Service: The General Ledger Service is a convenient tool that allows you to post payroll data directly into the accounting software of your choice. It’s quick and secure, and the automation means that there’s less room for human error, which can be costly for any business. This ledger service is also helpful in getting an overview of your company’s productivity levels and profitability. It shows you where you’re spending money and breaks out earnings by departments, locations or organization as needed, giving you a pretty good snapshot of your business’s financial health and position.
- Employee access: The Paychex system has a sleek system that makes it really easy for employees to access their information, which means less hand-holding from the employer. Employees can review and manage their pay stubs, W-2 information, benefits, time-off balances, and even clock in and out through Paychex eServices or on the Paychex mobile app. Many Paychex customer reviews from business owners tout this one-stop flexibility as a key reason for employing and keeping Paychex as their main payroll service.
- Payroll specialist: You’ll find a lot of Paychex reviews that mention the convenience of having a dedicated payroll specialist for each business. The specialist serves as a single point of contact for any and all questions related to payroll or taxes. This extra personal service puts Paychex over the edge as a service that goes beyond just providing the software.
The collection of Paychex payroll services is useful and easy to use for both businesses and their employees and alleviates some of the administrative work for business owners.
Human Resources Management
Paychex offers dedicated HR services that can be scaled to your business needs. This service is mostly for businesses without an HR team in place but can be useful for those with a small HR infrastructure in place as an HR outsource solution. It covers basic HR services, like customizing employee handbooks and dealing with compliance issues, and also has a system set up for recruiting new candidates.
Image Source: Paychex Reviews
Additionally, the Paychex HR team can help you keep up with changing regulations, such as COBRA and health insurance regulations that may change year to year. The HR management system provides a way for smaller businesses without an established HR team to stay current with regulations and maintain an HR presence in their businesses.
Paychex Benefit Services
Another feature that Paychex offers is its employee benefit services. This includes retirement planning and insurance services. Paychex offers flexible 401(k) retirement plans and can help businesses choose a plan that fits with company needs.
The program takes you through a step-by-step process in which you choose the type of retirement plan that works for your business, whether that’s a traditional 401(k) or a profit sharing model with employees. You can then choose investment options, either on your own or with the help of an advisor. Insurance services range from group health insurance to worker’s compensation and business insurance.
All of the Paychex benefits can be used company-wide or can also be used for owner-only coverage for small businesses. Like its payroll system, employees can access their information and manage their services through the eService Paychex desktop portal or via mobile access, making it a convenient solution for both employees and business owners alike.
Paychex Accounting Online
Paychex recently developed an additional service for providing bookkeeping and accounting assistance for small to mid-sized businesses. Aptly named Accounting Online, the service provides a cloud-based accounting system for a set monthly price.
Through this system, you can enter expenses, track expenses, capture receipts and categorize them, get real-time financial reporting, and track sales. Since this is a cloud-based program, just like its other services, it allows you to use this tool on desktop or on-the-go through a mobile app and will automatically backup any data to the cloud.
Benefits of Paychex
First and foremost, its payroll system is its most robust offering and probably the biggest benefit you’ll get from Paychex. Payroll by Paychex is one of the best known payroll tools out on the market today and for good reason. It’s been around for a long time, and Paychex has refined its tools over time to create a very user-friendly, easy-to-use system for business owners with its Paychex Payroll Preview platform.
This intuitive platform really is a great tool for small to mid-sized businesses that don’t have the time or resources to hire a full team of payroll and accounting staff to handle the day-to-day hurdles of payroll management. According to the Paychex website, the company handles “over half-trillion dollars in client funds each year.”
That’s a lot of money – and a lot of experience – that Paychex brings in securely handling payroll systems. There are a lot of startup payroll and accounting systems cropping up today, but there’s something to be said about the peace of mind you have in knowing that you’re working with a well-established company with years of experience behind it.
For all that Paychex is able to handle, the price is pretty affordable. Yes, there is a cost, but you’re paying for a service that would cost a lot more if you were to hire a payroll or HR personnel to fulfill those responsibilities. Having been established for over 40 years, Paychex has a large footprint of experts that spans across the country, which means that you can easily leverage expertise on different state payroll and tax rules.
Paychex is an easy and affordable way to get the job done. Also important and useful is the employee’s user experience. Since employees can edit and download relevant information through the Paychex eServices platform or app, it creates less questions and concerns and provides a seamless experience for everyone involved.
Drawbacks of Paychex
Paychex is a great solution for small and mid-sized businesses, but larger companies with a team already in place may find limitations in the system and will get fewer benefits out of the tools. Additionally, there are some limitations with Paychex Preview in the way it handles cross-period reporting, so depending on whether your business is set up to report on a fiscal calendar or a calendar year, you may run into some issues that you’ll have to find a workaround for.
Although using its full suite of systems can provide a simple, unified experience that makes your life easier, its newer services aren’t as established as the Paychex online payroll system.
A few Paychex reviews from active users have complained about representatives who provided less-than-stellar customer service, and a Paychex employee review does show that some specialists aren’t too keen on having to constantly service businesses on its complaints.
However, overall, most users report of having a good relationship with their representative, and a thorough employee review shows that most people are happy working with its respective businesses, which is an important part of the Paychex experience.
There is an increasing number of new up-and-coming software-as-a-service programs for payroll and accounting management today. With so many more options for this type of service out on the market than ever before, you may be able to find a solution that is a better fit for your business than Paychex. It’s important to weigh out the differences and to keep in mind that long-term security and peace of mind are very important factors in making this decision.
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Conclusion
Overall, payroll by Paychex, Inc. is definitely one of the strongest service offerings out on the market and is highly recommended for small to medium-sized businesses. It gives you, as a business owner, the time to focus on growing your business; not on administrative tasks that could bog down a day. This system makes payroll processing quick and easy and can be utilized across various services that include benefits management and HR services.
While it’s not a fit for every company, especially larger ones, it’s a good solution for those on the market for an easy, intuitive way to manage payroll, HR, and benefit plans.
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