Paychex Flex Software

Paychex Flex gives me peace of mind

Overall, I have been very pleased with Paychex as a company and their online platform, Paychex Flex.  I have the peace of mind that our payroll is in capable hands. 

Pros

It is easy to use and it gives me a peace of mind that our company's payroll is in capable hands. Their customer service is great. Each customer has a dedicated payroll specialist, so every time I have a question I am talking to the same person. Our payroll specialist has always been very helpful any time I have had weird situations or questions.

Paychex withholds all the appropriate taxes for both the employee and employer and then files them when the appropriate government entities. Our business is located Ohio, which has a complex tax structure including both state and local taxes. Paychex has saved me so much time and stress.

Cons

I wish that Paychex Flex tracked pay increases. That is the only thing that I liked better about our previous payroll provider. Our previous payroll provider had a tab that showed an employee's salary history and the date of each raise. Paychex Flex does not have this, so I have to track it separately.

I wish they had a more intuitive reporting function. The standard payroll reports are laid out very well and are very easy to run, but if I need to run a report that it out of the ordinary, I usually end up calling my payroll specialist because I can't find the report. To be fair, the couple of times this has happened I have been looking for a report having to do with workers comp and since workers comp is run by a government entity in Ohio it has some added complexities.

Paychex has FINALLY gotten it right

Payroll reports for my clients are at my fingertips!

Pros

Paychex FLEX is easy to navigate, fast at loading reports and pages, and gives you access to what you need. As an accountant it is vital for me to be able to have access to the reports and items I need to get accounting and taxes done without having to jump through hoops to get that information. Many payroll firms make this task frustrating and time consuming. With Paychex FLEX I have one log in for all of my clients and can easily navigate to the company and reports that I need every month or at year-end within a few minutes (including the login process).

Cons

One thing I don't like is that the default view for reports is set to the last 90 days. Many times, especially dealing with tax forms, I need reports that were created more than 90 days ago. Also, since the newest reports go to the top of the list you already have the most recent reports at the top. Why not default to the past year and then just let me filter down to a smaller group of reports if that's what I want?

Other than that small gripe, they have done a lot to improve their FLEX format. When it was first released everyone hated it but it has finally been improved to the point that it is extremely usable. The problem is that it seems like every time they get things just right they move to a new platform and "upgrade" their systems. I understand that this might be a necessary evil but it sure does cause a lot of growing pains for the end-user.

Paychex Flex the next best electronic payroll system!

The benefits of using Paychex Flex software is that the product is available online to users. Other benefits include being able to select a specific payment plan or subscription suitable for the company to aid the human resources aspects of payroll. Additional benefits include accessing a dashboard with all employee information to be edited or submitted at once. More benefits of utilizing Paychex Flex include developing quick reports such as payroll statistics. Paychex Flex is a good tool to administer payroll for your company.

Pros

Paychex Flex is an online software that human resources personnel can utilize for payroll. Paychex Flex has various subscriptions that company's can select depending on the types of features. Paychex Flex offers an employee dashboard that requires an username, password, and pin number. Paychex Flex allows users to disburse amounts of funds to contractors, employees, vendors, and sponsors. Paychex Flex offers tools, tutorials, and customer support related to the online library and overall application.

Cons

Paychex Flex requires a new verification code upon logging into the dashboard. Users listed in the Paychex Flex may not be deleted depending on administrative rights to complete such an action. Paychex Flex may provide usernames and passwords to administrators and not employees, thus employees may not be able to update time card electronically. Paychex Flex allows time card adjustments to be made by the administrator. Paychex Flex allows payroll adjustments to be made by the administrator.

Paychex Flex is a robust payroll solution that can accommodate almost any payroll need.

Pros

Together with the company's team of payroll specialists, Paychex Flex is an effective payroll solution for small and large companies alike. As administrator for a small company, I appreciate having permissions to manage my company's staff in the tool while allowing the payroll specialist from Paychex to key in the biweekly payroll data. This delegation of duties gives me control over the the job functions that are most important to me.

The General Ledger integration with QuickBooks Online is configurable and works well once set up to meet your business needs. The 3rd party integrator's staff is professional and diaplays an expert knowledge of both Paychex Flex and Quickbooks.

What I like most about Paychex Flex is that our tax returns and payments at the Federal level and for most states are done for us automatically.

Cons

The browser interface is unattractive and not always self explanatory. The client id, which is needed on all email correspondence with your payroll specialist and is displayed on the banner at the top of the screen, cannot be copied and pasted into emails.

The filter feature on the Person screen doesn't work consistently, and I frequently have to reapply the same filter so that only active staff appear.

Online help for the software can be misleading or inaccurate. After following instructions for 1) giving access to staff and 2) adding a new state for withholdings, without success, I learned from my payroll specialist that I didn't have the ability to perform either task through the software.

Love the Ease if Online Benefit Administration

Survey software is not something that I usually recommend.

Pros

The best thing about this software is that I can do everything I need to do on my computer or mobile phone at any time of the day or night. The application is very easy to access and I administer payroll, 401k, health, dental and vision benefits, FSA and employee additions/changes over the application. Almost every service I utilize through Paychex is on this application. Invaluable! If I'm out of town I can still submit payroll! WOW! What a game changer Paychex Flex has been! The old way of doing business is out the window with Paychex Flex replacing it in a very positive way!

Cons

There is a couple of items that I would like to see enhanced. In people, I would like the ability to always pull up my preferred view of employees without having to click on the apply button. My preferred view is saved but will not display until I click on apply. Second, on the people drop down menu from the upper right corner, I would like the ability to select that view as well. When that drop down is selected I get all the employees that have ever been entered into the Paychex database - terminated and active. I want to be able to display just the active employees in that drop down. These are just enhancement requests that in no way affect the valuable pros of the application. The items in the cons are just "nice to haves".

Excellent company top to bottom

Pros

Paychex has been top-notch for over five years, when I switched to them from another payroll company. I operate a small seasonal business with about 10 employees, and from the beginning I have received all the support that I need for my payroll and tax responsibilities, and at a more reasonable rate than I was paying before. I deal with one single payroll specialist every week (unless she is on vacation or something), which I love, and if she is unavailable the fill-in specialists have been able to take care of my payroll, which is not quite standard, without any issues. The website took a little getting used to initially, but I download my reports from there every week, quarter, and year, and everything is easy to find and use. I couldn't recommend Paychex more highly, at least for any business such as mine.

Cons

If anything, I feel that it would be good to consider a website review and edit - I do not have anything specific to offer in terms of what to change, but it did seem a little confusing the first few times using it. I don't have any issues now, but admittedly I only log on to do the same thing (download the report) each week, quarter, and year.

I have worked with Paychex for HR and Payroll purposes.

We were able to reduce storage of paper statements that were never picked up. We were able to increase employee morale by giving our employees the ability to see their own data and make time off requests on their own.

Pros

The user friendly approach within the Employee Online Access. We had employees that were afraid to go paperless with pay statements but with a little training everyone began utilizing the system. I liked the time and attendance module which allowed employees to see their own timesheets and administratiors to make corrections/update their staff timesheets and approve prior to payroll processing.

Cons

I disliked the fact that the payroll module didn't link directly with time and attendance, we had thought that what was done in time and attendance regarding time off balances would automatically feed to payroll and reflect on our employees pay statements. But we found out that we had to do adjustments in both windows to ensure it matched.

Don't bite off more than you can chew

We transferred over from Preview to Flex in March and have had some sort of issue (always a new problem) with running payroll from glitches, to inaccuracies in accruals due to incomplete data transfers to random errors like pay rates suddenly not being mapped to the proper pay components. Overall Paychex has great features and I love that our employees are offered the option to view their stubs and w-2s online and request time off but, I feel like they need to train their employees more on their updates and work out the kinks before they release updates because it causes a lot of unexpected error on the user end which cause a delay and inconvenisnce on our end.

Pros

I like that their Flex software is "live" and you no longer need to transmit hours as a file.

Cons

New features are released with glitches, representatives are NEVER available, it takes a lot of follow-up to get assistance and they pass you from representative to representative like a "hot potato".

Good Website

Pros

I do like how the website is laid out and how easy it is to run reports, set up new employees, and enter in payroll. In general the reps are helpful and you dont always have to talk to just your assigned rep to get answers.

Cons

When there is a tax problem, the only person you can talk to is your rep, who general doesn't know anything about taxes and can only pass the question onto the tax department. Once you ask the question, it can a few weeks before you even hear back from someone about the status of your questions. It gets put into a queue and you are not told if or when it will get answered. This is very frustrating when it comes to time sensitive tax issues.

PREVIEW was a great payroll work horse. But beware, FLEX Payroll is no PREVIEW.

We've been on Paychex PREVIEW payroll software for 16 years. It was a solid no non-sense payroll processing work horse which came with everything you'd ever need to process payroll for 100+ employees in a very quick and efficient manner. PREVIEW software was extremely well designed and well thought out. The developers took the perspective of payroll processing users and provided all the navigation speed, functionalities and reports that we'd ever find useful or need to do our jobs quickly and efficiently. There were hardly any unnecessary clicks, keystrokes or scrolling to speak of. It exceeded my expectation all these years. Paychex's golden era and reputation as payroll processing leader was probably due to these sensible legacy products. Like all good things which must come to an end, we were switched to FLEX Q2 of 2016 because PREVIEW was so old that Paychex decided to sun set it this year - which was totally understandable. But any reasonable PREVIEW clients would also expect and assume that whatever good features, good functionalities and useful reports that were available and had been working well in PREVIEW would be brought over and be available in the new payroll product as well. Not so. Enters FLEX which Paychex touted as being technologically advanced, etc. It probably is. But as far as FLEX payroll processing features and functionalities are concerned, I am actually set back 16 years to a payroll processing product that seemed Beta, very slow, cumbersome, awkward - compared to PREVIEW. Paychex simply threw PREVIEW out the window and started fresh from scratch with FLEX. I spent my first several months on FLEX Payroll sending them suggestions to make FLEX "better". I don't know if anyone cared. FLEX Payroll screen designs and navigation are very slow, very cumbersome, and very awkward. What I considered "speed features" in PREVIEW were non-existent in FLEX. Fields are spread out as far apart as they can find room to spread them out to (instead of keeping the screen layouts compact) seemingly so as to "maximize" unnecessary clicks, scrolls and keystrokes as much as possible. It's also more cumbersome and time consuming just to get information and reports from FLEX Payroll which could be run quickly and easily before in PREVIEW. I felt like I'm using payroll software designed by inexperienced college graduates who had never processed payroll before in their lives. They're out to get as much of my time make me do as much work as possible for the same amount of work that I have to do as before - to see where my breaking point is. So overall, I'm not impressed. To me, if the basic payroll processing functionalities are less than before, FLEX Payroll will still be inadequate despite all other "great features and modules" they added to FLEX which I don't need.

Pros

Flex integration with Benefits Administration (Benetrac) module can make life a lot easier for some - but Beware - only if your group is 100+ enrolled. Our Paychex sales rep did make the claim that with Benetrac service, our medical insurance transactions "will all be automatic with carriers and we wouldn't have to do a thing" - which was totally not true. As it turned out, more carriers than not do not do EDI for groups (company) with < 100 enrolled. So the main FLEX selling point totally didn't even pan out for us. Please learn from our lesson. Do verify specifically that your medical and dental carriers will do EDI for your group before signing up for Benetrac.

Cons

Although FLEX does its job as payroll software, having been on a faster and more efficient product before, we know how much more time we are spending on this "more inefficient" product compared to before.

Oh and please save yourself the headaches and trouble by passing on other Paychex's services. We tried Paychex Health Insurance and ACA filing. They both failed miserably. Same story in both cases. Can't get hold of the account rep and customer service rep. No one would answer or return our calls. Last year's ACA were 60% wrong after I've redone and resubmitted data 3 different times after 3 different CSR told me 3 different things. They were just making it up as they went. Very frustrating.

Extremely User Friendly

Pros

As both a Paychex user and admin, I love how easy it is to navigate, you feel that your information is secure and if you experience an issue there is very short wait when calling customer services (typically no wait at all). When you first log into paychex, there are multiple security levels that one has to pass depending on your preference. Also, once you are in there is a dashboard with shortcuts to all the most used features. Paychex is constantly improving their software which is exciting. Our company is really enjoying the new live reports that update on a daily basis calculating everything from turnover rate, average headcount, and hired & termed totals.

Cons

We really enjoy using this software, there is nothing we dislike at the moment.

Makes Employee's Lives Way Easier

Easy to keep track of employees, vacation and benefits - all in one hub for employee information!

Pros

I can easily clock in and out of my Paychex account on any device - super convenient when on the road or working remote. I can also find my W2, tax and benefit information in one place which makes my life easier around tax refund season. I can easily punch in vacation time and forward it to my HR person.

Cons

Sometimes it doesn't register the clock in on the first try but selecting it twice will allow me to. The interface allows you to Break In and Clock out even if you never Clocked in which is odd, but HR can easily fix any mistakes.

Paychex flex is so easy to use.

Everything you need is in the system and best of all accurate.

Pros

This software is so easy to use. It gives you tutorials if you get stumped on how to do something. It also has the capability to put all your reports in one place so when you need to run a report, it is all there waiting to be downloaded.

Cons

The only thing I really do not like with the system is that you have to go thru so many prompts to log in and then you have to have a specific code sent to your phone in order to get into the system. Needs to be a simpler way that allows the protection.

Easy to use, didn't require training, pretty intuitive

Easy, consistent payroll service. Inter-department communication could use some work.

Pros

Payroll specialists are very good and on top of their game. Easy to use from anywhere, never down, easy to get reports any time, easy to add in deductions or bonuses, customizable in general.

Cons

If I make a mistake, then go back to fix it, for some reason twice now it would not take my edits and I had to call to fix it, really annoying, I hadn't submitted yet.
Tax questions/DOL questions - you have to wait until they get back to you, no way to know when they will, who is working on it, etc.
Every change needs to have an accompanying form sent in. Very annoying, So if I change it, I have to fill out a form, print it, sign it, scan it back and send it, for every little change. Change an address, form, change a rate of pay, form, change a bank account, form, someone leaves for 6 weeks medical, form out and form back - you get the drift.

Paychex Flex

Procured the total HRO package (payroll, 401k, FSA, Time & Attendance, HRIS, HR Compliance and HR Generalist). There is no HRIS compatibility with the Payroll system, one has to run separate reports. Anytime Paychex updates their website, links do not work to the other features and or issues occur. Example, PTO accrual stopped working properly so we had to start accruing PTO manually and users not properly redirected to their links in the Learning center. On the payroll side the support is a black hole. Specifically any state registrations that are not properly loaded by Paychex and result in state tax fees which do not get resolved without employer paying penalty. Numerous emails do not get acknowledged. The implementation process is juvenile and lacks complete project management scope. Overall communication and execution by Paychex is so poor, one finally stops being frustrated and simply begins search for better system, which we are doing.

Pros

Compliance. Nice to have employee handbook online and learning center for compliance training is also helpful.
While Paychex payroll has strong workflow rules and meets general processing requirements, they make everything else so painful, therefore one could never recommend them. It would be like telling someone it's okay to cross a bridge that you know could collapse any moment and that you know is no longer maintained.

Cons

Assigned customer reps - unresponsive or not timely in responses until escalations. Paychex's lack of technology understanding - every time they upgrade they do not test what the impact to customer use and all their products. They had a big upgrade in late December 2015, their system was not accessible from early morning until the evening (end of year!). Multiple email and calls yielded no information. Finally at 4pm we get an email that they were experiencing problems and would be back live shortly. Who does that?
While learning center is a nice to have, spent an hour giving feedback and nothing changed, e.g., the CA Manager Anti- Sexual harassment training is 2.5 hours all in one shot. Not standard for training needs - asked them to break into 4 modules so it would not be daunting to busy leaders....crickets.

Better than the competition, and it's secure

This system was preferred before switching to ADP, however their cost at the time resulted in us switching to ADP

Pros

I like the fact they require two factor authentication. Their customer service used to be good and is still decent compared to ADP. Their system can be fully customized for reports and coding purposes. Their reporting is much better than ADP

Cons

Their support has gone down hill in the last year in addition to their pricing is about 20% higher than ADP on most items. Lacks an employee portal standard on all plans

Paychex Flex // Manage Your Workforce

Paychex Flex allows our company to finalize payroll easily for our weekly checks. Employees are able to view their paystubs the day before the check hits. Discrepancies are easily solved.

Pros

Ease of use: Manager login allows user to view and edit timecards of employees. Correct errors made by employees and finalize timecards for payroll. Layout of website is very user friendly and easy to find what is needed.

Cons

The scroll of "Clock In" through "Clock Out" should not have moving icons, as it causes some employees to click the incorrect punch.

I find Paychex Flex very easy to use. The app is great and very convenient.

I love the ability to access my paychecks remotely as well as change my deductions at my convenience.

Pros

The ability to use the system from my smart phone is amazing. Just before I left for vacation I changed my deduction, unfortunately due to user error I had them deduct too much money from my pay check leaving me with a lot less than I expected. In a different environment I would have had to wait until I returned home the change the setting and therefore leaving my next paycheck with the same deduction. With the app I was able to adjust the deduction properly and my next check was the amount I was expecting.

Cons

The feature to submit you time off is missing an important function. It does not give the user the ability to see what has been requested until the request has been approved. It's very inconvenient for someone who's manager isn't monitoring the queue on a daily basis to approve their requests.

pricing should be better

Help save me money on my payroll fees, which is getting a bit much for only 3 employees soon to be only 2. I think I could get others to use Paychex but they freak out when I tell them how much is the payroll fee is.

Pros

Paychex has been great. It was a hard start, just because New Mexico is weird but Paychex and the state finally got it all worked out. All papers are always filled out perfect that our sent to government. Everyone is so nice

Cons

Pricing on payroll keeps going up and up every year. I tried getting my employees monthly to save money but they said they would quit. :( There should be a better invoice charge for less than 5 employees cuz in 2 weeks I will only have 2 employees and will be paying the same for invoice charge. And one other big thing is that for the last 5 payrolls I HAVE TO CALL IN. This is getting frustrating cuz all the specialist says is that is his too busy and paychex is short handed to call ALL clients. REALLY?? I pay and have to remember to call my 3 lonely number in. Because of these 2 major things, I am starting to consider calling ADP to see how much their fees are. I am a small women disabled business. So I need what any money I can. I really love Paychex it is just these 2 major things that might make me switch companies.

Easy to use; report friendly; customized views

User friendly and easy to manage for specific needs.

Pros

My favorite aspect of this software was the visability of all my employees on one screen. I could adjust time from same screen and double click to get into the detailed information about an employee. You could set up schedules and with the linking of the fingerprint clock it worked perfectly.

Cons

Manually change times unless you wanted the clock in and out times to be static otherwise you could create a behind the scene scenario for punches.