Namely

Pros

Namely is a great human resource management system. We are a tech firm, and the platform has received nothing but praise from our developers. Our HR services are now more streamlined than ever thanks to the intuitive reporting and various modules that allow us to devote more time to strategic rather than administrative tasks.

Cons

The months-long process of finalizing API feeds has slowed down the processing of layoffs and new hiring with their perks with our many partners. The resolution of this issue will also simplify our situation.

Pros

I appreciate how quick and easy it is to check my benefits and salary. Leave of absence requests can also be submitted. The onboarding procedure at Namely is streamlined. It's useful for maintaining legal conformity. The payroll system I use has a very responsive customer service team.

Cons

There are sometimes too many hoops to jump through and paperwork to submit before a desired change can be implemented. For instance, the system required us to acquire and present an authorization letter of the IRS in order to change the company name. For some reason, filing taxes under the new name wasn't good enough.

Pros

Super easy to use, great UI, have had no issues so far

Cons

To be honest, I have ran into no issues so far on Namely

Pros

When we started out, we had an 80% great implementation team, and the only part that was lacking was payroll. Well, 2+ years later the *only* think going well is payroll, but issues still exist that we told them about *at implementation*. So what do I like best? Literally just our Payroll Admin. She is fantastic and does a terrific job.

Cons

Things were bad with Namely, then they were acquired by a benefits brokerage and the tech has definitely taken a backseat. Simple things like LOA administration are not even built into the tooling, and their support is a mess. After 2+ years, we finally have a dedicated rep, and he is trying, but their team doesn't even know their own tech. I asked a question about a feature that *should* be necessary in expense reimbursement, for audit compliance. Their support said it didn't exist. I found it buried in the back end *by accident* two weeks later. That does not inspire confidence.

Pros

Its affordable price, full customer support and tools to comply with laws makes Namely my best choice. Namely also impressed me with its modern, no-frills interface which made it easy to complete HR tasks like running payroll or requesting feedback with a few clicks.

Cons

Lacks internal communication features. Also, it has limited reporting and analytics functionality.

Pros

Namely is far better than Paychex, which we used previously. All the necessary functionality is there, and it serves its purpose.

Cons

Although miles better than paychex, Namely leaves a lot to be desired from an employee user experience. The portal is not intuitive to navigate, the functionality for performance reviews is basic, and overall I find myself needing to reach out to HR often for help navigating the platform.

Pros

The customer service is outstanding and can't complain about it. From the end user's perspective, it is great to see all the information in one place, such as benefits, changes over time in benefits and PTO, payroll, and birthdays, etc.

Cons

Could not create an organizational chart, and the reporting does not meet our needs due to our more complex structure.

Pros

It has a great range of tools for hr management, especially tracking the leave or vacation time of employees. It also makes reports collecting all this data. You can also manage performance reviews.

Cons

The API provided by Namely has limited customisations for developers as well as rate limits. If you don't have experience working with such softwares, it can be difficult at first to understand all the functionalities of the interface.

Pros

Once set up, Namely is very easy to use and has a very friendly interface.

Cons

No issues so far. Some submenus could be better arranged, specially in the goal settings section.

Pros

Namely has been a powerful payroll management tool.
The features of Namely are brilliant.

Cons

I do not dislike Namely.
Namely has been dependable.

Pros

It's easy to use and has all the information we need easily accessible in one spot.

Cons

Sometimes things are not in the tab I would think they are in.

Pros

I enjoyed using Namely because the interface was intuitive and all documents and information were easy to find.

Cons

I truthfully didn't have any issues using Namely. I feel that out of all of the HR/employee platforms I've used Namely is the simplest option. Everything you need is accessible and easy to find, and the platform isn't overly complicated compared to some competitor platforms.

Pros

Was very easy to use from an interface standpoint and they had some good built in community options

Cons

This was a highly innovative product when we began using it but 4 years in the product never innovated and their support completely fell apart. Their pricing was dramatically higher than the rest of the market for a product that was behind competitors

Pros

In comparison to other all-in-one HRIS systems, the interface is a lot more friendly. It marries the concept of social media newsfeeds with HR, allowing employees to comment on each other's birthdays and anniversaries. This gives HR an opportunity to engage employees with a fresh approach to benefits, payroll, and compliance.

Cons

I'm unsure of the experience of other customers, but the concept of Namely never took hold for our organization. Beginning at implementation, the Namely team was disorganized and unstable. Implementation was scheduled to wrap up October 1 and wasn't completed until January. During that time, Namely's implementation team experienced turnover 3 times, each time having to reset our implementation schedule. Information was missed, uploaded incorrectly, recreated, etc... They missed the ACA filing deadline and we had to work with an outside vendor with additional costs. They filed our taxes incorrectly and this still has not been resolved. On the benefits side, the agent assigned to our team miscalculated the rates from the plan we chose. According to the rates on the spreadsheet, we chose this particular carrier because it seemed these were the best rates and value. We had our open enrollment meetings and an employee pointed out that the numbers were incorrect, that she would be paying up some amount more per month. We had the agent resend us the sheet, we broke down the formulas, and identified the incorrect formula. Thankfully, our agent forgot to submit our enrollment form and we missed the deadline with the carrier. The integration with Adobe Sign has never been successful, so we have not had a single successful Onboarding through Namely. Instead of fixing glitches in the systems, they have built around them which makes it less intuitive (ex. build a new hire's profile including payroll info, send the onboarding packet, then after the new hire starts, go back into the profile to add the payroll group. When I asked why we weren't able to add the payroll group while we are adding payroll info at the start, they explained the glitch.) Compared to other systems, reports have a long way to go. Most come back blank after being ran. We have experienced more turnover in Namely's account managers. With all of the errors and issues we have needed to remedy, we simply did not have time to encourage use of the system. The time off app crashes, so we have lost engagement in the system. Rather than risk any further damage to the organization, we have implemented BambooHR (which is wonderful) and now let Namely sit silently in the background. It has been costly and frustrating, for the admin as well as the employees.

Pros

Namely is easy to navigate for the admins and our employees. The social aspect that everybody can share on the dashboard is great. Payroll service is also very satisfactory. Customer service improved from an year ago. We have received fast and helpful responses to our inquiries. Benefits management in the system is also intuitive. We had smooth last Open Enrollment.

Cons

One of the features that I wish to improve is the Namely Time reporting. Majority of our employees are hourly so when we are looking for reporting on the hours worked the reports are not robust and involves lots of time cleaning to get to the information you need. PTO tracking for hourly and salary and reporting it could be better and less confusing.
Another feature I wish to improve is the Namely Benefits as a broker. We had signed up previously but then ended up with another broker as many errors occurred in our benefits management and lack of commutation with our broker. File feed management during open enrollment could improved also.

Alternatives Considered

Pros

Namely is used as our HRIS and payroll system. I has an onboarding module that was incredibly helpful in digitizing our entire onboarding system and allowing all the info to flow into HRIS and payroll. The EE review feature has also streamlined our review process

Cons

The implementation required heavy lifting to present our data into a Namely prescribed spreadsheets. I wished there were better mapping that would have required more on Namely's part. (2) some of the place holding features that exist in payroll are not available on the HRIS side. Ex: if I want to view deductions for many EEs I can go the deduction location and click through and easily view one EEs info after another. If I want to do the same within HRIS I cannot. So there are many, many clicks required to accomplish the same task.

Pros

I liked that this was a one-stop-shop for all things HR and payroll. Functionality was easy and entire platform was intuitive.

Cons

The price. As with anything, good service comes at a premium. At least we got what we pay for.

Pros

Namely is simply a great platform for HR, Payroll, and benefits management within the organizational framework, as it helps to create better workplaces with varying functionality to adapt in small to mid-size businesses and comply with different regulations at work.

Cons

No particular downsides of the software. Sometimes, I got a problem syncing employee's data to Namely. The API call is not worth handled by the application and keeps me disconnected. Hope this would be solved in the next update.

Pros

Before my company started using Namely, we were submitting our time-off requests on paper and routing through multiple mailboxes for approvals. We did not have a reliable and convenient system for managing our leave accrual or communicating with busy managers about PTO requests. Now, all of that information is at our fingertips, approvals are a breeze, and it's easier for managers to keep track of all of their direct reports' schedules. Namely also allows us to view our pay stubs and benefits information at any time, and complete our annual open enrollment, all within the software. I would highly recommend the service to any organization looking to improve its efficiency for HR processes.

Cons

At our company, employees accrue comp time for working weekend events throughout the year. Namely does not allow us to enter that comp time in a formal system that is tracked electronically. Instead, we keep track of it on our own, and when we enter PTO requests as "comp time for XYZ event", it is on the honor system. Not a huge complaint, but would be nice if we could track that piece of our PTO the same way we can vacation time, sick time, etc.

Pros

As an HRIS Namely is as good as it gets. After using many other platforms in the past, I can say that Namely provides an easy to use platform that works out of the box but offers a great deal of customization to fit your workflows. They are constantly releasing new features and improvements that are visible and useful with a support staff that is always ready to help.

Having HRIS, Payroll and Benefits in one place and dedicated client rep and dedicated benefits rep is definetely hard to beat.

Cons

Integration between payroll and HRIS is a work in progress that still needs work. I am confident they will continue to improve it moving forward.

Pros

Love that it is so customizable and I can add whatever data fields I need and the majority of these data fields are reportable (the reporting feature on pretty much any field is incredibly helpful for us). Namely listens to its customers and continuously adds features that address pain points.

Cons

These aren't cons per se but they are pain points for us: as wonderful as the customizability in adding data fields is, the HRIS is kind of basic in terms of functionality that just make sense - for example data flowing from the HRIS to the payroll system (only some of it actually does), terminations, rehires and benefit enrollment, not being able to edit onboarding templates (need to copy the template, edit and then create vs. just making edits to a current one) ...

Pros

I love the payroll function for Namely. It is user friendly, accurate, and reliable. I also love working with a dedicated payroll rep each payroll cycle to help make things run smooth and efficiently!

Cons

There are some missing features on Namely, like the ability to have recurring monthly deductions versus deductions each check. I would also like to see some improvements to the performance management system.

Pros

-Excellent customer support.
-One stop solution for HRIS, Payroll, and Benefits.
-Very customizable for different use cases.
-Constant and reliable product updates and roadmap.

Cons

-Document storage is not robust
-While the tool is very customizable, it is a slight learning curve to master the smaller details.

Pros

We are a non-profit organization that works seasonal. Most of our employees are retired and have challenges using different technology, but with Namely they are able to adapt to our new system fairly quickly. We like how the system is user-friendly for both admin and user side.

Cons

There are some reporting options that are not available for admin, but I was able to obtain the reports that I needed through the service team.

Pros

The user experience is simple and easy to navigate.

Cons

The build out for open enrollment and feeds is extremely lengthy and pricey.

Pros

Namely is easy to navigate, can easily be accessed anywhere, and in my experience, has a small amount of website issues. It's a hub you utilize daily when employed with a company, and a platform you can still access after you've switched jobs. It was very helpful when filing 2022 taxes even though my new company doesn't utilize Namely.

Cons

The only feature I remember having issues with was not being able to go back and edit PTO time after the scheduled PTO time period had passed. For example, if i had requested 8 hours of PTO but only took 6, I was unable to edit the next day. My manager would have to completely delete the request, and i'd have to create a new one.

Pros

Very simple to use, simple to teach employees how to use, simple to teach managers how to performance manage with. Good integration with Okta providing a really slick and polished onboarding and offboarding loop.

Cons

May not be as feature rich as things like ADP or Trinet when it comes to time tracking and part time employment, but nowhere near as infuriating to use.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Namely

Pros

is a good tool for US companies. if you have a worldwide entity, better choose another global friendly with more possibilites.

Cons

it does not have a good personalization and usability, is not intuitive and very basic

Pros

The social feature on the home page was great. I loved how our team was able to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries when they logged on.

Cons

When I used it Namely was new to the industry and had some growing pains they went through. Re-orgs and misses on design layout. Was still happy to use it on a daily basis though!

Pros

Easy to use, very intuitive and fun to use!

Cons

Another platform to navigate, but overall we really like it!

Pros

Good tool, easy to configure and simple to use, with excellent features and very responsive customer service.

Cons

Nothing particularly inconvenient, just thinking about improving a few aspects of the configuration system

Pros

The best thing about Namely is that it is user friendly and the reports are valuable. We have easy access to our resource section where we can post any policy, brochure, company or benefit related information.

Cons

Could be more intuitive, especially going back and forth between all the modules. Also, I think some features could use more customization.

Pros

I love the interface. It’s easy to use and user-friendly. It’s a one-stop solution for all your HR needs. Performance review and onboarding process is also very smooth.

Cons

There is room for improvement of reporting feature/performance review. Even the tax feature can be made more user-friendly.

Pros

We decided to go with Namely because it worked well with Germany, and we are an international company. It is unfortunately very difficult to find a product that works well in both Germany and US, since Germany is not a 1st tier country (like Spain, France, England). Germany also has very specific compliance and protocols in place. This was a number 1 feature to us, as well as the price point.

Namely also had relatively simple reporting, we were always able to get what we needed.

Cons

Performance reviews were quite bad (from both an administrative and user standpoint), no ability to plan compensation within the system, difficult to set up work flows and difficult customer service (not able to just chat with someone, needed to email and create a ticket and wait for a response), organization chart was not set up well, work flows were not as simple as they could have been (ie a workflow for managers to be involved when someone was onboarded - had to be entirely manual).

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Namely

Pros

We really like the onboarding tool for our new hires. There are definitely benefits to this system to streamline your process. For the most part, Namely provides an easy to use platform for our new hires to upload and provide their information. I really like the option of the e-signature which allows us to send out documents to individuals or company wide to be signed. Those documents are then available on the employees profile. We like the analytics which allow us to look at a variety of data points about our employees. We are preparing to add Namely benefits to our package and are hopeful that this will allow us to increase our employee experience satisfaction.

Cons

We did not have a great experience with implementation and felt that we were not prepared for our go live. Our original Customer Support person struggled with many of our questions and concerns and we were left to figure a good number of work arounds on our own. We are hopeful that the new system for getting help support will be better for us. We are frequently looking for ways to work around the limitations of the Namely software. The Namely community of users has been helpful to our company.

Pros

It's pretty. There is really no other pro.

Cons

HRIS:
No proper Leave tracking for maternity/paternity, jury duty, bereavement leave ETC
There's no way to see a PTO accrual history
Employees are not alerted when their address format is invalid
Only one set of holidays - UK sees all US Holidays
When reporting structure changes you have to make MANUAL changes in Namely Payroll IN ADDITION to doing a mass upload in the HRIS
Doesn't auto track history of Job titles
Need to manually assign PTO to employees not automatic
Leave approval amends, not sent
Lack of point in time reporting
Does not auto assign pay group based on the type of pay entered

Payroll:
You can't retract partial payments
Had to print W2s and sort through employees that electronically consented and send out those that did not
"We have to do all of the calculations manually when there is a comp change in the middle of a pay period "
Invalid addresses prevent us from proceeding with payroll
We are unable to easily add "time and a half" for employees who work on holidays
Takes weeks to add a new department code
Tax withholdings do not flow seamlessly from HRIS to Payroll
If we need to Mark an employee as FICA tax exempt we need have to reach out to Namely as only they can do this
Employee ID do not flow over to HRIS
Manually have to add holiday pay for employees does not flow into payroll
You have to manually exclude employees from payroll once terminated

Time and attendance:
Time card entry is tedious
PTO doesn't communicate to Payroll
You have to man

Pros

The ease of use, customizable reports in format pdf or Excel, and it even looks appealing to work in.

Cons

I have to manually input PTO for new hires, or when someone moves to next tier of years of service. The numerous email alerts you get for any employee change request (ie: address; title change; Raise, etc...) gets annoying, yet to confirm that I sent off the payroll submission, I don't receive any.

Pros

The software flows very well and links everything so it's easy to onboard and offboard employees. The profiles store employee data efficiently and the reporting and analytics is very useful.

Cons

There are many inconsistencies or illogical set ups that make the software wonky at times. For example, titles are considered an "object" rather than text. So you have to add every title manually in the backend. THEN, only on the onboarding form can you search titles. Everywhere else you must search the alphabetized list manually for your title. This is just a minor inconvenience. A more major one is how salaries are handled. When inputting a salary for payroll you have to calculate out how much each check should be and input that in addition to listing the annual salary. This might be fine if every other form or field didn't calculate it automatically for you. This seems like a major oversight and really puts into perspective how this software was developed. And that is, many teams working on their own parts without any formal cohesion of functionality. Honestly, it feels like an intern built the whole onboarding piece (which is the function you will use the most).

Alternatives Considered

Pros

It is a very convenient system to make the HRM more easy & effective. It helps to manage the system remotely & sync all the information instantly. The software is very easy to implement & has a great User interface.

Cons

The software is already a great build but sometimes it becomes clumsy to manage all the data at once.

Pros

We have a ver detailed and multi step performance review process, Namely allowe dus to build the ratings and concepts for our processes. The abilit ti assign multiplie review writers, the steps of approval and the reminders are all key in our operations.

Cons

Our account contacts and the way we communicate has changed at least 3 times in the past year. Sometimes i feel like there is a push to work with customer service only in their prefered way, if you send an e-mail instead of a case or if you mark something urgent that they don't think is urgent.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Namely

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Namely

Pros

I do like the Facebook look and feel for the main page for ESS. Articles and help guides easily to upload to system.

Cons

Where to begin? So many to list....
Hold times for client services are crazy. I guess b/c the company is in financial trouble the staff is bare. get ready for TWO plus hours of hold times to get help!!! You can barely ever get a hold of a live person. You have to create a "call back" and list three times you want a call back...but it is within their hours. Then they send an invite for when "they" are free...not the client. System cannot track correctly FMLA or other PTO times. System cannot do imputed income on GTL or other imputed items per pay period like ADP, Paychxex, Ceridian, Workday, SAP and all other modern systems can do easily.

The software cannot do gross ups easily, manual checks are a fiasco. Whoever designed this system did NOT have background in payroll or HRIS. Manual checks cannot be ran with the regular payroll. It has to be done as a "separate payroll".

Pros

Payroll setup and management was simple to setup and run for each pay period.

Cons

The service was not reliable for tax preparation, and failed to submit our state taxes in some states.

Pros

User Interface is simple and somewhat easy to navigate from a visual standpoint. HRIS side of the platform is nice. Reporting tool, while simple and one-dimensional, is easy to configure. Uploads and onboarding are simple.

Cons

When it comes to robust, enterprise-level tools and customization, this system is clearly lacking. The HRIS and Payroll side are fragmented and poorly connected. The two systems talk to each other poorly with common fields that are not truly linked. This forces the client to constantly audit both portals and update manually to ensure data integrity within a singular platform.

Run into bugs and validation glitches daily, which are hard to resolve through self-service. Namely "gatekeeps" much functionality on their end so clients must email the service team for many requests. Customer support can vary greatly depending on the representative. Some are fast and informative, while others will completely ignore your service request, forcing you to track cases and follow up.

Non-Intuitive Benefits Enrollments, ACA, no mailing of W-2s come year end. Ensuring tax compliance is a daily struggle. Lack of audit trails and historical data for many fields is a compliance nightmare.

Pros

I absolutely LOVE Namely. The HRIS is very easy to use, manage and creates a great experience not only for admins but our employees as a whole. Everything is seamless to navigate and it is honestly an HR professional's dream come true.

Cons

I wish the reporting aspects were a little bit more straightforward to use / understand how to create and do more analytics and data pulling. Overall, it's great and something I'm sure the helpdesk community would be happy to set up a session to delve into more 1-1.

Pros

It's like Facebook so it makes it familiar and user friendly to those who have Facebook accounts.

Cons

1. Every time I go to onboard a new hire there is a client-wide issue with the system and it's with "Engineering" to fix.

2. You don't receive communication on when there are client-wide system issues or when they are fixed. You just have to keep inputting the same information over and over until the one time you click and it miraculously works!

3. The migration from one system to Namely has taken from October 10, 2018 until present (3/5/19) to complete. The implementation team is genuinely nice, however, they do not answer your questions, respond correctly (if at all to emails), voicemails and you get a lot of "unfortunately the system does not do that..." during and after the time you've purchased the system. The Sales Team way over promises and the Implementation and Support Teams way under deliver in service. Truly one of the worst beatings I've experienced and I've been in HR for over 11 years and have done numerous system migrations.

4. Deductions are made and you don't know if the funds were transferred electronically to HSA's or to the Attorney General's office for child support payments until an employee contacts you with an issue.

5. I'm ending here by saying..... SAVE YOUR NERVES AND DOLLARS AND DO NOT PURCHASE THIS PRODUCT!!!!!

Pros

We love the Onboarding, it has saved us so much time. On employee's first day, 99% is done. That's amazing.

Cons

Con is that not all of Namely HRIS info carries over to Namely Time.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Namely

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Namely

Pros

What I like most is the ease of use for our employees. It is a very intuitive system to use and an employee's profile, performance management, PTO and onboarding tasks are visible to them.

Cons

What I like least about this software is that we have brought up questions, multiple times, about performance management system generated responses that do not make sense and they have never been fixed. You will receive an email that says "your approval required" even though the text below it says the review is incomplete.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Namely

Pros

It is a straightforward and easy to use software, the user interface is the simplest one in the market of HR Management tools. It is a good example of the Integration between Payroll and HR Systems, and might be useful in the Linkbuilding bussiness with a few enhancements and addons.

The Customer Service is great and the people involved are very kind and competent.

Cons

The customization of the processes is not easy to implement, and tends to be tiresome, and in many cases it slows down the navigation.

It is currently lacking a proper auto-sync feature.

It does not have the E-signature feature for current employees.

The performance management module has a complicated nature.

There could be a better integration between the HR and the Payroll modules. As I explained in the Pros, it is easy to use but it could be highly improved in terms of pragmatic functionalities over the user friendly interface.

Pros

Product is easy to navigate and use. Customer service is top notch

Cons

I would like to see the ability to use more complex filters for reporting. Sometimes I must download into excel to do additional filtering on the same column

Pros

I think the ease of use for all users was a main factor. Keeps the team engaged, connected and really enjoy the ability to manage PTO all in one spot.

Cons

Think sometimes there are a couple of suggestions by a minority that get a lot of attention and maybe it isn't something that needed to get focused on right away or maybe more discussion so the functionality works better for all.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Namely

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to Namely