So far so good
So far so good. One thing I’m sure of that ADP is terrible. Who knows maybe my expectations are just very low but I think Paychex so far has been a needed change.
Jasmine Stout - Customer Service
I spoke to Jasmine Stout on Customer Service Chat and boy did she help me. She was professional, dealt with all my questions, and just did such an amazing job. She taught me a lot about the system and how to work it. She is such a life saver. I feel like I just graduated Paychex school!
"Great place to learn the ropes"
I worked at Paychex full-time (Less than a year)
Pros
flexibility to work on projects, tool wise and time wise. no micro management. great products to clients.
Cons
politics even in a small team of 5, for promotion or everything else. narrow path to growth if you want to stay long.
Advice to Management
n/a. they are well established, won't listen, won't change.
Not great but not horrible
Began using this week about 3 weeks ago.
The company I recently get hired for uses
Paychex as their 3rd party one-stop-shop.
Time cards / payrolls / sick / vacation hours / tax tops / and even External tools like FinFit.
As my experience has neither been horrible or great I’m neutral at this point because this app was only pushed upon me by my employers to get all Employees on one platform.
Hopefully this app gets some kind of universal integration with a majority of the banks. Such as Zelle to better see where it can serve a purpose in banking / finance
I have been happy with my experience…
I have been happy with my experience with paychex for several years. The turnover in payroll experts is something to be desired but we always seem to get over the bumps. However the insurance company they use is beyond intolerable. Imposable to deal with or contact. My license is noe on hold because I cannot get a WC certificate made out correctly. This is putting a unbearable financial strain on my business. And paychex is unwilling or unable to help me in this issue
Poor design. UI? Ha!
They clearly need to hire some UI designers. Entering receipts is painful on the desktop and not possible (as far as I can tell) on mobile. There is no decent way to create expenses once you have finally got a receipt in.
I have not found one bit of functionality where it is obvious what to do next.
Entering about 20 receipts from a 3 day trip took 2 hours. I've used well-designed sites where a similar task took 15 minutes.
If they even have a QA (Quality Assurance) staff they are not skilled and certainly not empowered to say when things are unacceptable.
Made several mistakes, extremely slow in response
While I was with them, they made several mistakes and were extremely slow in response. They missed filing for our L&I return for Q2 and Q3 2024 and then denied any responsibility. Their typical answer as" The typical response time is 30-45 business days, as notices are processed in the order they’re received."
To be fair, they eventually responded faster than the 30-45 day indicated--after I posted a one-star review here and shared it with them. They had failed to file several time while I was with them, it caused us lots of stress.
So, we transferred to a different payroll processor.
FECON. online
Never use this service, for whatever reason. My decision to fall, cost me a lot of money. A provided expert advice, research, and security c my title name measures to help navigate the world of digital assets.
Are there BETTER options for switching
I had a frustrating experience with Paychex due to poor customer service and unresponsive support. I decided to switch to a privately held payroll/HR company, and the difference has been remarkable. Their customer service is top-notch, treating every business with equal care, whether it's 5 or 50 employees. If you're looking for a better alternative, feel free to reach out to my rep at anthonyatnrutledge.com. He´s being great.
Paychex Flex/Representives
We use Paychex Flex for our payroll processing. I have had to request new reps several times as they are not responsive or know what they are doing when I ask questions. We pick up our payroll from a different location so it is important it processes timely. Our payroll not processing timely is a constant issue due to representatives are not available and/or do not put "Out of Office" responses when not in the office. Even when I have responded to someone it does not process. I usually have to call which defeats the purpose of Paychex Flex. I also requested our W-2's to be sent directly to us. I even confirmed this and they were still mailed to our employees. Since COVID-19 Paychex is not the same to the point we are considering moving payroll companies. Everyone has the excuse of not enough employees. We are short employees also but we still have customer needs to meet regardless. We have been with Paychex for over 10 years and it is not easy to move to another company but payroll is one of our priorities as a company as well.
Giving up on Paychex for payroll services
My small business has used Paychex for several years. This year we have been extremely dissatisfied and will be changing payroll companies. The company has not been following through with issues raised, are inconsistent with financial guidance, and are very inaccessible when trying to reach a customer service representative. I have spent over 30 minutes on hold and have left messages as well as emails that haven’t been answered appropriately.
In our company’s case
In our company’s case, I really can’t complain about payroll processing mistakes. There have been very few, and those minor, which is I why I couldn’t give you just one star in good conscience. Our entire negative experience has been apparently related to staffing issues. You apparently don’t have sufficient staff. Our company has had Paychex ever since I came aboard 22 years ago. For much of that time we had just one Payroll Specialist who was a pleasure to deal with, very dependable calling at or close to our set time. However, once covid started matters went noticeably downhill. We have had about 10 different specialists since then and about 2/3 of the times no one called us at all for our biweekly payroll, and when one calls the specialist, it is almost invariably voice mail that one receives. When I call you, the wait times are long, sometimes over a ½ hour of hold music. It just seems that you need to figure out how to obtain and retain more staff. Thank you for listening and hopefully considering.
Response time inadequate
Response time inadequate! Stay clear from their benefits and Cobra package. Have sent 4 emails requesting a response. It has now been 5 business days. 1st email was sent on Aug 30th. Still no response.
They are not a good source for smaller businesses.
Very disappointed in Paychex. They use to be a good company.
Not a Good Match for Small, New Companies
This might be a good company for a large corporation or highly knowledgeable, experienced clients but if you are just starting out, this is not the company to deal with. The process for signing up is disorganized and scattered. A simple checklist with what is required would be greatl Looking for a new company that understands new small businesses and will help walk us through all of this.
Save yourself some serious STRESS - Stay AWAY from Paychex!!
Total DISAPPOINTMENT AND STRESS!!! I liked their platform the best after vetting services when looking to establish the new payroll provider, but phew OMG what a disaster. Al was a great sales representative, professional, and patient. Unfortunately, that's where the thoughts of right decision made ended. Literally, do your business and clients a favor and recommend paying the extra for ADP or use the comparable service in Quickbooks, Intuit etc... Their communications and consumer handling are absolutely positively terrible. I thought this was going to be a great start for a new small business being established, but clearly I was deceived. Thanks Al for handling the setup and John for at least taking my call today and not giving me the run around on why I continue to receive invoice emails when the organization terminated my account. Your demeanor and professionalism at least allowed me to walk away from this experience calmly and with some hope for other departments within your organization outside of sales. 1 Star for AL and 1 Star for John from the payroll specialist department
Off To A Disappointing Start
I began with Paychex last month. The sales representative emphasized that, unlike other Payroll companies, I could easily reach my payroll specialist if there were questions or problems, or that someone else would be available if she couldn't be reached.
I received a form letter from my Paychex Specialist about 2 missing tax id #s. (One actually had been provided with the initial paperwork.) The other I hadn't ever previously needed before when filing. The letter stated: "Please send me documentation of your ID as soon as possible, but no later than 03/04/2022. If we do not receive the information by the due date, an automatic monthly fee of $25.00 per missing ID will be applied to your account. Our main goal is to obtain the missing tax agency IDs to process your tax payments and returns correctly and avoid charging you the fee. This charge is strictly to handle the additional requirements of processing returns without agency IDs." The State informed me it could take 2-3 weeks to process the application for the new id #.
When I tried to call my Payroll Specialist, it was forwarded to a someone else who didn't return my call. Finally, toward the end of the day, I reached a different extension and was put on hold for 35 minutes. The person I spoke with also didn't understand why I would be charged $50 on March 4. She assured me that the new tax id number wouldn't have to be provided until the end of March for the quarterly filing.
That same day I received an email saying my case had been reassigned to a different payroll specialist.
The experience was very frustrating and not at all in line with what I had been told I could expect if there were customer service issues.
Poor, unresponsive customer service
I am an employee of a company that uses PayChex so I am writing from that perspective, not how much money PayChex saves the company. I have had several issues and there is not a published phone support number so one is forced to use either chat or email. For chat, the individuals just use canned responses based on a keyword in your question. They have no other knowledge, cannot or will not forward you to the next level and will not provide a phone number or other way of getting answers.
As for email, that is ignored entirely. I had questions about the fields in enrolling in their 401K but they could only tell me general answers about a 401K which I did not need. I had an issue where the wrong state taxes were deducted and their response was there was nothing they could do.
So, they may be cheap and fine if there are no problems but it is a shoddy organization if there is a problem to be resolved. Even my company's intervention could not get someone to address the issues. If your only concern is a cheap solution, PayChex may be for you. If you care about your employees, hire a local high school student who could do a better job.
20 year Customer unfortunately
We've been a paychex customer for about 20 YEARS.
Every single week when I call in payroll the wait time before anyone answers is 20 minutes or more.
Almost every month the account gets put on an "accounts receivable hold" and I have to talk to someone in that department and find our cashed check receipt and give them the number and amount, then get put back on an extended hold to faintly be able to give someone our employees hours.
Paid $91.50 per check!
Update 2/16/21
Please read below but here's the update. I did contact the president of Paychex through an email asking "how are we doing?". I got immediately called and worked with a regional manager who reviewed the account. After explaining my situation I was made aware that my payroll specialist was running my payroll within 24 hours of my requested pay date. This generated a lot of extra fees. Some of them were refunded. I would say that if you have a small payroll of one or two people take the time to call Paychex sales and they'll give you a better rate. I did all of that and still my payroll specialist screwed up. The reason I have liked the service is the quarterly reporting, W2's and the on-line portal. Right now my account is on hold which would normally generate a monthly fee which Paychex waived for 6 months.
Original Post
In 2020 I ran 14 payroll checks with Paychex. The cost? At stunning $91.50 per check. The cost includes a year end final tax report/W2's. I got in touch with Paychex I was given a $300. refund.
I've been with Paychex 20 years with a number of businesses and employees. The company has changed. . I LOVED Paychex. Easy, easy, easy. Now I'll probably use Quickbooks.
Update: Paychex has put my account on hold with no charge for 6 months since I'm not running payrolls during Covid.
destroyed 30 years of loyalty
Edit/ reply to Paychex: since I can’t reply directly to Paychex I want to say that we have spoken with all possible leadership and that has gotten us nowhere. I also want to add that their automated response to all negative reviews does not help.
We’ve been with Paychex (originally Oasis) for nearly 30 years, and it has been a slow, frustrating decline ever since Paychex took over. What used to be a supportive, reliable relationship has turned into an absolute nightmare.
Customer service is almost nonexistent — it takes multiple calls and emails just to get basic questions answered, if at all. There’s no consistency, no follow-through, and zero sense of urgency. We’ve been passed around from rep to rep without ever getting real help.
Worse, their pricing has become outrageous. Fees have ballooned, and there’s no transparency in how they calculate what we owe. We strongly suspect we’ve been overcharged for state unemployment taxes and other employer costs, but getting a straight answer is nearly impossible.
We are a small, family-run business — the exact kind of client Paychex claims to support. But instead of helping us, they’ve taken advantage of our loyalty and made it clear that once you’re in, they stop trying.
We will be leaving Paychex as soon as our contract ends and will never return. We’re actively warning other local businesses to avoid them as well. There is absolutely no benefit to working with a giant payroll provider that treats small businesses like we’re disposable.