Paycor Review: Is It Right for Your Business?

Paycor is a payroll and HR solution that works well for companies wanting all of their software in one system. It provides tax and compliance support, onboarding, time tracking, and tools to help retain employees. Its plans are tiered for growing companies, and pricing starts at $99 monthly. A free three-month trial is available if you’d like to try it before committing to a plan.

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What We Recommend Paycor for

Paycor ranked in our top picks for payroll software. It provides powerful HR tools for companies that want integrated payroll and HR services. It offers basic payroll and tax processing with its small business product and more advanced HR tools in its human capital management (HCM) product like compliance support, recruiting and onboarding, training and retention, and reporting and analytics.

Paycor is best for:

• Businesses with complex payment processing needs: Paycor can support a wide variety of payment processing functions such as managing garnishments, child support, 401(k), benefits, and tax deductions. It also provides a dedicated certified HR professional you can consult with if you sign up for its Complete plan.
• Companies with 50+ employees: After growing past the 50-employee mark, companies have a bigger need for the integrated HR and payroll support that Paycor provides. Automated time tracking and ACA reporting for health benefits are essential and come fully integrated into Paycor’s system.
• Companies needing to upgrade from a manual payroll system as they increase hiring: Growing companies can save time and effort by using its HCM suite that comes with automated recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training tools. It also supports online signatures for enrollments, taxes, and employment agreements.

When Paycor Would Not Be a Good Fit

• Budget-conscious businesses with fewer than 40 employees needing advanced features: Paycor’s advanced HR tools aren’t available in its Small Business plans, which aligns more with costs suitable for budget-conscious businesses. Tools such as 401(k) provider integration, e-signatures, HR experts, onboarding, and 1099 support are available in the higher-tiered plans, whereas some payroll providers include these in their lowest-cost plan. For more options, check out our best payroll services guide.
• Small operations that only need basic payment processing: Companies just starting with only a handful of employees may be able to find a lower-priced payroll processing service. This service starts at $99 regardless of the number of employees or users. Check out our free payroll software guide for more affordable options.
• Businesses with international employees: Paycor does not support global operations. If you have global employees or are planning to expand overseas, check out our top picks for international payroll services.

Looking for software with a greater focus on HR? Read our guide to the best HRIS/HRMS software for small businesses to find a solution that’s right for you.

Paycor Overview

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Paycor Pricing and Features

Paycor offers four plans: Small Business Basic, Essential, Complete, and Mid-Market. The plans range from $99 to $199 per month. The Mid-market plan, which includes a majority of the more advanced HR features, requires potential customers to submit their information to request a customized quote. The core of every plan is payroll processing. The higher-tiered plans include more HR features.

If a company exceeds its subscription, overage fees may be charged—fees are charged per active employee. For example, suppose you have the Basic plan and exceed the number of active employees in your agreement. You’ll be charged $10 per month, per employee plus more for additional services such as $5 for adding them to Paycor Time and another $2.75 for including them in Scheduling Pro. You may need to update your subscription as the company grows to control costs.

Paycor offers a comprehensive list of HR, time tracking, and payment processing solutions. Depending on your needs, you can choose to utilize recruiting and onboarding, talent development, benefits and ACA, training, time tracking, payroll and tax processing, reporting and analytics, surveys, or compensation planning software. These tools are all available online and mobile apps are available for employees and admins.

Core Human Resources

Larger companies can better manage their employees using Paycor’s Human Capital Management Software. The core of the HCM software is payroll, HR, onboarding, analytics, mobile tools, and reporting. Additional features available include talent management, benefits support, time and scheduling, and learning management.

The core HR tools include support for helping HR managers and leaders promote employee engagement, manage benefits, ensure compliance, create profiles and org charts, and automate open enrollment periods. Numerous HR reports and customized reports are also available. Paycor even includes reports to help track employee trends such as turnover, pay equity, and benefits enrollment. All employee data is securely stored online and accessible from anywhere using controlled permissions.

To help attract and retain quality employees, it includes compensation plan support. HR managers can run “what-if” scenarios to test the expected impact of compensation, bonus, merit increases, and benefit changes. The data also helps the company ensure pay equity and market competitiveness.

Paycor allows you to view data in a variety of ways, including charts, graphs, standard report format, etc.

Payroll Processing

Payroll processing and tax support are the primary functions that Paycor provides. These tools help HR and accounting teams accurately process payroll with the support of time-tracking, automatic tax withdrawal and payments, benefit and garnishment deduction processing, and payment processing.

The employee tools log all types of work, including hourly and salary employment. It administers payroll payments by direct deposit or pay cards. It also provides workers’ compensation support. However, it doesn’t offer a PEO or global payment services.

You can choose to have employee work hours automatically populate, especially if they’re salary, and you can manually enter or overwrite them when necessary.

Time Tracking and Scheduling

Companies that pay by the hour or need to track billable hours tend to find Paycor’s time system useful. Employees can clock their hours using mobile, web, time clock, or kiosk technologies. Time tracking features also include managing time-off requests, tracking overtime hours, managing compliance restrictions, and creating digital schedules, great for companies with sporadic and unpredictable work hours.

To help limit buddy clocking and time entry errors, Paycor provides biometric or fingerprint readers. It also supports PIN and proximity badge punching. And geo-tracking is available if needed.

Recruiting and Onboarding

Companies that are actively hiring and striving to market their company as a great place to work will appreciate Paycor’s recruiting and onboarding tools. These tools help streamline recruiting processes and help to ensure applicants enter through an organized system that’s consistent.

Recruiting tools include applicant tracking, job posting, candidate texting, remote hiring tools, resume searching and parsing, and automated offer letters. You can brand career pages, run employee referral award programs, and process e-signatures.

Paycor’s onboarding tools help make a good impression on new hires and automate the onboarding process. Onboarding features help HR teams gather compliance documentation such as hiring documents and tax information with minimal resource hours. Most onboarding procedures can be automated and are accessible from anywhere.

You can use Paycor’s software to send direct text messages to applicants .

Talent Development

Paycor includes talent development tools to help you keep your employees engaged and progressing in their careers. The management platform supports automated workflows to support processes such as one-on-one meetings, feedback-communication loops, performance reviews, and goal tracking.

Paycor includes pre-built templates, calendar syncing, survey support, and trackable action items to help managers and employees develop performance and improvement plans. It also tracks company-level and department goals.

Paycor Ease of Use

• Online and mobile access for admins and employees
• Simple to use with minimal training
• Easy to upgrade as small companies grow
• Telephone and email support for all plans
• Helpful online articles, guides, and videos

Most users find Paycor simple to use, even with minimal training. We found the interface easy to navigate and well-organized. Automation features save admins and employees time, while templates and workflows help streamline routine processes such as onboarding, payment processing, and benefits enrollment. Branding features allow you to easily customize the software.

Paycor and its partners provide a wide range of compatible solutions, such as background check services, expense management software, and payment solutions. Partners include:

• Background screening: GoodHire, Assurehire, EBI, ESR, and Sterling
• Benefits: WageWorks, Paytient, and RestoreResilience
• Expense Management: Center and Certify
• Global Payroll: Globalization Partners and CloudPay
• Job Boards: Indeed, LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter
• Pay Solutions: Netspend, Instant Pay, and Rabid Disbursements
• POS: Altametrics and Hubworks
• Rewards: Ignite
• Retirement: Alliance Pension, American Funds Premier Group, America’s Best, Ameritas, Ascensus, Blue Star, Truist, Fidelity, and more
• Time Management: On Shift, ZUUS, and Deputy
• Workers’ Compensation: AmTrust, Guard, and Travelers

This is an abbreviated list. You can find the entire partner list on the Paycor website.

Top Paycor Alternatives

If you’re not sure Paycor is right for you, see how it compares with our top HR software for small businesses. And if you need help choosing, follow our step-by-step guide on selecting the right payroll solution.

What Users Think About Paycor

Many users relate that they like the payroll processing features and that the software is easy to use. Employees like that they can sign into their shifts using their mobile phones. Users say that it easily tracks data, such as vacation time, sick hours, employee information, schedules, attendance, and benefits.

Repeatedly, many expressed similar complaints about Paycor and their frustrations with customer service. It seems to have gone downhill with users experiencing long wait and response times since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. Many comments before that time period raved about Paycor’s service, so timing your sign-up and assessing your needs will be helpful.

Some users said they had a difficult time reaching their dedicated support person or the person they reached didn’t know the software, while others stated that they communicated with a knowledgeable support person.

At the time of publication, Paycor reviews earned the following scores on popular user review sites:

• Capterra: 4.4 out of 5 based on 1,946 reviews
• G2: 4 out of 5 based on 385 reviews
• TrustRadius: 6 out of 10 based on 305 reviews

When reading through user reviews, we noticed these trends:

Bottom Line

Paycor provides easy-to-use payroll features that grow with companies as they hire and employ a larger workforce. It provides the features HR admins and managers require to recruit, hire, and onboard new employees systemically while also training and maintaining current employees. And, to keep the company attractive to quality employees, it includes compensation and equality tools. The only features you may find missing is a PEO and global payment services.

If you want to learn more about Paycor’s features, you can sign up for a demo and a free three-month trial.

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