Paylocity offers a suite of integrated cloud-based payroll and human resources (HR) solutions. With a platform designed to automate workforce management, it can streamline HR processes—from hiring and payroll to benefits administration and performance monitoring. It’s ideal for midsize to large businesses looking for an all-in-one and mobile-friendly HR platform.
Paylocity works with you to create a custom package that fits your HR needs. You can start with its payroll solution and then upgrade your plan by adding modules for recruiting qualified candidates, capturing employee data, and tracking time and attendance. In our evaluation of the best HCM software, it got an overall rating of 3.42 out of 5.
Pros
- Efficient payroll and time-tracking tools
- Payroll solution includes automated expense reimbursement
- Wide range of HR solutions and integration options
- Global payroll services for over 100 countries (via Blue Marble)
Cons
- Pricing isn’t transparent (requires you to call for a quote)
- Its full-service HR and payroll platform can be pricey for small businesses
Supported Business Types | Midsize businesses and large enterprises that want integrated HR tools to handle the entire employee lifecycle |
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Free Trial | None, but you can request a free demo |
Pricing | Pricing is not published on its website; you have to contact Paylocity to discuss your HR needs and request a quote |
Standout Features |
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Ease of Use | Platform generally is easy to use but you need to have basic knowledge of HR processes, such as how to run payroll; there may be a slight learning curve depending on the number of Paylocity modules you get |
Customer Support |
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If you’re nearing the end of your payroll provider search and are ready to make a decision, check out our step-by-step guide to choosing the right payroll solution to ensure you have all your bases covered.
What We Recommend Paylocity For
- Midsize and large businesses that need an all-in-one HR software and strong customer support: Paylocity has a feature-rich platform that can handle all aspects of the employee lifecycle—from hiring and paying workers to managing performance reviews and learning sessions. You even get a dedicated account manager and support team who are solely responsible for your services.
- Companies with employees who work in the field and/or travel for work: Paylocity’s payroll module and mobile app come with an expense management tool that lets employees create and submit expense reports (managers can review and approve transactions) while on the go. Tracking employee attendance is also easy via the mobile app as it can record clock ins/outs and even comes with geofencing support.
- Growing companies with an HR professional who doesn’t have a lot of payroll experience: Paylocity brings a wealth of compliance support that HR managers who already have a full schedule can use to ensure payroll goes smoothly. Support is on-demand via phone and chat. Your HR manager will not have to go at it alone as with more do-it-yourself (DIY) software.
When to Use Something Else
- Small businesses looking for an HR and payroll solution with straightforward pricing: Paylocity’s pricing isn’t transparent. If you have a small business and a limited budget, check out our top picks for online payroll services—many provide payroll and essential HR tools at reasonable rates.
- Micro businesses or mom-and-pop stores: Paylocity is loaded with features that are beneficial for growing companies but might be overkill for businesses with only a handful of people. Also, its pricing structure is geared towards larger organizations, making it less cost-effective for very small businesses. Read our best payroll software guide to find options that are easier to use.
How Paylocity Compares With Top Alternatives
Best For | Paid Plan Starts at | Standout Features | Learn More | |
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| Businesses with field or remote workers | Custom priced |
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 | Tech-heavy businesses that need HR, payroll, and information technology (IT) tools | $8/user monthly |
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 | Small businesses looking for payroll and solid HR support | $49 per month + $6 per person per month |
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 | Companies in highly regulated industries | $10/user monthly |
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Paylocity’s pricing structure is based on the number of employees you have per month. However the exact pricing information isn’t readily available on its website, so you’ll have to contact the provider to request a demo and pricing details. It also doesn’t have a free trial or free version, which causes it to lose points furthermore. While it offers customizable and flexible plans that fit each business’s needs, it is not clear what features come with its standard package.
Paylocity’s suite of solutions helps users manage day-to-day HR administrative tasks more efficiently, allowing them to focus on other business projects. Its highly configurable platform that integrates payroll with other human capital management (HCM) applications gave it a high score in this category.
Here are some of Paylocity’s important functionalities.
You can simplify and streamline employee pay processing with Paylocity’s payroll solution. It comes with custom general ledgers (GLs), complex calculation reports, and preprocess pay registers for checking and verifying employee payrolls prior to finalizing pay runs. The provider also offers wage garnishment managed services and tax reporting services for filing federal, state, and local payroll taxes.
Expense management helps you reduce payroll errors, automate your processes, and scale easily. Paylocity understands this, thus providing you with expense management tools—a feature that similar providers, such as Rippling and Justworks, offer either as a paid add-on or via third-party software integration. Aside from automating the entire process of filing business expense claims, this tool simplifies the reimbursement process as it pulls all approved requests automatically and adds the amount to the employee’s payroll.
Paylocity lets you create, submit, approve, and track expense claims through its online platform and mobile app for iOS and Android devices. (Source: Paylocity)
Paylocity’s On Demand Payment functionality allows employers to offer their employees early access to a portion of their earned salary before the payday. This flexible payment model helps employees better manage unexpected expenses and reduce financial stress. Doing so improves employee satisfaction and increases productivity. With Paylocity prefunding the transfers, you don’t have to worry about potential cash flow issues.
Real-time net pay calculations that show actual earnings are also available. This helps ensure that your workers don’t request more than their net pay. You don’t even have to approve the transaction manually and track the payroll deductions because Paylocity will handle these processes automatically. Employees can even expect same-day fund transfers, provided the requests are made by noon CT.
Employees can raise On Demand Payment requests through Paylocity’s mobile app (Source: Paylocity)
You can manage employee payments in more than 100 countries with Paylocity’s Blue Marble global payroll service integration. It grants you access to a dedicated US-based support team and in-country experts who can guide you through the complexities of paying international employees. Support services are also available if you need to set up a local business entity, open an in-country business bank account, hire a global workforce, and manage expat employee requirements.
Paylocity’s employee benefits management solution lets you plan and administer third-party benefits like medical insurance plans, health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible spending accounts (FSAs), health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), and transportation management accounts (TMAs).
Aside from managing benefits for different employee groups, its platform lets you customize user plan limits, add your company’s enrollment rules, and view plan details online. Your employees can also access their benefits through Paylocity’s mobile app (for iOS and Android devices), manage enrollments, and run reports to see their contribution amounts.
Given that this module connects seamlessly to Paylocity’s payroll solution, employee benefit deductions are automatically captured and included in pay runs. Plus, it lets you send electronic data interface files to insurance carriers in cases of employee coverage changes.
Tracking employee work schedules and time-ins/outs can be quite tedious, but Paylocity’s time and labor management module efficiently automates these two tasks. Apart from creating work schedules, it lets you add shift-related policies, such as shift durations and time between shifts, and manage an audit trail to check tardiness, extended breaks, and absenteeism. Automating these processes helps organizations comply with labor regulations, improve accountability, and boost productivity by minimizing disruptions caused by unexpected absences or late arrivals.
Similar to popular time and attendance software, Paylocity has a PTO monitoring functionality that enables employees and people managers to request and approve PTO. The provider also offers time clock kiosk tablets for capturing employee time-ins/outs—either through facial recognition, fingerprint scans, or photo captures. This prevents several workplace issues related to time and attendance management, such as buddy punching and time theft. It also minimizes human error in time reporting and ensures compliance with labor laws by precisely tracking work hours and breaks.
These devices even allow you to screen clocking-in employees with prompts that ask about their general health condition (like whether they have an elevated temperature at the time of clock-in) and other company or labor policy-related queries (such as whether they have taken mandated rest breaks).
The feature aids OSHA compliance and WHD audits by demonstrating proactive health monitoring and documenting safety efforts. It also helps identify potential workplace hazards, ensures proper compensation, and provides evidence of your commitment to maintaining a safe work environment.
You can set geographic parameters for employees who clock-in/out through Paylocity’s mobile apps. (Source: Paylocity)
Paylocity’s onboarding tools offer a seamless transition for new hires from acceptance to becoming productive team members. Once the chosen candidate signs their offer letter through Paylocity’s e-signature tool, they are immediately integrated into the automated onboarding flow. They will have a step-by-step guide through completing the necessary paperwork and going through relevant training courses.
To enhance the onboarding process, you can create personalized welcome videos to help new hires feel connected and valued, fostering a positive start to their employment. Additionally, you can send pulse surveys to keep track of how the new employee is adapting.
Paylocity’s learning management system (LMS) allows employees to access a wide range of training courses tailored to their roles and career goals. This system allows for automated course assignments, tracking progress, and ensuring compliance with mandatory training requirements.
Additionally, Paylocity’s LMS supports various learning formats, including a course builder and a library of 600-plus premade training programs as well as on-demand videos and interactive modules, catering to different learning preferences. It also enables managers to monitor employee development, identify skill gaps, and customize training plans accordingly.
Paylocity’s performance management system simplifies employee evaluation and development. It offers tools for setting and tracking goals, conducting performance, and providing continuous feedback. This system ensures that employees and managers are aligned on objectives and expectations.
Additionally, Paylocity facilitates regular check-ins and 360-degree feedback allowing for a comprehensive assessment of an employee’s performance from multiple perspectives. The platform’s analytics and reporting capabilities help identify performance trends and development, enabling more informed decision-making.
If you want to foster communication and collaboration among employees, Paylocity’s “Community” feature provides you with an online social hub that connects your workers. Announcements and reminders can be posted on its company feed, and you can even create “Ask an Expert” groups for designated company administrators to answer online questions raised by fellow employees. This feature creates a centralized information hub that improves communication, knowledge sharing, and employee engagement. It also reduces email clutter and ensures important updates reach everyone efficiently.
Paylocity’s HR tools enable users to reduce the amount of time needed to manage staff information. With its self-service portal, employees and managers can view pay information, update personal data, collaborate with colleagues, access training sessions, and approve pay rate and schedule changes online.
Paylocity’s employee self-service tools provide employees access to their attendance and leaves, benefits, earnings, pay history, and tax forms. (Source: Paylocity)
Paylocity also makes managing compliance easy for HR teams and business owners. With its HR compliance dashboard, you can view and track important compliance items, such as updating I-9 work authorizations and tracking attendance to required courses like sexual harassment prevention training. Plus, it posts updates to tax, payroll, and labor regulations on its “live news feed,” including blog articles about regulatory changes.
Paylocity’s reporting capabilities earned a 4.5 out of 5 rating due to its robust and customizable nature, allowing users to generate detailed and insightful reports across various HR functions. The platform provides real-time data access, a wide array of pre-built reports, and the flexibility to create custom reports, like turnover analysis by department to track employee retention rates across different teams. Training ROI reports also measure the impact of training programs on employee performance and productivity.
In addition, Paylocity’s powerful analytics tool provides HR professionals with crucial insights into workforce trends, performance metrics, and operational efficiency, allowing them to identify areas of improvement and align HR strategies with overall business objectives. For example, its data insights tool uses AI to analyze HR data and provide proactive recommendations, like creating an employee engagement action plan or suggesting personalized training programs for employees. Another unique reporting feature is the data visualizer which enables users to create interactive charts and graphs for easier insights. Lastly, its modern workforce index provides benchmarking data to compare organizational performance against industry standards.
Paylocity’s HCM functionality provides an all-in-one solution that streamlines HR processes, automates tedious tasks, and offers powerful analytics. This allows organizations to manage their workforce efficiently and focus on growth without needing a large HR department or multiple software systems.
Beyond operational HR features, Paylocity also includes more strategic functions like headcount planning, training management, and goal alignment. These capabilities allow you to focus on more strategic processes, like employee retention, upskilling, and succession planning, that smaller HRIS typically can’t support.
In my evaluation, Paylocity’s comprehensive HR and payroll solutions cater well to mid-sized businesses. On the other hand, these features and advanced functionality may exceed the needs of smaller SMBs. Its reporting function is powerful and customizable which can effectively provide insights to businesses with complex workforce structures. However, this level of sophistication might be overwhelming for smaller organizations.
When it comes to its user interface, it is generally intuitive and user-friendly, though some users may experience a learning curve due to the breadth of features. Lastly, while Paylocity’s pricing is competitive for mid-sized companies, it can be cost-prohibitive for smaller businesses, especially those with limited HR needs or on a tight budget. Thus, in my opinion, the platform’s value proposition is strongest for growing businesses that can fully utilize its extensive capabilities.
Some of Paylocity’s features are counterintuitive. You sometimes need to take several steps to complete a simple action. However, you do get access to dedicated support and expert professionals who can help guide you through the system. You can also contact your dedicated account manager either by phone or chat from Mondays through Fridays, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Central Time.
If you use third-party software like applicant tracking and time and attendance solutions, Paylocity offers 180- and 360-degree integrations with several systems. This enables vendors to automate the flow of data transfers to and from Paylocity’s system.
In addition, Paylocity has a marketplace of more than 300 third-party partner systems that consist of accounting, recruiting, training, benefits, and other solutions. For reference, here are some of its partner software.
- Accounting systems: Concur, Expensify, QuickBooks, and Xero
- Benefits administration: BenefitPlan Manager, BenXpress, Employee Navigator, and HR Simplified
- Learning management software: CypherWorx, Prosperity, and Wisetail
- Point-of-sale (POS) solutions: Clover and Square POS
- Recruiting systems: ApplicantPro, BreezyHR, CareerPlug, ClearCompany, Greenhouse, iCIMS, Hireology, Lever, and JobScore
- Single sign-on tools: Okta, OneLogin, and PingOne
- Time and attendance solutions: Deputy, Homebase, QuickBooks Time, and When I Work
| Users Like | Users Don’t Like |
|---|---|
| Responsive customer service | The interface isn’t always intuitive; some features are hard to find |
| Efficient for accessing PTO, benefits, payslips, and employee clock-ins/outs online | Occasional system glitches |
| All features work well together | Inconsistent customer support; some reps aren’t knowledgeable |
| Ease of running payroll | Adding advanced HR features can get pricey |
Many of the Paylocity reviews on third-party review sites, such as Capterra and G2, are positive. Users comment that it is generally easy for system administrators and employees. Users also appreciate its time tracking and employee self-service solutions, adding that its payroll tools are very efficient.
Meanwhile, other reviewers said that while it has a wide range of HR features, a few of its features aren’t intuitive or are cumbersome to get to. Some wished for more advanced reporting functionalities, including a less expensive option when adding advanced HR tools.
At the time of publication, Paylocity earned the following scores on popular user review sites:
- Capterra: 4.3 out of 5 based on around 842 reviews
- G2: 4.4 out of 5 based on 2,578-plus reviews
Methodology: How We Evaluated
When I evaluated Paylocity, I looked at pricing, ease of use, and its capability to scale as the business grows. I also considered the HR features that it offers, how it integrates with other systems, and the quality of customer support it offers. Lastly, I also looked at what real-world users say on popular review websites.
Click each tab below for the full breakdown of our evaluation criteria:
20% of Overall Score
For this criterion, I checked not only the cost but also how transparent the pricing is and whether there is a setup fee. While I like Paylocity’s modular pricing system, its website does not display the cost for its modules, leaving small businesses no point of comparison.
20% of Overall Score
Basic and advanced HR tools simplify HR processes and enhance employee data management. Paylocity got a 4.25 out of 5 rating in this criterion because it has online onboarding and new hire reporting, as well as advanced features like recruiting, compensation management, learning and development, and performance management.
5% of Overall Score
I looked at third-party review websites (specifically G2 and Capterra) to find out what users are saying about the platform and the ratings they give it. It received a 4+ rating out of 5, with more than 3000 user reviews.
5% of Overall Score
Paylocity received a perfect score in this criterion because it offers a wide variety of pre-designed report templates and customization options. Reports can also be downloaded as CSV files.
20% of Overall Score
Under this criterion, Paylocity was one of the preferred HCM software because it has features that address the whole employee life cycle. Furthermore, Paylocity got extra points because it has recruitment and employee training tools.
15% of Overall Score
Here, I assessed whether the software’s HR and payroll tools are ideal for SMBs. I also looked into Paylocity’s strengths and limitations, and whether its HR features are ideal for small businesses.
15% of Overall Score
While Paylocity is easy to learn and its UI is easy to navigate, it does not offer 24/7 live support and, according to user reviews, customer support is unsatisfactory. These factors affected Paylocity’s score under this criterion.
Paylocity Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Yes. Paylocity offers various integration options with other systems and third-party applications, including accounting software, benefits providers, and time and attendance solutions. These help streamline data flow and enhance overall efficiency.
Paylocity provides a range of customer support options, including phone support, email support, and an online help center with resources and FAQs. Customers also have access to dedicated account managers for personalized assistance.
Bottom Line
If you have a midsize or large operation and are looking for a cloud-based platform to help you manage all aspects of the employee lifecycle, consider Paylocity. It has a suite of integrated HR solutions, such as employee onboarding, training, engagement, and retention. It also has a flexible and customizable system, allowing you to start with basic modules (such as payroll and time tracking) and then add advanced solutions (like performance and compensation management) as your company’s HR needs grow.
Sign up for a free Paylocity demo today.
