I love Payroll and HR software, and find the niche of payroll and HR software to be one of the most confusing and competitive. I’ve never known a business that didn’t need something like payroll or HR suite.
Here are my best payroll software. You will love them.
Namely – Best for Employee Self-Service
Namely is an all-in-one Human Resource management solution that offers payroll, benefits, and talent management. This HR platform helps businesses improve their HR processes and remain compliant in the meanwhile.
Namely is trusted by 1,400+ organizations. It delivers features like onboarding, talent management, time and attendance, recruiting, analytics, employee management, and more.
We can say that Namely falls into the human resources information systems (HRIS) category. You will be able to manage all your HR procedures and policies from one platform.
What makes Namely one of the best HR software is it’s designed to improve employee engagement. The staff can access all of the HR information they need from a user-friendly self-service portal.
Overall, Namely is a good option for mid-size organizations.
Its core HR features include:
- Task lists
- Time off management
- Performance and goal tracking
- Custom fields
- Employee self-service
- Onboarding
- Compliance database
- E-signature
Workday Review – Best for HCM (Human Capital Management)
Workday is a popular HR software with a bit of difference from all the other software on our list. The reason for that difference is Workday is the only system for finance, HR, and planning—all in one.
It helps you manage and organize your HR processes while keeping your bottom line in mind. This HR software is trusted and used by many organizations across various industries, including Salesforce, Toyota, Visa, Target, and Adobe.
You must have got a hint by now that Workday is a very versatile tool. It provides solutions for spend management, talent management, enterprise planning, workforce management, payroll, and more.
Workday is also relatively easy to use. Some of its other features are:
- Time tracking tools
- Self-service tools, employee directories
- Advanced analytics
- Machine learning to identify employees’ skills
- Payroll, compensation, benefits administration
Workday Capterra Rating: 4.4 (725)
Homebase Payroll: Best for Businesses Employing Hourly Workers
Overall Score: 3.66 OUT OF 5
What We Like
- Flat pricing with reasonable monthly fees
- Payroll plan includes time tracking, scheduling, job postings, and applicant tracking tools
- Unlimited pay runs with automated payroll tax payments and filings
What’s Missing
- Payroll services available only in 37 states (as of this writing)
- Lacks health insurance options
- Integrates only with QuickBooks Online
Homebase Payroll Pricing
- $35 per month + $5 per employee monthly
Read Full ReviewVisit Homebase Payroll
Homebase has added a payroll module to its suite of time tracking and scheduling solutions. Similar to Square Payroll, Homebase Payroll offers flat pricing for its easy-to-use pay processing solution that includes automated payroll tax payment and filing services. Its payroll platform is designed specifically for hourly teams as it comes with essential scheduling and time tracking tools to help you manage your hourly workforce more efficiently. It even offers job postings, applicant tracking, PTO management, new hire onboarding, and time clock apps.
Homebase Payroll earned an overall score of 3.66 in our evaluation. Its reasonably priced plan with flat pricing and robust HR tools contributed to its high scores (4 and up), while the lack of online Homebase Payroll reviews resulted in it getting a zero rating in our popularity criteria.
Homebase Payroll Features
- Flat pricing: Both Square Payroll and Homebase Payroll offer flat pricing, allowing you to easily plan your payroll software expenses. You also don’t have to worry about having to pay extra fees if you exceed a plan’s user limits or need additional payroll and essential HR solutions. Homebase Payroll has only one plan that includes all the tools you need to hire, onboard, and pay employees.
- Robust payroll plan: Homebase Payroll is the only payroll system for small businesses that we reviewed that’s affordably priced and comes with several HR features. For only $35 plus $5 per employee monthly, you get hiring, onboarding, time tracking, and scheduling tools in addition to full-service payroll and automatic tax filing services. Paycor, ADP, Paychex, and Rippling may offer similar functionalities, but you either have to pay extra or subscribe to its higher tiers to get these solutions.
- Full-service payroll: Unlike Paychex, ADP Run, and Paycor, Homebase Payroll offers unlimited pay runs so you can process employee and contractor payments as many times as you need in a month. Salaries are sent to the employees’ accounts via direct deposits, although Homebase Payroll also supports payments made through printable checks. In addition to W-2 and 1099 reporting, Homebase provides automated payroll tax payments and filings.
- Early access to wages: Similar to Gusto and Square Payroll, Homebase Payroll offers an employee perk that grants your staff early access to wages. Your workers can transfer a portion of their salary to their bank account before payday to help pay for emergency expenses.
Homebase Payroll’s Drawbacks
- Doesn’t offer health insurance and retirement benefits: While it can help you find qualified candidates, onboard new hires, schedule work shifts, track attendance, and pay employees, Homebase Payroll doesn’t provide access to benefits options that you can offer to your workers. If you want robust benefits choices, consider any of the providers in this list except Square Payroll and Patriot Payroll. Gusto also has health insurance plans but it is limited to only 39 states.
- Limited payroll coverage: Given that Homebase’s payroll solution is fairly new (as of this writing), its payroll services only cover 37 states. However, the provider is working on adding new states, so check its website for updates.
UserGuiding – Your go-to for Digital Adoption
UserGuiding is a no-code solution for employee and user onboarding with minimum effort. It helps you build:
- Interactive guides,
- In-app messages such as tooltips,
- Announcement modals,
- Interactive help centers,
- and more…
Training new employees and onboarding them are the top priority to retain your new-hires.
HR managers know the value of this transition process of new employees into a company. With the right employee onboarding process, new-hires can kickstart their job at high efficiency, warm up to the company’s culture, tools, and colleagues.
In today’s tech-oriented world, almost all HR systems are carried out with online tools and software. This makes it necessary to introduce the HR SaaS software you use for the new employees.
Apart from that, onboarding is essential for SaaS services as well. It’s highly crucial to let the new-hires get to know your SaaS product as well and quickly as possible to start adding value to it.
On top of these, HR online onboarding is the most commonly used training technique – whether for employees who work remotely or in the office. A correctly carried out HR online onboarding program:
- Breaks the ice
- Keeps employees focused and productive
- Increases employee engagements, especially for remote employees
UserGuiding Capterra Rating: 4.6/5
Join 2,000+ teams creating better experiences.
14-Day Free Trial, with an extra 30-Day Money Back Guarantee!
QuickBooks Time – Best for Employee Time Tracking
QuickBooks Time is an HR software designed for employee time tracking and scheduling. It comes with a self-service portal and payroll management.
With QuickBooks, employees can easily track time from any location in real-time. Employees can time-track on smartphones and tablets as well as desktops since QuickBooks offers an HR application software, too.
QuickBooks allows employees to clock themselves in. The self-service feature is one of the must-have features for almost any HR management software. We will talk more about the major human resource management solutions in the following of this article.
QuickBooks Time Capterra Rating: 4.7 (5470)
ADP Workforce Now
ADP offers various human resources management solutions, including payroll, benefits, talent management, time management, compliance, analytics, and benchmarking.
This HR platform can also integrate with other business and HR applications via the APIs and ADP Marketplace.
What other HR features does ADP deliver?
- Self-service portal
- Onboarding
- Applicant tracking
- 360-degree feedback
- Compensation and recruitment management
ADP Capterra Rating: 4.4 (4936)
Gusto Review – Best HR Software for Small Business
Gusto is an online HR software that helps the HR management workflows of small businesses run smoothly.
It offers features such as:
- Compensation management
- Onboarding
- Self-service portal
- Time off and benefits management
Unlike ADP, Gusto doesn’t have the 360 Degree Feedback, Recruitment management, and applicant tracking features.
Gusto Capterra Rating: 4.7 (2797)
Paycor – Best for Payrolls
Paycor is an all-in-one HR and payroll solution. It helps you directly import employee hours and view cash requirements before submitting the payroll. It’s beneficial to remove the manual work from the payroll workflows.
It offers onboarding, performance management, payroll management, and applicant tracking as well. Overall, Paycor delivers an excellent solution for payroll processing systems and streamlines HR.
Paycor Capterra Rating: 4.4 (1950)
BambooHR – Best HRIS Software for Small & Medium Businesses
Another popular HR SaaS software is BambooHR.
This HRMS is one of the best HR software for small and medium businesses (fewer than 1000 employees.)
Being a cloud-based system, BambooHR also comes with integrated payroll, applicant tracking (ATS), e-signatures, and time-off tracking. Its other prominent features include:
- Benefits, compensation, recruitment, and performance management
- Time & attendance
- Self-service portal
- Onboarding
What makes BambooHR popular is its ease-of-use for employees. With its convenient mobile app, employees can use and report efficiently. If you want your HR team to move on from spreadsheets and organize their HR data, BambooHR is an ideal HR management solution.
BambooHR Capterra Rating: 4.5 (1206)
Breezy – Best for the Entire HR Hiring Process
Breezy is an ATS (Applicant Management System) that helps you automate repetitive and time-consuming hiring tasks from identifying the top candidates, emailing (or texting), and scheduling interviews to sending them offers for signature.
This HR software is best for teams of 10 to 10,000 that manage collaborative recruiting and hiring processes.
Since Breezy is an ATS, it doesn’t offer all-in-one HRMS solutions such as employee database, payroll management, and performance management.
What features does Breezy offer?
- Onboarding
- Self-service portal
- Recruitment management
- Applicant tracking
Breezy Capterra Rating: 4.5 (1068)
Conclusion
Small business payroll software is a very important aspect of running a successful business. There are a lot of available options out there, but you have to determine which ones really do their job. They need to be affordable, easy to use and also meet a few other basic needs. The great thing about choosing payroll software that can help your small business is the features these programs have to offer you.