APS is a national workforce management and cloud-based HR solution provider. The platform includes core HR, payroll, time and attendance (including manager and employee self-service), compliance tools, and onboarding.
Kronos Workforce Dimensions, later UKG Dimensions was a solution used to automate critical workforce processes such as timekeeping, scheduling, and leave management. The product has been discontinued, and is no longer available for purchase.
APS Payroll is an easy to use payroll system, and integrates well with some things such as the APS Hire feature, which handles onboarding, and the eSelfServe timeclock feature. It exports well to Quickbooks, but is only ok with NetSuite. (It works but is a completely manual process and takes a lot of setup.) Our tax registration and filing has been fine and we're always apprised of any tax discrepancies such as small Unemployment overages/underages when filed compared to what was withheld.
UKG Dimensions provides an extensive feature offering for advanced scheduling in non-procedural clinical settings and administrative operations. Although EZ-Call can be used for procedural areas the lack of out the box integration with [UKG] Dimensions creates an undesirable experience for departments needing both products. UKG [Dimensions] can increase customer adoption by offering a more integrated experience for clinical settings requiring both products.
It's fast and intuitive. Our previous contractors were ADP and Paychex and neither were intuitive. Our payroll runs have less errors now than with previous vendors. Payroll prep time is down from 5 hours with ADP to 2 hours with APS for the HR Manager.
The limiters are great. I'm always afraid of that error that no one caught. Let's assume that you add a $200 limiter to overtime. Any time that a staff member is about to receive more than $200 in overtime for that pay period, a red flag goes up for the HR manager to double check.
We have 3 programs in public schools that block certain ports. APS has a 2nd feature using GPS so that staff can only check in for their shift while they are in the designated GPS range. Great for someone who has to report to a remote location. Just add the GPS coordinates and they can't check until they get to the project.
I have been using the system for over a year now and feel more comfortable with the functionality of it. I have just recently implemented the benefit administration portion.
The APS Payroll software is very easy to use, and it is easy to train new employees on it. The APS Payroll support team is very helpful and response time is quick. It is easy to enter/change employee information, adjust salaries and benefits, etc. New features have also been added that makes it even better, such as being able to set up your own income/deduction items.
UKG Dimensions is very user-friendly from an employee and supervisor standpoint. It is very robust on an admin level and can get complicated; however, you can do so many things with it that is outweighs the complexity. The security for UKG Dimensions needs to be revamped however. It is very cumbersome and not user-friendly.
I had to learn APS on my own, and the support team held my hand. They are still there when I have an occasional question. Anytime I need support, I can call my rep or send an email and help is on the way, without failure. The support team is awesome
Kronos Workforce Dimensions a new product, and it has a lot of scope for improvement, with future releases. One of the best tools to perform time tracking.
Their support team is very knowledgeable, and their SLA's are pretty tight. Any query raised would be addressed in a few hours.
Timeclock configuration can be complicated; however, their support team knows the processes and guidelines.
It would have been helpful to understand the phases of the implementation up front so I could have prepared differently for enrollments, billing, and transfer of information to payroll. At the end of the day, I'm happy with the selection and the system and anticipate I will like it better as we go along. We have done a number of other system implementations in the past few years, and this has been pretty painless, however, I've had a few surprises.
We had used ADP for years and had always struggled with their customer service. With over 20 locations (20+ W2s, quarterly filings, etc) we had a lot of questions. We would have to call and sit on hold for long periods of time to talk to someone who couldn't always answer our questions. Then we would get different answers from different people or have to re-explain our issue. It was a major time suck for my employees and they dreaded having to call all of the time. For us - the final straws for us to switch providers were: +Numerous year end filings with incorrect names and addresses (they couldn't keep our 20+ locations separate even though our paperwork was completed correctly) +Incorrect SUI rates for several locations that resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in overpayments which was a lot of money for small hotels. We had sent in numerous requests for them to fix this but it never happened +Lack of care - even though we were having all of these issues, nobody would work with us to get them all resolved and make sure to remedy the situation. We had to seek out a manager to get them resolved but even after this, we still had more issues. Overall - DON'T stick with ADP or even think about switching to them. They might be able to slash prices but their poor customer service and lack of care will cost you in the end. It's not worth it. APS does everything ADP had the capability of but we don't have the errors or headaches we did before. I am really looking forward to this year end!
WorkForce Software has a solid foundation for enterprise scaled employee counts of 100,000 employees and supports multiple assignment configurations, i.e. one employee can have multiple timesheets that multiple managers can own. UKG has one employee to one timecard. It makes it hard for companies that have employees that can have multiple jobs within the organization that can have separate timecards that report to multiple managers. UKG works well for medium size employee counts, once over 10K employees, you start to see the system have performance issues. WorkForce was able to handle 80K employees and process an employee demographic file in 2 hours, while UKG with 26K employees takes 6 hours. WorkForce lacks end-user configuration documentation, while UKG has great documentation and training materials. UKG's user community is top-notch, while WorkForce's has before 3 years, there has been no improvement. UKG has a better support model for end-user support. Workforce provides database access and the ability to write javascript for integrations. UKG has no access to the database and uses APIs that are not [flexible] to retrieve data. End-user configuration for UKG does not require a programmer or IT professional, while WorkForce has a powerful rules engine policy editor that makes it highly [flexible].
We were able to transition quickly and continue to successfully hire and onboard new hires for several Clubs that opened within weeks of moving to APS.
We do struggle a bit with the ease of reporting simply because our locations are all under separate EIN and that can make it difficult to easily combine data queried under custom reports, so the volume of reporting that I might wish to be able to push through weekly in order to help address 'real time' trends is not always available.
The lack of effective dating for position and wage changes does mean that HR and available APS data is not 'real time' accurate and that HR does need to return to the system to update changes well after-the-fact, which is not ideal.
