Overview
What is Ascentis (discontinued)?
Ascentis HR uses web-based management programs to help automate complex HR processes. Ascentis’ other services included customizable payroll, time and attendance and recruiting modules. Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022, and will be discontinued.
Santis offers you everything in the sales call and delivers only a part of it. Implementation and often is unavailable to communicate with you at all for a long time
Ascentis HR is where you want to be with your firms HR offering if you want a local company that cares about what they are selling.
Ascentis HR - It just works!
One and a half years in.
User friendly software in a hard times industry
New User w/ Honest Feedback
Medium Product
HRIS and Payroll System Excellence
Ascentis is great and could be even greater with a few tweaks
Short, Sweet and Simple, Sincere Review
More bang for your buck! And great support to boot!
Technical System View
Ascentis--once you get past the learning curve, it's great
Ascentis - Cost Effective HRIS for Smaller Firms
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
Popular Features
- Update personal information (151)8.686%
- Pre-built reports (142)7.575%
- Employment history (140)7.373%
- Report builder (144)7.070%
Pricing
What is Ascentis (discontinued)?
Ascentis HR uses web-based management programs to help automate complex HR processes. Ascentis’ other services included customizable payroll, time and attendance and recruiting modules. Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022, and will be discontinued.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
Alternatives Pricing
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ADP Workforce Now is a cloud-based HR platform for mid-sized businesses. It features customizable modules of various HR services that businesses can tailor to their specific needs, as well as regulatory monitoring and alerts to help businesses remain compliant.
What is Rippling?
Rippling gives businesses one place to run HR, IT, and Finance. It brings together all of the workforce systems that are normally scattered across a company, like payroll, expenses, benefits, and computers. This enables users to manage and automate every part of the employee lifecycle in a single…
Features
Human Resource Management
Organizing, tracking and providing instant access to critical employee data, job profiles, transfers, promotions, and benefits information.
- 6.7Employee demographic data(137) Ratings
Administrators have the ability to enter detailed demographic data for each employee.
- 7.3Employment history(140) Ratings
Employment history is the ability to track previous positions held.
- 6.9Job profiles and administration(128) Ratings
Job profiles and descriptions can be created and edited.
- 6.7Workflow for transfers, promotions, pay raises, etc.(126) Ratings
Employee move workflow provides the ability to move employees to different positions and apply pay raises.
- 5.2Organizational charting(90) Ratings
Organizational charting is the ability to create hierarchical charts.
- 8Organization and location management(109) Ratings
Organization and location management allows employees to be managed across multiple geographical locations.
- 8.8Compliance data (COBRA, OSHA, etc.)(102) Ratings
Compliance capabilities ensure full compliance with federal workplace regulations by capturing required data in central database.
Payroll Management
Provides for pay calculation and benefit plan administration, in addition to managing direct deposit, salary revisions and payroll tracking.
- 7.1Pay calculation(115) Ratings
Pay calculation provides for computation of employee pay with state and federal deductions.
- 6.1Support for external payroll vendors(62) Ratings
Support for external payroll vendors is the ability to integrate with 3rd-party payroll services.
- 8.3Off-cycle/On-Demand payment(28) Ratings
Provide employees access to wages accrued during the pay period before the end of the pay cycle.
- 6.7Benefit plan administration(108) Ratings
Benefit plan administration is administration of health insurance plans and 401k plans, and other benefits.
- 9.2Direct deposit files(100) Ratings
Direct deposit is the ability to electronically transfer pay to an employee’s personal bank account.
- 8.6Salary revision and increment management(92) Ratings
Salary revision is the ability to modify individual employee pay.
- 8.8Reimbursement management(51) Ratings
Reimbursement management provides cash reimbursement for employee expenses related to business travel or other.
Leave and Attendance Management
Streamlines communication between HR and employees and facilitates efficient management of employee leave including requisitions, approvals, balance calculation, and annual carry-forward.
- 7.9Approval workflow(99) Ratings
Approval workflow is the process for approving employee paid time-off requests.
- 7Balance details(99) Ratings
Balance details is automatic updating of paid time-off balance to reflect time taken.
- 8.4Annual carry-forward and encashment(84) Ratings
Annual carry-forward and encashment enables unused paid time-off days to be carried forward to new year, or paid in cash.
Employee Self Service
Employee portal allowing employees to view and update their personal information.
- 7.8View and generate pay and benefit information(138) Ratings
Employees can view pay and benefit data and print pay stubs.
- 8.6Update personal information(151) Ratings
Employees can update personal profile with change of address, dependents, or other personal data.
- 5.4View company policy documentation(110) Ratings
Employees can review company handbook, and corporate policy documents.
- 6Employee recognition(61) Ratings
thank a team member
- 7.3View job history(108) Ratings
Employees can view all positions held at the company.
Asset Management
Maintaining a record of assets such as laptops, pagers, cell phones, etc. issued to employees. Record typically includes asset type, number, serial number and date of issuance.
- 5.8Tracking of all physical assets(33) Ratings
Tracking of track laptops, pagers, phones, and other company equipment.
HR Reporting
Pre-built and custom reports, and integration with external data.
- 7Report builder(144) Ratings
Report builder allows custom reports to be created using a GUI.
- 7.5Pre-built reports(142) Ratings
Pre-built reports is the provision of a variety of canned reports on employee retention, and other key metrics.
- 4.6Ability to combine HR data with external data(73) Ratings
Ability to bring data from external systems like CRM and combine with HR data.
Onboarding
Employee onboarding is the process of orienting new hires to the social and performance aspects of their jobs so that they are able to function in their new roles as quickly as possible.
- 5.3New hire portal(98) Ratings
New hire portal eliminates printing and mailing with a personalized portal of all required reading, corporate information, and all forms and other paperwork, online.
- 4.9Manager tracking tools(76) Ratings
Tracking tools allow hiring managers to check status on individual hires for all onboarding activities.
Performance and Goals
Goal alignment is the practice of ensuring that all employees have clearly defined goals in support of the overall corporate strategy.
- 6.7Corporate goal setting(43) Ratings
Corporate goal setting is the ability to define corporate goals, and/or vision statements in the system.
- 7.6Individual goal setting(53) Ratings
Individual goal setting is the ability to define individual goals that align to organizational and subordinate goals.
- 7.1Line-of sight-visibility(38) Ratings
Line-of-sight visibility is the provision of line-of sight visibility for each goal to see how goals support overall corporate objectives.
- 7.2Performance tracking(50) Ratings
Performance tracking allows managers to track individual progress against goals as a component of overall performance.
Performance Management
Performance management is the process of ensuring employees meet pre-determined objectives and goals through regular check-ins and appraisals.
- 5.6Performance plans(59) Ratings
Supervisors have ability to build individual performance plans including, goals, competencies, etc..
- 5.6Performance improvement plans(50) Ratings
Supervisors can track disciplinary actions such as performance improvement plans.
- 5.8Review status tracking(57) Ratings
Supervisors can monitor and track review status completion with dashboard showing milestones and status.
- 6.5Review reminders(55) Ratings
System can generate reminders to ensure review completion timeliness.
- 6.6Multiple review frequency(50) Ratings
System supports multiple review types including annual, quarterly mid-year and anniversary reviews.
Succession Planning
Succession planning is the identification and development of internal employees with the potential to fill key business leadership positions in the company.
- 6.4Create succession plans/pools(21) Ratings
Managers can create and manage pools of potentially high-performing individuals.
- 6.4Candidate ranking(21) Ratings
Candidate readiness for key business positions can be ranked and assessed.
- 5Candidate search(27) Ratings
Candidate search provides search capabilities for potential candidates based on attribute or other profile data.
- 5.8Candidate development(23) Ratings
Candidate development is the ability to assign learning and development goals.
Recruiting / ATS
Recruiting or Applicant Tracking Software is software used to manage the recruitment process electronically by handling job postings, applicant status, resume management, etc.
- 5.4Job Requisition Management(85) Ratings
Job Requisition Management – Job requisition management is the ability to create jobs quickly and easily
- 5.2Company Website Posting(79) Ratings
Software allows postings to be displayed on the company website
- 5.6Publish to Social Media(59) Ratings
Software provides ability to publish postings to social media sites
- 5.8Job Search Site Posting(71) Ratings
Software provides ability to publish postings to top job search sites
- 5.6Duplicate Candidate Prevention(57) Ratings
Duplicate candidate prevention prevents candidates already in the system from being added
- 5.7Applicant Tracking(83) Ratings
Applicant tracking allows recruiters to assign applicants to various stages so others can see status at a glance
- 5.3Notifications and Alerts(69) Ratings
Notifications and reminders inform you of tasks to be completed
Product Details
- About
- Competitors
- Tech Details
- FAQs
What is Ascentis (discontinued)?
Ascentis was acquired by UKG in March of 2022. The service will be discontinued.
Ascentis (discontinued) Screenshots
Ascentis (discontinued) Technical Details
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
---|---|
Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
Comparisons
Compare with
Reviews and Ratings
(323)Attribute Ratings
- 6.3Likelihood to Renew12 ratings
- 6.7Availability5 ratings
- 7.1Performance4 ratings
- 7.6Usability44 ratings
- 8.2Support Rating150 ratings
- 8.3Online Training4 ratings
- 8In-Person Training1 rating
- 8.3Implementation Rating5 ratings
- 9Configurability1 rating
- 6.7Product Scalability4 ratings
- 3Ease of integration1 rating
- 9.6Vendor pre-sale3 ratings
- 9.6Vendor post-sale3 ratings
Reviews
(1-25 of 33)The Good and the Bad!
- Ascentis HR allows you to attach anything to the EE's records, so you can be quite paperless.
- Benefits Open Enrollment went pretty smoothly! Much better than the manual way we'd been handling things.
- Setting up users (ex: managers, supervisors, etc) is pretty decent, but we are still learning how to work with all of that to have things work correctly.
- Ascentis HR needs to flow over to Ascentis Payroll with a little more fluidity. Most are OK, but it does need to work on certain issues better. Some could be an administrative error as we are all still "learning" things.
- I believe Ascentis HR should not have to "use" Ascentis Support as much for certain things: Alert setups (why can't we set these up ourselves without sending notices to Support to set up), any remote desktop set up or password reset has to go thru Ascentis Support - why can "administrators" on our "user" end set it up?
- There is no "flow over" of things like bonuses, car allowance, phone allowances, etc from HR to payroll. There should be. HR training needs to be handled a little smoother.
- There is still so much to learn on the HR side after more than a year of having it. And, that's not including the separate "modules" that companies can utilize. That's just the basic stuff.
- Somewhat of a "choppy" learning experience.
- Report tool can be enhanced/modified to work better!!! Whether a custom report or a canned report, sometimes the selection criteria that one has chosen DOES NOT work the way it should (this is very noticeable when reporting on certain benefits that one has selected, yet ALL benefits (STD, LTD, Med, etc) still come out on the report, and then one has to sort and remove them THEMSELVES from the reports. Also, on the HR reporting, you have to create a TXT report first, and then make it into an EXCEL (or whatever type of report you want), you can't just create the EXCEL report first. The REPORTING feature DEFINITELY needs some enhancements/modifications to work MUCH better in many ways!!!
Ascentis HR - It just works!
- Employee Self Service is excellent
- Notes, attachments to employee records are easy to use
- Management self service is also well thought out, although we would like to see managers included in their own team calendar views.
- We looked at the scheduling system available from Ascentis - in depth - it was almost what we needed for our paramedics, but not quite (NovaTime) - it would be great to move in that direction in the future.
- A way to connect leave calendars to MS Outlook would be a wonderful tool.
- The need to use remote desktop to get to Employee Manager and Setup Manager is cumbersome - people forget their passwords frequently - it would be nice to see Ascentis move toward web-based functionality for the entire thing.
We do not find the payroll function to be well suited to our needs - and as mentioned previously, the NovaTime scheduling system could not be customized to work for us without spending upwards of $20K US.
Some good, some not-so-good.
- Payroll process with direct deposit, taxes, EE withholding
- Self service website, though it's not perfect
- Customer service is usually very helpful and resourceful
- Web based HR is still missing a LOT of functions. No point in going there yet.
- The communication between HR and Payroll systems is bad. Hoping for a resolution of problems once HR is fully online.
- Payroll works well on desktop. But the online system is not very useful yet.
Ascentis = BEST HRIS System Around!
- Ascentis is VERY user friendly! I conduct all New Hire orientations, and make sure our new employees are familiar and comfortable with the system. Rarely do I get a call back with questions.
- The Ascentis Support Team is always very prompt and helpful when we have questions. We usually get a response and get our problem or questions resolved within the day.
- We LOVE the homepage and widget function. We communicate all important info. on the homepage, and have included countdown widgets, links, etc. The homepage is a very easy set-up, and allows employees to utilize in place of a newsletter, etc.
- The new reporting system is amazing and very easy to use! Makes running quick analysis reports a breeze!
- It would be great if on the new platform, you could look up employees by hire date, as we used to use that function all the time on the old desktop.
- Some of our new hires have had issues uploading an employee photo during the onboarding process - maybe a bit of user error, but it does seem to puzzle them - maybe a way (I'm not sure if there is one) to make this easier?
Overall gets it done
- Flexibility of the HR Module
- The homepage / dashboard is great as an administrator
- Benefits is pretty easy to use
- L& D module needs more flexibility and options
- clunky between Ascentis and the NovaTime modules - not cohesive enough
- finish putting everything out under the web interface, I don't ever want to have to log into the desktop option
Lots of possibilities
- Houses many pieces of data
- Produces payroll well
- Maneuvering through the system could be more intuitive.
- Producing ad hoc reports has been complicated.
- Recruiting implementation has been challenging.
Fantastic support! Product is improving.
- Ascentis has amazing support. They are quick to respond to emails and the people on the phone are always very helpful.
- They are constantly making improvements. I can tell that they are investing in their product and trying to make it more up to date.
- Their implementation is fantastic. Individual meetings are held with product teams that walk you through every step.
- Having multiple databases and websites is not ideal. Updating something as simple as a job title requires the use of multiple applications including payroll, payroll bridge, and a remote desktop.
- In addition to multiple databases, their recruiting is not their own application. This creates challenges as the setup and support is a different process than the rest of the HRIS.
Larger organizations looking for an all-in-one seamless experience should look elsewhere.
- Contract with LaborMetrix
- Payroll - Requires more manual steps including processing separately in the timekeeping portal, calculating in the variable pay calculator application, exporting from the variable pay calculator application to a .txt file, uploading that .txt file into Ascentis payroll to add the hourly pay. Paychecks do not include the time off balances by default, which is out of compliance with CA earnings statement laws. Administrators have to export the balances and manually upload them for every payroll. Paychecks can display the 401K contribution percentage, but not the Roth 401K contribution percentage. We have to use a separate payroll application to do the W-2 and quarter-end processes because the main web portal is not able to do that. We have to use the separate payroll application to get reports of any use because the main web portal only has a few reports available and they are not helpful. In order to view an employee's paycheck, the administrator has to go through his or her personal profile and payroll screen. The administrator is unable to edit an employee's tax withholdings on the web portal.
- HR - Almost everything related to configuration and management is only fully-functional on the Remote Desktop that no one mentioned being necessary at all during the sales calls. Administrators cannot do everything from the main web portal. This includes editing employee access and changing the information that is displayed to employees on the main web portal. This includes setting up benefit carriers and employee profile management. Most of the reports available on the web are not useful, and administrators have to use the Remote Desktop to create custom reports.
- Benefits - Unable to view the EDI feed information. Administrator view does not show the sum of all of an employee's benefit costs. Managing the documents and links in the benefits section requires using the Remote Desktop that no one mentioned during sales and requires unnecessarily complex steps involving adding a picture to a specific folder in the remote desktop and then including the file reference to RD/Company/Admin/Folder/file.jpg just to have a picture displayed for employees instead of just uploading the picture like any other website.
- Timekeeping - Requires separate processing in order to lock timesheets and process payroll, requires a workaround involving exporting the following pay period to show the current time off balances when downloading the figures to be included on the paychecks,. The system has meal premium features and shifts features, but they conflict and display incorrect times for approaching hours (example shows meal premium after 6.01 hours instead of after 5 hours). Notifications that were sent to the EE and supervisor were sent at midnight the night after the employee already reached the point of getting a meal premium, which does not help anyone avoid it at all. Holidays paid out the number of work hours on the shift plus the 30 minutes of unpaid lunch, which meant they were overpaid. Holidays paid out for days when the employee was not scheduled to work, which meant they were overpaid. Sick balance policies consider transferring to be like a new hire, which incorrectly adds 3 days of sick time to the employee's balance. It's been a year since implementation and problems that caused Ascentis to postpone our implementation still have not been fully resolved. Features highlighted during the sales meetings do not work and we have had to deactivate them to avoid confusion with our staff and supervisors.
- Mobile App - Paycheck information in the app does not match paycheck information shown on the web portal. It displays hourly-only timesheet features like exception counters and things for salaried employees who do not get meal premiums or OT or clock in and out. It allows employees to add or remove employees from their benefits, which should not be allowed unless the employee had a qualifying life event. It does not allow employees to submit address updates, scheduled for future bug fix but currently displays unpaid hours like unpaid vacation as a dollar amount instead of hours. It's scheduled for a future bug fix but currently shows a total rate that is the sum of an employee's sick rate + vacation rate + regular rate + OT rate + etc... that does not mean anything, but is shown for some reason. It does not allow administrator configuration of what should or shouldn't be visible to employees, does not display all of the pay statements in the employee record when they are all visible on the main web portal, and it has two separate sections in which employees can view their balances and request time off - one from the last paycheck's information and one from NOVATime, which is confusing because they do not always display the same information.
- Recruiting - The system user experience is extremely convoluted. Also, unlike others that just allow clients to add the forms and things required from applicants, Ascentis charges at least $100 for every form that needs a signature, which is most forms in the new-hire process. Ascentis also charges for each signature. Ascentis also charges for each administrator/manager who would use the recruiting module. None of this was stated during the sales meetings or even in the order form/contract.
- Reporting - Reports cannot contain timekeeping data, HR/Benefits data, and payroll data in the same report. They all have to be separate reports. Also, unlike ADP or others that do it for free, Ascentis charges the client at least $500-$1000 for creating custom reports.
You won't lose if you choose Ascentis HR!
Ascentis HR is a great solution for a human resources department to go paperless. The software is intuitive and you have the ability to customize it to meet your needs. The reports tab is extremely robust and allows you to slice and dice data however you need it. The compensation tab is extremely useful as it allows you to set up ranges and get compa-ratios for each position. It also breaks down the compensation by the hour, day, pay period, month and year. The benefits tab is very comprehensive and allows you to keep track of the benefits and associated costs easily.
I highly recommend Ascentis HR as a robust inexpensive solution.
- Reporting capabilities
- Compensation tracking and analysis
- Benefit management and cost containment
- Login through a remote desktop
Ascentis Review
- The web-based product is being advanced and seems to be moving in a direction where a web-based product could be utilized in place of the remote desktop.
- Customizable fields and tabs. Ascentis has a significant quantity of customization which is very necessary for the complexities within our organization.
- User password reset. It is very quick and efficient to change a user's password when they are locked out (as long as the remote desktop is already open).
- It should be far easier to rehire an individual with prompts as to the fields that require editing. Currently, there are multiple steps and screens/tabs and no prompts at all. If one field is missed on the employment tab, the employee will continue to show as being terminated on reports which can raise a lot of questions and takes more time/effort to correct.
- The Employee Manager window should be expandable to enlarge. It is small and often hard to read for aging eyes. Lack of this simple feature makes the product also appear quite antiquated.
- Information in the fields and tabs within Employee Manager should not be so easy to accidentally overwrite. Lack of a simple warning again makes the Ascentis product seem antiquated.
- Lack of follow up follow through when there are issues. We often take issues to Ascentis Support and often, the resolution takes days or weeks and has been seldom satisfactory. We often have to send several reminders for assistance before we get the action we need. Frequent turnover of account reps also seems to be an area of concern.
- Using a remote desktop source or RDP over SSL is also antiquated. A well-secured web-based product would be far more user-friendly and simpler to access.
- Limited space on remote desktop. Having to move attachments over to the remote desktop to upload to an employee profile can be a hassle. I have moved several attachments over to upload, been faced with the typical HR interruptions and ended up have to re-attempt a fee days later only to find that some of my attachments are randomly missing. Then having to go back and identify what was deleted due to space constraints and start the entire process over.
- Easy access for employees via ESS
- The web resources are available from any computer
- Personable implementation and support team
- Moving more things from the remote desktop to the web application
- Making the web navigation more user friendly (less pop-up boxes)
Bring back the designated person support!
- The desktop version is very user-friendly.
- The reports that are available under the "reports" tab are extremely helpful, wish there were more.
- The flow of HR and Ascentis payroll is very smooth.
- Ascentis HR screen for entering info is very small and not adjustable.
- The vacation/sick tab for employees: I wish I was able to delete rows.
- Wish we received a designated person to ask questions.
Back to Basics: Works for Smaller Organizations
We use it as our HRIS system to track and manage employee profiles (job, dept, division, location info; personal contact info; compensation info; emergency details as well as a self-serve portal).
- Simple UI platform
- Ability to run reports and customize reports for various purposes - Report Manager component is easy to use
- Option to view accrued time and breakdown of accrual calculations
- Some errors in reporting data (i.e. location for employee set-up as Vancouver, however, report consistently pulls it as 'Undesignated')
- Employee Manager keeps logging out.. not efficient with multiple log-ins (remote desktop separate log-in from EE Manager, Set-Up Manager, etc)
- Simple UI leaves lots of rooms for error
- Lots of room for error (i.e. delete a field and field still shows up... lots of bugs)
Great for a growing company
Our company has 100 non-union employees and 70 union employees. All non-union employees use the self-service portal to sign up for benefits or enter personal info. The union employees do not receive benefits from us, therefore we did not add them to self-service.
Ascentis eliminates many spreadsheets and centralizes employee data.
- The benefits open enrollment worked great for us. Employees are able to see all the different options, compare plans, and calculate their monthly premiums as they sign up.
- The self service portal uses widgets that can be customized. We are able to keep employee updated with any changes.
- The report wizard is easy to use. We are able to create reports for any business question.
- Moving from one employee to another in the Employee Manager is a bit cumbersome.
- Moving from remote desktop to a web-based entry point would be nice.
- It would be nice to have all employee info in one place.
A User-Friendly Product
- Ascentis provides well-designed webinars that highlight key, critical information in order to fully utilize the software.
- The HR Support line is very helpful. The representatives are well-trained and have excellent customer service skills.
- The software itself is user-friendly and, in general, intuitive.
- Although the training provided is well-designed, all of it is webinar-based. A few remote classes with a "live" instructor would be helpful for those of us that are fairly efficient online, however, still appreciate interaction with a human.
- When Ascentis is trying to assist with selling additional features to an existing client, a more high-touch, less aggressive approach is appreciated.
- I have had some issues with different passwords for different features. Sometimes confusing.
- As an employee, having access to my personnel file at any time is great. If there is an update to be made employees can make it themselves rather than fill out some update form, submit, and wait for it to get updated.
- There is a link between our payroll system and Ascentis HR which almost seamlessly connects the two. If an employee updates their direct deposit information our payroll software knows. As administrators, we have to approve any changes, but the employee initiates. So, when the direct deposit comes back as undelivered due to the wrong account, the only person there is to blame is the employee themselves who put in the wrong information.
- The payroll simulator is a great planning tool. It helps employees to get an idea of what the impact of different changes would have on their net check. Examples include: receiving a raise, changing your retirement election percentages, changing from a traditional 401k to a Roth, changing your exemptions, etc.
- There is a fair amount of learning and set-up when getting the system but once it's set up it's easy to run and maintain.
- For administrators, the Employee Manager application can be a little difficult to use at times. Trying to find where a field is, or what particular field is that needs updated (there are a couple different attachment areas with different purposes, but not initially clear what's what)
- For administrators, the report running functionality is pretty good but it can be a bit clunky, and the export doesn't always come across in a useable format. Sometimes it's is a clunky text file, others in excel CSV file that's hard to format. There are several 'wizard' steps to go through to run reports and lots of options as you walk through the steps. It means you can really customize your report, but it also means that it can take you many many tries and time to get the report you are wanting. The good thing is though you can save your wizard settings if you will be rerunning the report.
- For administrators, we have to access the management functions through a remote desktop. Sometimes that connection is slow or has issues. Also, it adds an added step when trying to upload documents to employee files, download report exports, or you just want to open a web browser to look something up while you are in there (there are very few pages you can navigate to). It would be nice if the application was web-based without opening a remote desktop.
- It has performed well in producing 1094s and 1095s
- The onboarding feature is good - not great - just good
- Needs to be cloud-based NOW
- Ascentis needs to develop their own products instead of cobbling different products together and telling people they developed them
- Lose the words "hard coded" from your vocabulary
HR & Employee Satisfaction with HRIS!
- We received rave reviews from employees with our first benefits open enrollment. Using Ascentis all employees were able to complete the process themselves online, as opposed to in our old system the previous year only about 20% of employees were able to complete their enrollment without our assistance. Also new employees are able to complete enrollment on their own with minimal or no instruction.
- Benefit enrollments now flow directly to the carrier. This is a significant time savings as previously enrollments were done manually on each of our multiple benefit vendor sites.
- Our first ACA reporting using the new system was a success. The ability to do this reporting in Ascentis allowed us to eliminate a separate vendor thus saving money for the institution going forward.
- More targeted and flexible reporting allows us to obtain just the information we need at a given point in time.
- The file export to payroll is a much smoother and faster transfer process.
- We are still using remote desktop log in. Having to log in a minimum of three times before we get to employee data is time consuming and annoying.
- While the reporting feature allows access to all employee data, it takes some time to go through all the questions needed to create a report. It would be helpful to have some pre-set up reports using standard employee parameters.
- We would like to see more functionality to capture multiple jobs for an employee. We had to customize those fields, then those fields were not included in standard reports so we had to get customized reports created for us.
- More flexibility for us to run custom reports when we want to run them instead of having a schedule or putting in a request with support to run the reports for us.
Ascentis HR Review
- The Ascentis Recruitment ATS is really good. It is web based and it is easy to work with.
- The Employee Self Service is also a good feature that is offered by Ascentis. It is easy to access and very user-friendly.
- The onboarding feature is an excellent resource to have. It streamlines the onboarding process and it makes it easy for new hires to complete their paperwork ahead of time and it helps with keeping the completion of forms paperless.
- The biggest drawback for me is the HRIS side of the house. It is not web based making it very difficult to access it over the web at any time from any where. The whole HRIS side needs to be completely redone so better easy and functionality. Make it web based and a lot easier to use. I really did not fully understand how the HRIS side of the house worked before purchasing a three year agreement with Ascentis. If I had known that the HRIS side was desktop based, I probably would not have signed up with Ascentis.
- Reports in the HRIS could be greatly improved. It Is not easy to pull reports from the system. There are so many steps you have to complete in order to get the report needed.
- The benefits setup wizard through the Ascentis HRIS is very difficult and a tedious process. There are a gain lots of steps to take in order for a benefit to be placed properly.
Ascentis is a Gift to HR Professionals Everywhere!
1. Self service to employee info
2. Benefits enrollment
3. Central "intranet" for employees to read info
4. Lack of organized reviews and goal tracking
5. Recruitment centralization
- Implementation - You work one on one with a specialist to help build and customize each module. They are patient, supportive, and very helpful.
- Customization - There were few (if any) things I asked for that couldn't be customized. They really do work with you to make the system work for you.
- Support - If/when an issue arises, you are met with immediate response and rectification. Their dedication to customer service is great.
- Remote Desktop - Logging in via remote desktop can be a bit cumbersome. I understand they are working towards a web-based application which I can't wait to see.
- Electronic data transfer - One of the reasons we wanted to use Ascentis was to take advantage of automatic transition to our benefits carriers. We are 6 months in and still having issues. For example, the feed that goes to our COBRA provider every Friday keeps going over in an encrypted manner in which our provider cannot accept. Despite many communications between them, they resolve one week and go back to the same encryption the following week. As a result, I have to double check the things that should be "automatic".
Less well-suited: If you are looking for fancy bells and whistles, you may be disappointed. The system is easy to navigate, but not flashy with graphics, etc.
Ascentis HR Review
- ACA Reporting once you figure out the process is fairly simple.
- Ability to edit company info and add departments etc.
- Overall user experience is very clunky - it appears like it's old software, there's often a lot of steps involved to do a task that could be set up in a much simpler way.
- The system can be unreliable - would prefer it was fully web-based rather than web and remote desktop.
OK Computer...You Didn’t Learn That In School
- Ascentis HR is particularly helpful in keeping a record of past jobs and/or managers. If you have an organization that lets employees move from one department to another fairly often, this software has a tool that will help you keep track when Employee "A" moved from Supervisor "X" to Supervisor "Y" as well as from Department "B" to Department "F" without having to restart that employees length of service.
- Ascentis HR also has a number of ways that you can customize tabs. If you want to keep track of something for your organization that you don't see on one of their prefabricated tabs or screens you can make one of your own. We have made several different ones to help us keep track of different information such as driver's licenses and expiration dates as well as specific training and/or orientation tasks that we want supervisors to accomplish with their new employees.
- Ascentis HR lets you upload documents (particularly pdf) to employees files, which is particularly helpful. Additionally, you can mark these so that the employee can or cannot see them when they log onto their side of the Employee Self Service. One of the things I particularly like about these uploaded documents is that each part cluster of tabs has its own tab for attachments. When you open the "Employee" section where you find information about the employee and his/her personal information as well as job information, you will also find a tab where you can put attachments for personal and/or job-related information - such as a job description sign off or something of the like. When you open the "Compensation" section you will find another tab for attachments, and this might be where you decide to upload copies of direct deposits if you require them or wage changes.
- One of the biggest issues I have had with Ascentis HR is that it lacks updates. We started using it four years ago. We stopped using it because we were trying to piecemeal three different systems together. We tried another system for two and a half years. That didn't work out any better. We decided to give Ascentis HR another try. I was hoping that there would be a few upgrades, but the system was largely the same. On the one hand, I admit it was nice because there was not a steep learning curve, but on the other, the technology was behind a lot of the other systems that we were presented with.
- The complaint that I hear the most from my employees is that there is no app for the program and that it is extremely hard to use on any mobile device. The Employee Self Service/Portal is set to be used on a computer or laptop - not a small mobile device. With so many people using their phones as the main internet source, it does make it difficult for many of our employees to access their self-service portal outside of the work environment.
- Because it is an older system, some of the things can be a little trickier to set up. Benefits are one of them. There are multiple screens that need to be gone through and rules that need to be built. It can seem a little like a choose-your-own-adventure at times. If you don't hit the correct button on the right page, you may miss out on options down the road. There is no real safeguard built in and no particular view mode to see if things were done correctly. You have to make things "live" in order to see if your rules and the benefits worked. In addition, once the benefits have been set up correctly for the employees, it still has to be mapped and moved over for payroll to be able to see things.
- Currently, we are using their remote desktop service which requires us to move anything we want to put on our Employee's Self Service Portal from our desktops to their remote desktops and then copying the correct path to bring it back to our online version of an old MySpace page. I know that they are trying, but it seems as though it is a lot of work for something that should be a lot easier to do with a few more layout and posting options.
- Although they do have some canned reports, most of the reporting functions take time to learn and is best done when one understands how to write Custom Reports to get the information that one is seeking. The Customer Service Reps are usually more than happy to help, but it does take time to explain just what you are looking for and how to make it into a report that would help you. Overall, I think that the structure of the reporting function is solid; however, the user-friendliness of it is not.
Lacking System
- There are a variety of really great reports that we can pull. The ability to create custom reports is also a plus.
- The performance management system needs a lot of work. We've encountered so many different issues that we didn't use it for two review periods which cost us a lot of time.
- The ATS tracking system is not the greatest. It is especially difficult uploading or updating the documents needed after an applicant has been hired.
Ascentis HR - Review
- Great customer service, the support team is fairly easy to reach via phone and email.
- Great internal reporting aspects of the system.
- All in one system with HRIS, Payroll, and Timekeeping.
- Updated system design. (timekeeping has been updated - nice touch)
- No need to access the system through remote desktop seems silly.
- All data needs to be added to the different systems manually and approved. Multiple/duplicate steps reduce efficiency.
Ascentis HR Review
- It works great for time off requests and approvals.
- It helps our managers quickly look up employee details, such as pay rate, hire date, etc.
- Allows employees to easily and quickly view their available accrued time off.
- Make it easier to include part-time employees with different vacation accrual rates to be added to the system.
- Support needs to be a little more responsive and helpful to questions.