Paycor vs BambooHR

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Our analysts compared Paycor vs BambooHR based on data from our 400+ point analysis of HR Management Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Best for: Employee engagement and document management

Ranked at number two on our best HR software list, Paycor is a comprehensive, cloud-based HR system designed for businesses of all sizes that serve industries like healthcare, manufacturing, retail and technology.

It supports key HR functions, including talent management, benefits administration, payroll processing and compliance, catering to teams ranging from a single employee to over 1,000.

Paycor is a SelectHub award winner in employee onboarding and administration, self-service and performance management. It’s also in our top ten for applicant tracking and recruiting, benefits management, compensation management, and succession management.

The platform’s mission is to empower leaders with easy-to-access resources and personalized experiences featuring customizable homepages and learning paths. Managers can gain valuable insights to evaluate performance, track wins and identify areas for improvement.

Struggling with employee retention? Paycor helps by providing data on recognition frequency, promotion rates, pay adjustments and completed one-on-ones.

For recruiters, Paycor offers tools to enhance job postings and streamline the hiring process, utilizing AI for smart candidate sourcing. Key features include performance management, applicant tracking, recruiting, benefits management, compensation management, employee engagement, onboarding and employee self-service.

84% of users give it two thumbs up, noting its straightforward performance, payroll and scheduling management. In contrast, some have encountered complex reporting issues and occasional bugs following updates.

Pricing starts at $99 per user per month, with a free trial available.

To view other popular Paycor solutions, visit our Paycor company page.

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BambooHR is an HRMS designed for small and medium-sized businesses, and provides solutions for organizations in all industries. Based in the cloud, it streamlines data collection throughout the employee lifecycle, warehousing relevant information in a centralized database to make it easily accessible for managers and individual employees.

It facilitates hiring, onboarding, compensation administration, performance management, provides employee self-service capabilities and everything in-between. It allows organizations to make customizations, set multiple administrators and maintain inactive employees.
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$175 Monthly, quote-based
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Centralize HR: Complete all core HR tasks through one unified platform, eliminating multiple logins on different systems. Track and consolidate data so HR managers can generate comprehensive reports that summarize HR practices. Interview management, document access control, AI-based benefits advisor, budget allocation, compensation grid, automated tax filing, mobile scheduling, charts and visualizations are all fully supported for every aspect of HR.
  • Improve Document Management: Add flexibility with Paycor’s document management function, which is rated 100 in our analysis. This system includes fully supported features such as a document repository, document search and sharing capabilities. Digital signatures and a range of compliance documents further enhance the process, particularly during onboarding.
  • Boost Employee Engagement: Gauge employee engagement with pulse surveys that earn our highest rating. They measure engagement and job satisfaction, while self-paced learning fosters career development. Additionally, Paycor provides easy access to employee information, including pay, time tracking and time-off requests.
  • Streamline Data Entry: Upload applicant information and automatically import data, modifications and relevant fields to eliminate duplicate entries.
  • Strengthen Applicant Tracking and Recruiting: Manage all job candidates, their statuses and priority job listings efficiently. Assign specific hiring processes to each job record and use AI to generate job descriptions. Rated 86 out of 100, this function also streamlines the post-interview process by automatically saving feedback with user-friendly scoring.
  • Save Time: Automate workflows, reminders and notifications to reduce tedious, time-intensive manual tasks. Let employees focus on the critical, ROI-enhancing tasks.
  • Facilitate Onboarding and Administration: Establish timelines and provide training resources tailored to business needs. Paycor offers status calls, project scopes and demos for comprehensive support throughout onboarding, earning a 96 for this module.
  • Tailor Experiences: Customize homepages and their features for efficiency and comfort.
  • Enhance Visibility: Put important information at the forefront with homepage-based trends and alerts.
  • Get Tax Assistance: Monitor tax registrations and get tax recommendations, including notifications on employee location changes.
  • Empower Managers: Sharpen soft skills, including coaching, optimizing and retaining employees. Paycor’s core leadership model focuses on helping employees set goals, get feedback, stay motivated and celebrate successes.
  • Provide Leader Insights: Give managers insight into who's clocked in and who's nearing overtime, snapshots of employee records, time-off requests, upcoming birthdays, and anniversaries.
  • Plan for the Future: Keep employees and managers informed on individual progress and areas for improvement with assessments and role profiles. Help managers plan by finding talent gaps and risks via dashboards and insights. New to succession management? Paycor has a succession planning template for beginners.
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  • Apps Marketplace: Find official partner integrations and solutions in a unified location to choose add-ons that make BambooHR a more robust solution. 
  • Employee Self-Service: Employees can log in to view personal information, including time off balances, benefits information and the employee directory. Administrators can set reminders to notify employees when they have documents ready to e-sign or other tasks to complete. 
  • Ensure Privacy: Administrators can set permissions to allow employees to view and edit their personal information while restricting access to other sensitive data. Ensures that all individual employee information is kept private and protects important company information from employees who don’t need to see it. 
  • Live Support: Access live chat and phone support Monday through Friday, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. 
  • Progress Tracking: Gain visibility into the progress of individual projects and activities to oversee workflows and approvals, as well as which individuals have completed them. 
  • Security and Peace of Mind: Guarantees enterprise-level data security for any data that is housed within the system, ensuring compliance for organizations with security needs. 
  • Self Onboarding: Enable employees to e-sign and complete documents as well as enter their own information to streamline the onboarding process and free up managers to focus on other important tasks. Employees and new hires can also send introduction emails to meet team members before the newest employee starts their first shift. 
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  • Leader Insights: Just like report cards, give new managers a detailed look at their successes and areas for growth. Managers view the number of completed 1-on-1s, pay rate changes and recognition, supporting employee development and engagement.
  • Benefits Management: Centralize employee information and empower employees to self-enroll in benefits plans through the system. Gain high-level insights into maximizing employee benefits packages with analytics.
  • Compensation Management: Ensure workers are getting paid the correct amount based on experience, skillset, education, certifications, job title and performance (great for reducing turnover and boosting morale).
  • Career Development: Let everyone know when there’s an opportunity for advancement, develop goals that align with larger business objectives and reward high performers.
  • Learning Management and Development: Search for courses, take notes, provide feedback and access various learning tools from any internet-connected device.
  • Payroll Management: Enable easy access to pay stubs, history and tax forms without admin intervention. Ensure accurate payroll processing, calculations and deductions. Automate payroll calculations, tax withholdings and direct deposits, reducing manual entry errors.
  • Time and Attendance: Monitor employee hours and forecast labor costs using historical data. Clock in and out from Paycor's app. Manage time-off requests and resolve time clock errors.
  • Scheduling: Ensure peak productivity with real-time analytics. Manage leaves and sick days, ensuring there are enough people to get the job done when unexpected call-outs occur.
  • Reporting and Analytics: Combine HR, payroll and time data into a single report. Track, store and compile data to provide managers with insights into business practices.
  • Smart Sourcing: Use Paycor's AI smart sourcing to analyze job descriptions, focusing on key factors like responsibilities and experience to find the best candidates. Run targeted campaigns to attract and engage potential hires, speeding up your talent search.
  • Job Posting Assistance: Paycor has customizable templates and AI to take skills recruiters type in and turn them into job descriptions. The platform connects to various job sites, including Facebook and LinkedIn, letting managers see which employees share job postings.
  • Compliance: Paycor offers comprehensive compliance solutions, from application tracking and EEO/OFCCP compliance reporting to simplifying ACA requirements with detailed reports and employee eligibility tracking. They also have online resources on compliance updates and changes to state laws.
  • Performance Management: Ensure regular 1-on-1s, track goals and collect feedback. Use job assessments, role profiles, templates and role-based reviews.
  • Learning Management: Get self-paced tailored training and coaching. Employees and managers can take bite-size learning courses on key topics like compliance.
  • Pulse Surveys: Turn employee feedback into actionable improvements. Empower staff to share their experiences and identify needed changes to mitigate turnover.
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  • Applicant Tracking System (ATS): Allows recruiters to post jobs to popular job sharing sites and social media. Sends alerts to notify recruiters as candidates move through the application process and offers in-app messaging features to answer candidate questions directly. 
  • Overtime Compliance: Checks overtime regulations in all 50 states and territories, ensuring compliance. 
  • Benefits Administration: Provides an option to set a variable rate health plan or enable users to sync with Maxwell Health, a third-party benefits administration outsourcer. 
  • Calendars: Generate a “Who’s Out” calendar to track which employees are out on sick leave or PTO. Integrates with popular third-party calendar apps such as Google Calendar, iCalendar and Outlook Calendar, enabling employees to synchronize their devices so they can easily view who will be available and when. 
  • Custom Workflows: Build data entry workflows that allow different individuals to be assigned to tasks and enter information. Up to five different individuals can make changes and approve workflows. 
  • Employee Reviews: Measure employee satisfaction and see how to boost employee engagement via anonymous scorecards that allow employees to evaluate the workplace. Combines eNPS and intelligent feedback analysis to gauge all aspects of the employee experience. 
  • Inbox Notifications: Alerts managers when an employee submits a time off request and reminds managers when they need to take action, such as approving or denying these requests. 
  • Mobile Capability: Provides desktop benefits from anywhere. Android and iOS-compatible apps allow employees to view time off balances, request time off, view company directories, contact employees via direct message and more. 
  • Offboarding Alerts: Send reminders to system administrators and managers to ensure that all aspects of the offboarding process are completed before an employee leaves their position and it’s too late. 
  • Performance Management Add-On: Allows employees to leave peer reviews through an objective feedback questionnaire to provide more robust evaluations. Aids managers in evaluating and comparing employee performance on an individual and departmental level, as well as across the entire company. 
  • Streamlined Reporting: Quickly generate a variety of reports including EEO-1 via the library of built-in reports. Set custom permissions to keep confidential information safe and then share reports with an unlimited number of individuals for review. 
  • Time Off Calculator: Employees can check their current PTO balances, see any upcoming time off that they have scheduled and make PTO calculations with the in-app calculator to determine how much PTO they will accrue in the future. 
  • Time Tracking: Allows employees to clock-in and clock-out for shifts as well as view their timesheets. Alerts remind employees and managers to keep their timesheets up to date with accurate hours and approve timecards when necessary. 
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Product Ranking

#33

among all
HR Management Software

#38

among all
HR Management Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

85
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86
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89
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21
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Availability and Scalability
Document Management
Employee Engagement
Platform Security
Performance Management
Vendor Information
Professional Services and Maintenance
Training

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Paycor
BambooHR
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Applicant Tracking And Recruiting Benefits Management Compensation Management Document Management Employee Engagement Employee Onboarding And Administration Employee Self Service Learning Management Payroll Management Performance Management Platform Capabilities Reporting And Dashboard Succession Management Time And Attendance Management Workforce Management 86 89 86 100 100 96 92 92 90 99 59 92 98 86 47 62 49 21 78 79 80 60 36 49 53 61 62 25 54 31 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Paycor
BambooHR
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Availability And Scalability Deployment Options Integrations And Extensibility Mobile Platform Security 100 50 76 100 71 50 71 75 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Vendor Qualification Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 4226 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 4948 reviews
85%
of users recommend this product

Paycor has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 4226 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

91%
of users recommend this product

BambooHR has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 91% when considering 4948 user reviews from 6 recognized software review sites.

4.3 (14)
5.0 (38)
4.1 (758)
4.4 (1048)
n/a
4.58 (1773)
4.4 (2846)
4.6 (1589)
4.5 (11)
4.6 (272)
3.7 (597)
4.3 (228)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Paycor and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall HR Management Software available today and earns best-in-class honors for Document Management, Employee Engagement, Employee Onboarding and Administration and Performance Management.

Analysts' Pick Award
Document Management Award
Employee Engagement Award
Employee Onboarding and Administration Award
Performance Management Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated BambooHR and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Vendor Information. BambooHR stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Vendor Information Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Time Tracking: 86% of users like Paycor's time tracking feature for its simplicity and accessibility.
Payroll: 88% of users found payroll processing convenient and reliable, particularly when processing bi-weekly payroll.
Ease of Use and Navigation: 77% of users appreciate Paycor's intuitive platform, noting that it’s easy to use and navigate, which simplifies daily HR tasks.
Integration and Customization: The platform's ability to integrate various features and customize settings to meet specific needs is frequently highlighted as a strength.
Training Opportunities: Paycor offers a variety of training options, including online webinars, recorded sessions and certification courses, which users find beneficial.
Employee Recognition and Communication Tools: Features that support employee recognition and communication are well-regarded. Users find these tools effective in engaging and managing their workforce.
Onboarding: The onboarding feature is praised for its effectiveness in streamlining the new employee integration process.
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Ease to Use: BambooHR has an intuitive and user-friendly interface, according to 100% of reviews on the UI.
Leave and Attendance Management: 85% of reviews on leave and ATS indicated that it’s quick and efficient for recording and updating these details.
Employee Self-Service: 100% of reviews mentioning self-service observed that it helps easily update personal information, view job history, and generate pay stubs and benefits information.
Onboarding: Automated workflows make the onboarding experience simpler and faster, according to all reviews referring to this aspect.
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Login Frustrations: Users note that the login process can be inconvenient as it adds an extra step to accessing information.
Customer Service: Some recent reviews cite difficulties with the support process, specifically over the phone with wait times.
Timecard Issue: A recent review notes experiencing a glitch with timecard integration, which impacted payroll processing.
Reporting: Users find the reporting features cumbersome and inconsistent. The complexity of reports and the lack of simplicity in generating them are notable pain points.
Integration With Third-Party Platforms: There are some minor issues with integrating Paycor with third-party platforms, such as benefits systems, which can lead to excessive delays and unresolved problems.
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Lacks Crucial Tools: Lacks functions such as attaching documents for employee benefits, restrictions on editing employee forms once saved and more, according to all reviews on this element.
Custom Report Filters: According to 100% of reviews on reports, it doesn't provide any option to customize report filters.
Payroll Processing and Management: All reviews mentioning this element noted that the software lacks an in-house tool for payroll processing and management.
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Paycor is a popular HR management software designed for both in-office and remote teams, as well as HR managers aiming to improve performance management. Suitable for small, medium, and large businesses across the United States, Paycor supports teams of 50 to 500 employees and can scale to accommodate organizations with up to 2,500 members.Key features include personalized coaching, Smart Source recruiting, online learning and leader insights. Financial managers benefit from Paycor’s analytics tool, which helps with compensation planning, pay equity monitoring and trend analysis. The software also integrates with general ledger data and offers self-service options for employees to access pay stubs, history and tax forms.Jumping on a live chat, I found Paycor's the most personable experience compared to competitors. I selected “just browsing” and received prompts for webinars, compliance checks, product info, and pricing. The only downside was there wasn't an option to start a new chat and the previous conversation kept reappearing even after refreshing.The mobile app provides employees with easy access to their wages, flexible pay options and paycheck details from anywhere. They can view deductions and adjust federal and state tax withholdings directly through the app.Users appreciate Paycor for its intuitive navigation, self-service features and employee recognition tools. However, some have experienced extended wait times for customer support and challenges with implementation, which sometimes require additional support team intervention.Pricing for Paycor begins at $99 per user per month. A free trial is available for prospective users to evaluate the platform before committing.I found Paycor’s platform pretty straightforward after trying it out, specifically when it came to managing compliance and employee details. I appreciate how the system highlights potential compliance issues and provides clickable warnings for detailed insights. For example, if there's a tax registration issue, I can quickly see specifics like the tax authority, client ID, and tax code, as well as the exact problem, such as a missing tax ID. The platform then guides me to a resolution page where I can easily add the necessary tax ID to fix the issue.When it comes to managing employees, I found the “Manage People” section intuitive. I can filter employees by department, location, title, or status, including options like 3rd-party payable, Active, FMLA, Laid off, or on paid leave. To perform tasks such as assigning a new responsibility, I simply check the box next to the employee’s name. If an employee needs a specific form or document, checking their name is all it takes.The homepage is handy for checking time-related information at a glance. I can see scheduled absences, approaching overtime, and current clock-in or break statuses without needing to dig through multiple screens.For new hires, I can view their name, hire date, email and onboarding progress in one place. Clicking on their name provides access to important details for updates, such as tax information, compensation, and work schedule adjustments.Sharing documents is simple with the “Bulk Actions” feature. I can select and send documents like the employee handbook, PTO policy, or exit interview questions by setting a date and clicking “share form(s).” I can also track the status of these documents in the Forms & Documents Tracking Center.I like the drag-and-drop menu options for customizing my homepage. Managing my tasks is made easier with the “My Task” option, and viewing my available PTO balance and requesting time off are just a few clicks away. I can specify the dates and whether it’s a full or partial day leave, add any necessary notes for my supervisor, and submit the request easily.Accessing and downloading my pay stubs and tax documents directly from the platform is convenient, and setting up direct deposit is straightforward. I can even split my paycheck between two accounts if needed, with one as the primary. Plus, I can check how many days are left until my next paycheck right from the homepage.I'm a fan of the Recognition Center because it lets me view positive comments from colleagues and leave recognition for others.Overall, Paycor’s platform has simplified many of my HR tasks and made the process more efficient.

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BambooHR provides hiring, onboarding, compensation administration, performance management and employee self-service capabilities to companies of all sizes and industries. Reviews suggest that it has an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Employee self-service and a simplified onboarding experience are some noteworthy capabilities. The most repeated drawbacks include the absence of crucial functionality and the inability to customize report filters. Moreover, in-house payroll processing and management isn’t included. It can be a solid choice for companies willing to integrate with a third-party payroll provider.

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