Dayforce vs Ascentis

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Our analysts compared Dayforce vs Ascentis based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Talent Management Systems, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Dayforce Software Tool
Ascentis Software Tool

Product Basics

Dayforce is a cloud-based human capital management (HCM) platform that offers a full suite of tools for managing payroll, workforce management, career development, benefits and HR tasks.

It's a great pick for larger teams looking to streamline onboarding and training with performance management tools that support ongoing career development. Plus, its self-service portal gives employees more independence.

Ranked in the top five on our HR software list, Dayforce stands out as the Best for Reporting and Dashboards. It shines with features like employee engagement, succession management and compensation management.

With tools for workforce insights, personalized coaching, and mobile access, managers can enhance engagement and adapt more efficiently, which helps cut down on turnover and anticipate trends. Mobile time-tracking tablets and time clocks help minimize errors and ensure more accurate payroll.

The platform offers customizable dashboards, automated payroll calculations, centralized employee info and engagement tracking. Users love its intuitive, easy-to-use design and self-service options that lighten the admin load. However, some find the reporting feature a bit tricky; while reports are customizable, getting them set up can be complex.

Pricing varies based on the number of users and chosen modules, generally falling between $6 and $12 per employee per month, which is mid-range compared to other options out there.

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Ascentis offers HCM services to companies of all industries via its cloud-based suite. Its five modules include time and attendance, payroll, HR and benefits, talent, and recruiting. Users can choose to pick individual functionalities or the entire package of services, depending upon their needs.

It facilitates process automation for several complex business processes and transactions, reduces the probability of errors, offers real-time analytics, eliminates manual work, and helps talent managers and organizations cater to their human resources and talent management requirements. It also provides ease-of-use through an interface that can be accessed anytime, anywhere on a desktop, tablet or smartphone.
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$6/Employee, Monthly
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$16/Employee, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Centralize Records: Store all your documents in a secure repository, using filters to easily find the forms you need. You can also monitor and manage compensation levels, performance metrics, and org charts. Dayforce’s document management gets an 81 out of 100, according to our data.
  • Improve Payroll Accuracy: Reduce timesheet errors for more accurate payroll processing. While payroll management scores a 75, Dayforce payroll calculates pay in real time as it's recorded, giving admins continuous data throughout the pay period and providing more time for verification, review and audits.
  • Enhance Engagement: Promote stronger team engagement and communication with TeamRelate. Managers can track employee engagement daily, tailor coaching, and gauge employee communication styles and motivators through surveys. Its employee engagement tools come in at a perfect 100.
  • Navigate Compliance: Access real-time information on all legislative rules globally, including monitoring regulations in over 200 countries, to ensure compliance. Configure what the system monitors based on specific needs.
  • Work Flexibly: Update availability, check schedules and submit time-off requests on the go. Users can preview earnings, clock in and out, and view the People Directory to contact coworkers.
  • Boost Communication: Enhance communication by highlighting managers and colleagues in interactive org charts. Build and arrange employees based on the company’s structure and hierarchy.
  • Manage Time and Time Off: Replace punch clocks with tablets offering accurate time and attendance information. Employees can record time, request time off or trade shifts, and view schedules via the mobile app.
  • View Workforce Insights: Track critical organizational indicators like turnover by location and age to understand operational trends.
  • Ease Benefits Management: Simplify benefits enrollment with side-by-side plan comparisons and smart recommendations. Employees can update their coverage via self-service.
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  • Optimized Team Performance: Gather information and feedback for each employee, from all sources. Uncover talent and top-performing employees as well as facilitate planning that results in optimized team performance. 
  • Quality Applicants:  Showcase an employer brand when seeking new employees to encourage the maximum number of quality applicants. 
  • Efficient Employee Onboarding: Eliminate duplicate data entry and leverage the cost saving benefits of switching to an online application process instead of an offline process. Cut costs, make onboarding more efficient and reliable, and gain complete access to data 24/7. 
  • Regulatory Compliance: Stay compliant with all essential employment regulations such as FMLA, FLSA, and other local and state laws that require consistency and vigilance. 
  • Real-Time Payroll Processing: Ensure accurate, efficient payroll processing and audits. Run payroll processing anytime, from any place, as many times as required. 
  • No Tax-Related Penalties: Remove the stress of incurring accidental late filing penalties by ensuring timely payroll deposits and filing. 
  • Complete Customization: Tailor the system in ways that best suit company needs, enabling maximum usage and functionality. 
  • Automated Benefits Administration: Save time and reduce manual effort by automating benefits management, administration and employee enrollment processes. 
  • Data-Driven Decisions: Compare metric goals with data insights to make data-driven decisions that lead to improved overall performance. Leverage more than 300 templates for standard reports or customize reports to suit organizational requirements. 
  • Real-Time Self Learning: Cultivate and encourage self-learning and employee development through training resources that are available in real time. 
  • Enhanced Employee Experience: Users can access upcoming schedules, select open shifts, view and request leaves, check paycheck history and statements, punch in and punch out, find co-workers, receive important notifications and alerts, and much more. 
  • On-the-Go Access for Managers: Stay on top of tasks from anywhere. Manage employee schedules, check notifications for employee requests, and approve or reject leaves and expense reports from the user-friendly mobile app. 
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  • Core HR: Centralize employee info, manage performance, carry out recruiting, oversee payroll and get reports for data-driven decision-making.
  • Employee Self-Service (ESS): Let users enroll in benefits, view pay details, update personal information, access learning resources and stay current on announcements.
  • Payroll: Roll out a variety of payroll tasks, including tax management, employee verification and data entry for unique situations like retroactive payments. Dashboards provide insights and reporting tools support payroll reconciliation.
  • Benefits: Fast track enrollment by letting employees independently enroll for coverage. Admins can access enrollment totals, a library of qualification rules, on-demand calculations and streamlined COBRA management. It also integrates with hundreds of carriers and incorporates features to ensure ACA compliance.
  • Talent Management: Manage every phase of an employee lifecycle, from recruiting and onboarding to succession planning. Track performance in a holistic view, plan budgets effectively and reskill current employees with AI talent tools.
  • Workforce Management: Process payroll, manage sick days or vacation time, and view reports on key trends like spending for proactive planning.
  • Compliance Support: Safeguard sensitive information with role-based access and ease multi-jurisdictional tax filings with tax services for federal, state and local jurisdictions.
  • Customer Support: Get help with questions and concerns through live chat or phone. Access additional resources on the website like the help center and webinars.
  • Dayforce Wallet: Provide employees access to their earned wages before payday. This flexibility improves financial wellness and reduces employee stress associated with waiting for a paycheck. It also provides functionalities such as budgeting tools and financial planning resources. Note: The amount available depends on completed shifts and standard transfer time is between 1-3 business days. Faster transfers require additional fees.
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  • Time and Attendance: Offers several functions such as leave management, time tracking, employee scheduling, advanced scheduling, a mobile app and compliance. 
  • Employee Scheduling: Provides management automation for several key aspects like split shift intervals, leave balances, overtime, expenses and total work hours. 
  • Advanced Scheduling: Helps schedule workflows and optimize all scheduling processes end to end. Evaluates unique rules and requirements within an organization and then auto-generates schedule recommendations based on that information. 
  • Payroll: Payroll processing occurs in real time, offering maximized accuracy, compliance, control and flexibility. 
  • HR and Benefits: Provides functionalities such as benefits management, HR compliance, HR solution customization, employee self-service, reporting and more. 
  • Talent Management: Customizable and user-friendly module. Capabilities include succession planning, compensation planning, performance management, learning management, check-ins, 360-degree assessments and real-time feedback. 
  • Recruiting: Acts as a dynamic career portal, helps with social media outreach, enables efficient onboarding and improves workflow management for HR-related functions. 
  • Ascentis Mobile Application: Two types of access are available — one for employees and another for managers and supervisors. Based on their role, users can share messages, update and access information, and perform other activities, all through a smartphone or a tablet. 
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Product Ranking

#11

among all
Talent Management Systems

#19

among all
Talent Management Systems

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Analyst Rating Summary

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AI-based Capabilities
Employee Communication
Learning Management
Onboarding
Performance Management
AI-based Capabilities
Employee Communication
Onboarding
Succession Planning
Performance Management

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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Ascentis
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AI-based Capabilities Compensation Management Dashboard And Reporting Employee Communication Learning Management Mobile Capabilities Onboarding Performance Management Recruitment And Applicant Tracking Succession Planning 100 40 0 100 100 0 100 100 89 100 100 0 0 100 71 0 100 99 78 100 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 3463 reviews
Good User Sentiment 626 reviews
85%
of users recommend this product

Dayforce has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 85% when considering 3463 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

77%
of users recommend this product

Ascentis has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 77% when considering 626 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (24)
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4.2 (792)
4.0 (251)
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4.2 (51)
4.3 (969)
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4.6 (541)
2.0 (1)
4.0 (1137)
3.7 (323)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Easy PTO Tracking: Dayforce simplifies requesting and viewing PTO and tracking employee hours.
User-Friendly Interface and Features: Dayforce receives praise for being easy to set up and navigate.
Comprehensive: Dayforce is effective for managing payroll, benefits, and workforce management (WFM), providing real-time data and streamlined record-keeping. Custom reporting, time management and compensation planning are highlighted as strong features.
Consistency: The system integrates well across various functions such as HR, payroll, and time management, helping to consolidate processes and improve efficiency.
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Customer Service: All reviews mentioning this aspect indicated that the customer support services quickly resolve all user issues.
Ease of Use: An easy-to-use interface helps new users to quickly learn and understand its versatile features, according to 85% of reviews on this element.
PTO Calculation: 90% of reviews that mention PTO noted that all employees can send PTO requests via self-service and easily calculate their PTO earned by the end of the fiscal year.
Less Data Input: 100% of reviews on integration noted that the smooth integration between payroll and HR modules allows information to flow easily between systems, without feeding data in multiple times.
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Reporting: Report creation can be cumbersome and not very user-friendly. The ability to convert fixed reports into customizable formats and access more diverse formats is limited.
Outdated Employee Self-Service: Some users found this feature outdated without improved auditing and traceability features for payroll elections.
Frequent Updates: Some updates lead to slow down and create a learning curve for some users.
Implementation Process: Users reported implementation can have high up-front costs, take longer than expected and cause frustration.
Customer Support: Users experienced long response times and additional fees.
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Inaccurate Reporting: 100% of reviews on reporting indicated that the software sometimes creates random reports or files that are outside the set criteria, and that it’s time-consuming and confusing to create new reports or look through report history.
Password Reset: Employees are unable to reset their own passwords for the employee self-service functionality, according to 60% of reviews on the element.
Implementation Process: 85% of reviewers who mention this feature indicated that Ascentis has a time-consuming implementation process, due to the numerous features it provides.
Data Entry: All reviews on data entry observed that the ATS feature sometimes has multiple data entries of the same information.
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Dayforce, a popular AI-powered HCM solution, caters to businesses across various industries on a global scale. It’s perfect for large teams and companies needing a scalable and adaptable platform. Most of its features are user-friendly, making it relatively easy to learn and navigate.Dayforce stands out with its mobile time-off requests, smart benefit enrollment recommendations, TeamRelate, Dayforce Wallet and automated payroll calculations. It also offers robust support for day-to-day operations, including reports and dashboards, org charts, shift trades, and compliance.The mobile app and self-service platform give employees the freedom to handle tasks like accessing pay stubs, viewing schedules, and submitting time-off requests independently, which reduces the need for admin intervention.Dayforce tackles common HR challenges like managing varied payroll and compliance needs, dealing with tricky reporting, and making employee self-service easier. While users appreciate its mobile features and schedule management, they’ve mentioned that reporting can be a bit complex and time-consuming, sometimes leading to long waits for customer support.The demo reveals a comprehensive hub serving as a centralized dashboard, providing news updates, team objectives, pending tasks, and recommended applications like performance management and recruiting.Personally, I thought the scheduling module looked a little cluttered/complicated for beginners, but you can use filters to narrow down results and make it look less busy/cleaner.Payroll processing demands a hawk's eye when it comes to details. I thought Dayforce had a reasonably straightforward payroll design.Engagement surveys offer compact insights into employee sentiment and effectiveness, while customizable dashboards and scorecards display key metrics on workforce dynamics, such as availability, recruitment metrics, and turnover rates.Automated alerts and integration with job boards enhance recruiting, and self-service features support career development, HR and benefits enrollment.The chatbot provided a brief welcome and directed me to the Help Center after I chose support. The chat ended there, and I encountered the issue of the conversation not clearing when the page was reopened.Pricing is competitive, based on user numbers and selected modules (charged per month).Overall, Dayforce is a comprehensive HCM software that effectively supports managing people, pay and compliance.

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Ascentis provides à la carte solutions for human capital and workforce management. It can be a good pick for companies that are looking for software that has an intuitive interface, seamless integration between payroll and HR, PTO, benefits calculation and responsive customer service. However, several reviews mentioned reporting is inaccurate, challenging and cumbersome. There are also issues with duplicate data, and implementation is time-consuming. It can be a good choice depending on company needs and priorities.

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Screenshots

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