Paychex

If I was going to write this about my payroll specialist solely, he would get 5 stars. But I can’t. His supervisors are awful, they don’t return calls. the sales teams sets up meetings to to go over HR changes and all it is, is an attempt to sell more services. And lastly, their 401K department is AWFUL. They have no idea what they are doing and have caused me more work than needed. The very last report I got from them, I had to have my current 401k company redo and then I was able to file it with the DOL. RUN away far away from this company.

Don’t believe on the sale team of paychex. They would lie to get your money. I had paychex for many years on the payroll side. It is time for me to switch because their sales team lied to get me a benefit account. When the account is working out as it supposed to be, they refuse to refund the money. Over $ 1000 down the drain.

Wow, I am so with Stacy N. below. I first started using Paychex when my company started in KC and it was my horrific experience with the benefits side that made me leave them (I didn’t want to be connected with a division that was like night/​day with such a department).
I wasn’t happy with the other company that I switched to and ended up coming back to Paychex. We are very, very happy with the payroll service. And we ignore all the calls from their benefits department.

If I was solely reviewing the payroll side of Paychex, I would give them a four. If I was solely reviewing the benefit services side, I would have to go with a one or maybe a two. I will go with a low three to compromise.
We run a very small business — generally about 10 employees, only 2 of which are full-​time, one of them being a manager. When we set the business up, we chose Paychex as the folks who do our payroll. We don’t mind paying a fee (not a terrible one — received a discount, because our accountant put us in touch with someone) to have the payroll taken care of, tax forms filed, and we liked that they take the money out in one chunk, and put it in a holding account for the employees to then get their money from… that way we don’t have to wait for folks to deposit their checks one at a time. The payroll side we have had very few issues with, and any we have had, have been easy to resolve.
The trouble is with the benefits side. Sales people from Paychex called us multiple times to set up meetings about benefits we could offer through them. We set up at least three different meetings with them over the course of months (them calling, and initiating the meetings) and they never showed at the designated time. We should have stopped there. But, we actually were interested in getting some benefits — primarily a health plan — for our full-​time folks, and the easiest way seemed to be through them since they could easily take stuff directly out of people’s checks. My husband met up with them, and somehow we never got much info on health care, yet were talked to about how great a 401K plan would be for our employee (s) and for us as far as tax breaks. We ended up setting up one for just our manager, and made it explicitly clear that he was the only one interested/​qualified to get one (full-​time), and that we are not, nor have the time to be 401K administrators. They assured us that it was just for him, and that we wouldn’t have to do anything.
Flash forward a few months, and we receive a bunch of mail about things we need to do with the 401K. No help in understanding the language was really offered when we would contact them on the phone. Also, after noticing a disturbingly large amount of fees coming out of our account, we figure out that they have been more than double charging us! After a long phone call, we finally got it through to them, and they figured out the bad setup, and returned most of what they owed us. We saw that we were still owed a sizable chunk. Come to find out, that chunk was a contribution on our part to 401Ks for all of our employees — employees who did not want 401Ks and were not supposed to be getting them. Sigh. I am not going to go into further details, as it involves lots of IRS complications, circular logic, and a bunch of other crap. Ultimately, we have finally been able to cancel the 401K and get the rest of the money they owed us back. It has been a huge headache for awhile now.
Basically the whole fiasco comes down to naïveté on our part, and shady salesmanship on their part. We are not the type of small business that this kind of deal is good for. They mean businesses with 20 or so people doing this. Having one person get it, and receive a contribution from us cost us more in fees than in what we were saving on taxes. They knew this from the start, and also failed to inform us about the contributions to everyone else that would automatically take place. Now we have to start all over on figuring out benefits for some folks… we are focusing on the health care!
I’m glad it finally was able to be resolved, and we have learned yet another lesson in small-​business ownership. I’m tired of sales people.