17 years helping British businesses
choose better software
About Namely
With intuitive technology and a world-class team of experts, Namely empowers HR with a solution designed for mid-sized businesses.
We love the onboarding system, it makes everything very easy and automated.
Some of the locations for things seem a bit odd.
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User friendly HR platform
Comments: In other words, to make my job easier in every aspect. You can just like the post, add a comment. On the left you will see a panel where you will find several links to help you navigate the platform. You can also view compensation and benefits in the profile area. Goals and performance reviews are also easily accessible from there.
Pros:
The best thing about Namely is that it is user friendly and the reports are valuable. We have easy access to our resource section where we can post any policy, brochure, company or benefit related information.
Cons:
Could be more intuitive, especially going back and forth between all the modules. Also, I think some features could use more customization.
Alternatives Considered:
Simple HRIS that gets out of your way and lets you work
Comments: A really polished HRIS for most company use cases. You can build a very polished onboarding, offboarding, and performance mangement flow. Very positive user feedback.
Pros:
Very simple to use, simple to teach employees how to use, simple to teach managers how to performance manage with. Good integration with Okta providing a really slick and polished onboarding and offboarding loop.
Cons:
May not be as feature rich as things like ADP or Trinet when it comes to time tracking and part time employment, but nowhere near as infuriating to use.
Not the one that I would choose
Pros:
is a good tool for US companies. if you have a worldwide entity, better choose another global friendly with more possibilites.
Cons:
it does not have a good personalization and usability, is not intuitive and very basic
Happy with HRIS
Comments: Namely is a good system. It has helped us to make our candidate and employee experience easier and more efficient. We are looking forward to adding the benefits system to replace our current system to really give our employees a central place to go for all of their needs.
Pros:
We really like the onboarding tool for our new hires. There are definitely benefits to this system to streamline your process. For the most part, Namely provides an easy to use platform for our new hires to upload and provide their information. I really like the option of the e-signature which allows us to send out documents to individuals or company wide to be signed. Those documents are then available on the employees profile. We like the analytics which allow us to look at a variety of data points about our employees. We are preparing to add Namely benefits to our package and are hopeful that this will allow us to increase our employee experience satisfaction.
Cons:
We did not have a great experience with implementation and felt that we were not prepared for our go live. Our original Customer Support person struggled with many of our questions and concerns and we were left to figure a good number of work arounds on our own. We are hopeful that the new system for getting help support will be better for us. We are frequently looking for ways to work around the limitations of the Namely software. The Namely community of users has been helpful to our company.
Namely Response
4 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback and are happy to hear that Namely has enhanced your onboarding process and overall employee experience. As for implementation, we truly apologize for your experience. We have made several improvements recently, such as introducing Data Migration Services, to ensure that our clients' implementations go smoothly and properly prepare them to go live. As for customer support, we are confident that our new Pod Service Model will enhance clients' overall experiences and are happy to hear that you have found the Namely Help Community to be helpful.
Alternatives Considered:
Great HRIS and Payroll system with many customizable features
Comments: I and a Namely advocate, I was instrumental in recommending and seeting them up for my business. I just think their customer service format changes frequently and it is confusing sometimes to keep up with their preferred communication etiquette.
Pros:
We have a ver detailed and multi step performance review process, Namely allowe dus to build the ratings and concepts for our processes. The abilit ti assign multiplie review writers, the steps of approval and the reminders are all key in our operations.
Cons:
Our account contacts and the way we communicate has changed at least 3 times in the past year. Sometimes i feel like there is a push to work with customer service only in their prefered way, if you send an e-mail instead of a case or if you mark something urgent that they don't think is urgent.
Namely Response
4 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback and are happy to hear that you find our platform to be super customizable, especially when it comes to performance reviews. As for customer support, we truly apologize for your experience. We are confident that our new Pod Service Model and the Namely Help Community will enhance clients' overall experiences going forward.
Alternatives Considered:
Adequate product for the price
Comments: I personally would not partner with Namely in the future, but it worked well enough for the 1 year+ that we had it.
Pros:
We decided to go with Namely because it worked well with Germany, and we are an international company. It is unfortunately very difficult to find a product that works well in both Germany and US, since Germany is not a 1st tier country (like Spain, France, England). Germany also has very specific compliance and protocols in place. This was a number 1 feature to us, as well as the price point. Namely also had relatively simple reporting, we were always able to get what we needed.
Cons:
Performance reviews were quite bad (from both an administrative and user standpoint), no ability to plan compensation within the system, difficult to set up work flows and difficult customer service (not able to just chat with someone, needed to email and create a ticket and wait for a response), organization chart was not set up well, work flows were not as simple as they could have been (ie a workflow for managers to be involved when someone was onboarded - had to be entirely manual).
Namely Response
2 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback. We are disappointed to hear that you feel Namely wasn't the right solution for your company and apologize for your negative experience. We will be sure to relay your feedback and suggestions to our Product team.
Payroll Management Software, marketed as total HR management
Comments: We initially chose Namely in order to outsource / automate more of our total HR management and Namely had positioned themselves as total HR management. While the payroll onboarding, setup and execution was relatively easy, it was quite painful to set up and distribute HR policies or get any substantive value from the additional HR consulting that we had paid for. At the end, when we realized that some of our state quarterly taxes had not been properly filed or submitted, we chose a different platform.
Pros:
Payroll setup and management was simple to setup and run for each pay period.
Cons:
The service was not reliable for tax preparation, and failed to submit our state taxes in some states.
Namely Response
2 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback. We are disappointed to hear that you feel Namely wasn't the right solution for your company and apologize for your negative experience.
Alternatives Considered:
Namely Review
Comments: Namely HRIS, Payroll and Benefits have made such a difference. Easy to setup and use. Have worked with multiple payroll systems for over 40 years and Namely (by far) is the best and user friendly.
Pros:
We love the Onboarding, it has saved us so much time. On employee's first day, 99% is done. That's amazing.
Cons:
Con is that not all of Namely HRIS info carries over to Namely Time.
Namely Response
3 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback and are happy to hear that our platform saves you valuable time, especially when it comes to onboarding.
Alternatives Considered:
Namely Product Review
Comments: My overall experience has been very positive. They have an updated customer service center that provides you with related articles to your question which is very helpful. The customer service reps are usually pretty timely and are always very nice and polite.
Pros:
What I like most is the ease of use for our employees. It is a very intuitive system to use and an employee's profile, performance management, PTO and onboarding tasks are visible to them.
Cons:
What I like least about this software is that we have brought up questions, multiple times, about performance management system generated responses that do not make sense and they have never been fixed. You will receive an email that says "your approval required" even though the text below it says the review is incomplete.
Namely Response
4 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback and are happy to hear that you find our platform easy to use. We are also excited to hear that you have enjoyed working with our new Pod Service Model, as it has been designed to enhance clients' overall experiences.
I Recommend Namely
Comments: I really enjoyed the platform, my overall experience was a positive 10/10!
Pros:
Namely is easy to navigate, can easily be accessed anywhere, and in my experience, has a small amount of website issues. It's a hub you utilize daily when employed with a company, and a platform you can still access after you've switched jobs. It was very helpful when filing 2022 taxes even though my new company doesn't utilize Namely.
Cons:
The only feature I remember having issues with was not being able to go back and edit PTO time after the scheduled PTO time period had passed. For example, if i had requested 8 hours of PTO but only took 6, I was unable to edit the next day. My manager would have to completely delete the request, and i'd have to create a new one.
Needs more work
Comments: I have only been using Namely since the end of May 2019. I am hoping that as time goes on it will become easier to navigate, but at this time I am not enjoying the move.
Pros:
I like the idea of only having to use 1 program to manage employee timekeeping, payroll and benefits.
Cons:
This program has not been an easy transition nor has it been easy learn. One of my biggest issues with Namely is the process of inputting new hires. They call it Onboarding, and the new hire has to have an email or you have to setup one for them. Once you have completed the onboarding process then you have to go through many different screens to finish the setup, and then wait for the system to catch up and generate an employee ID so they can start clocking in/out on the time clock. I have found that if I do this in the morning, the employee ID is not issued until end of day. The old program I used I could setup the new hire in 10 minutes and have them clocking in and out right away. Clocking in/out for team members has been a struggle too because it does take a lot of time and if you have more than one person attempting to clock in/out for their shift, someone is always late or ends up with a missed punch because of all the "ok"'s they have to hit. If they miss the last "ok" it does not record their punch.
Good product for growing company
Pros:
The social feature on the home page was great. I loved how our team was able to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries when they logged on.
Cons:
When I used it Namely was new to the industry and had some growing pains they went through. Re-orgs and misses on design layout. Was still happy to use it on a daily basis though!
Avoid at all costs
Comments: Terrible - service reps do not know the system, standard payroll practice, let alone any questions. Service tickets get lost, takes months for resolution of more complex tasks and extreme micromanagement
Pros:
It's pretty. There is really no other pro.
Cons:
HRIS: No proper Leave tracking for maternity/paternity, jury duty, bereavement leave ETC There's no way to see a PTO accrual history Employees are not alerted when their address format is invalid Only one set of holidays - UK sees all US Holidays When reporting structure changes you have to make MANUAL changes in Namely Payroll IN ADDITION to doing a mass upload in the HRIS Doesn't auto track history of Job titles Need to manually assign PTO to employees not automatic Leave approval amends, not sent Lack of point in time reporting Does not auto assign pay group based on the type of pay entered Payroll: You can't retract partial payments Had to print W2s and sort through employees that electronically consented and send out those that did not "We have to do all of the calculations manually when there is a comp change in the middle of a pay period " Invalid addresses prevent us from proceeding with payroll We are unable to easily add "time and a half" for employees who work on holidays Takes weeks to add a new department code Tax withholdings do not flow seamlessly from HRIS to Payroll If we need to Mark an employee as FICA tax exempt we need have to reach out to Namely as only they can do this Employee ID do not flow over to HRIS Manually have to add holiday pay for employees does not flow into payroll You have to manually exclude employees from payroll once terminated Time and attendance: Time card entry is tedious PTO doesn't communicate to Payroll You have to man
Alternatives Considered:
Namely is a great option for a mid sized company
Pros:
The software flows very well and links everything so it's easy to onboard and offboard employees. The profiles store employee data efficiently and the reporting and analytics is very useful.
Cons:
There are many inconsistencies or illogical set ups that make the software wonky at times. For example, titles are considered an "object" rather than text. So you have to add every title manually in the backend. THEN, only on the onboarding form can you search titles. Everywhere else you must search the alphabetized list manually for your title. This is just a minor inconvenience. A more major one is how salaries are handled. When inputting a salary for payroll you have to calculate out how much each check should be and input that in addition to listing the annual salary. This might be fine if every other form or field didn't calculate it automatically for you. This seems like a major oversight and really puts into perspective how this software was developed. And that is, many teams working on their own parts without any formal cohesion of functionality. Honestly, it feels like an intern built the whole onboarding piece (which is the function you will use the most).
Namely Response
3 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback and are happy to hear that our platform has simplified your onboarding and offboarding processes. As for your pain point about salaries, we apologize for your negative experience. Fixing that process is currently on our product roadmap and we look forward to making your experience as seamless as possible.
The absolute WORST Payroll HRIS System...EVER!!!!!!!!!
Comments: From a zero to ten it's a zero. Run...do not walk away from considering this system and support model. Way too many more modern systems and service providers than this. Apparently this company does not take into consideration feedback from customers. You also do NOT have a dedicated service rep. So once you sign the dotted line...you're on your own. Good luck...b/c you will need with this awful 1960 system design.
Pros:
I do like the Facebook look and feel for the main page for ESS. Articles and help guides easily to upload to system.
Cons:
Where to begin? So many to list.... Hold times for client services are crazy. I guess b/c the company is in financial trouble the staff is bare. get ready for TWO plus hours of hold times to get help!!! You can barely ever get a hold of a live person. You have to create a "call back" and list three times you want a call back...but it is within their hours. Then they send an invite for when "they" are free...not the client. System cannot track correctly FMLA or other PTO times. System cannot do imputed income on GTL or other imputed items per pay period like ADP, Paychxex, Ceridian, Workday, SAP and all other modern systems can do easily. The software cannot do gross ups easily, manual checks are a fiasco. Whoever designed this system did NOT have background in payroll or HRIS. Manual checks cannot be ran with the regular payroll. It has to be done as a "separate payroll".
Namely Response
4 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback. We are disappointed to hear that you feel Namely wasn't the right solution for your company and apologize for your negative experience.
Sr. Director, Global People Operations
Comments: Extremely positive. I love working with the entire Namely team - they have a great customer-centric culture, are knowledgable, there at the drop of the hat and just a pleasure to work with. I couldn't recommend the team more highly.
Pros:
I absolutely LOVE Namely. The HRIS is very easy to use, manage and creates a great experience not only for admins but our employees as a whole. Everything is seamless to navigate and it is honestly an HR professional's dream come true.
Cons:
I wish the reporting aspects were a little bit more straightforward to use / understand how to create and do more analytics and data pulling. Overall, it's great and something I'm sure the helpdesk community would be happy to set up a session to delve into more 1-1.
Namely Response
3 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback and are happy to hear that you've enjoyed using our platform and working with our customer support team.
Easy and sustainable.
Comments: Namely is simple and easy to use, it requires a few improvements that seem to be coming soon. It still has some glitches that need an urgent fix, but with the few conversations I've had with the Customer Support team, I can tell that Namely will greatly improve in future versions.
Pros:
It is a straightforward and easy to use software, the user interface is the simplest one in the market of HR Management tools. It is a good example of the Integration between Payroll and HR Systems, and might be useful in the Linkbuilding bussiness with a few enhancements and addons. The Customer Service is great and the people involved are very kind and competent.
Cons:
The customization of the processes is not easy to implement, and tends to be tiresome, and in many cases it slows down the navigation. It is currently lacking a proper auto-sync feature. It does not have the E-signature feature for current employees. The performance management module has a complicated nature. There could be a better integration between the HR and the Payroll modules. As I explained in the Pros, it is easy to use but it could be highly improved in terms of pragmatic functionalities over the user friendly interface.
Accounts Manager
Comments: Love the software, love the functionality, love the ease of use. Very highly recommend.
Pros:
Ease of use, functions that are important to me as an end user.
Cons:
There were no issues, it was a seamless transition.
Namely Response
3 years ago
Thank you for your review! We really appreciate your feedback and are happy to hear that you've enjoyed using our platform.
User Friendly but not Payroll/ PTO Tracking / Time-Keeping Friendly. Bad Implementation Team.
Comments: We are trying to minimize paper clutter and store information digitally which is one of the reasons why we chose Namely. On-boarding process is much more automated as you can upload all required documents into a template and have new employees complete them using e-signature. Performance Management feature makes it very easy to keep track of everyone's progress and manage from the administrative side. Benefits Open Enrollment is now automated and employees will be accountable for making changes or selecting new coverage.
Pros:
ser friendly. Easy to navigate through the website and very easy to run custom reports in the HRIS side. We are also utilizing their on-boarding, performance management and benefits enrollment features to save the company time as well as to reduce paperwork.
Cons:
Biggest concern is that the Payroll module is as robust as Namely claims it to be. The report writer is limited and there are manual double entries that you need to do to if you are tracking PTO as well as other information using their HRIS module. We ended up purchasing their Namely Time module because the web-clock and PTO Tracking in their HRIS module is very limited; the web-clock is unable to round worked hours as we track employee hours worked in 15 minute increments and PTO Tracking was not accruing the correct amount of sick and vacation balance for the employees which caused us to manually track PTO for 6 months on a spreadsheet. Even with the Namely Time module, it does not fully integrate with Namely Payroll, therefore, all accrued vacation and sick balances does not feed over and we are not able to show the accrued balances on employees pay-stubs which is required by law in California. We have NOT been in compliance for over 10 MONTHS .
Namely - Great for HR, Payroll, and Employees
Comments: We signed up for Namely in the Fall of 2014. We started with the HRIS and benefits for just flex spending. Being in HR, it was wonderful to be able to customize Namely's platform to include the data that we wanted to track and provide. For employees, it was a game changer because they now had access to information they had never had before (such as a clear salary and bonus history). In January 2015 we launched payroll with two of our smaller entities. Employees found Namely easy to log into and the paystubs were clear and easy to read. In the Fall of 2015 we added all of our benefits into Namely and did our full open enrollment. It was amazing for both employees and HR. HR loved that there was no paper to track and it was easy to see where everyone was in regard to the open enrollment process. Employees appreciated being able to log in from anywhere and how easy the system was to navigate. We also started using the Onboarding feature and it has saved employees and HR so much time. Now, employees are able to fill out all of their new hire and benefits information before their start date. We've seen the turnaround time decrease dramatically! All around, Namely has been extremely helpful for employees, HR, and payroll. And, if anyone asked, I would absolutely recommend Namely!
Pros:
I love how customizable Namely is.
Cons:
They haven't rolled it out yet but, I'm excited to be able to report on any and every field in Namely in one report and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to do document signing for current employees one day.
Good Product and Company with Direction
Comments: Namely has saved us time in a lot of areas once we really learned how to use the system. We have been very impressed with Namely's interest in responding to client needs and I've not ever worked with a company such as theirs with a roadmap that is truly responsive to clients. One area they can continue to improve upon is in customer service--I find myself needing to follow up on service requests often. That said, I know it is something that they are working on improving. Overall good experience with Namely.
Pros:
Namely's onboarding function has been a huge time saver for our company. We have a lot of documentation that employees must sign and review before starting and it makes it easy for them to find it all in one place. Performance reviews are also a breeze with Namely. Lastly, we have found a lot of benefit in the all-in-one nature of Namely for ourselves and our employees.
Cons:
The integration between HRIS, Payroll, Benefits, and Time can certainly continue to be improved. Additionally, our company manages multiple EINs and so we would like to see Namely continue to improve functionality for this.
A great product for the price.
Comments: To have a one-stop location for PTO, performance management, payroll, onboarding, birthdays and anniversaries, salaries, and reporting makes our lives much easier .
Pros:
There are so many HRIS and payroll products on the market, that it was great to find one that did both really well several years ago. And there have been numerous improvements since-an onboarding feature, updated performance management, the API is more user friendly, and there are API connections with several other softwares we use.
Cons:
There are some intuitive changes that are happening in the product, such as improving the the reporting functions, title changes, and salary increase sections.
Best all-in-one system for small/mid-size companies
Comments: They took on our benefits brokerage services in the middle of a renewal season when we were struggling with an unreliable broker we've had for years. They came in and negotiated down rates for us, set up new plans, working with our insurance carriers and got us everything ready in time for open enrollment. Unbelievable effort - Namely hires outstanding talent and their benefits team works wonders!
Pros:
Aside from having every tool an HR/Payroll dept needs integrated and working together, the best part about Namely is their customer service. Each client has an individual client partner instead of an 800 number and a case ID. That's made all the difference - instead of going thru prompts and re-describing the problem to a different CSR each time you call in, your partner knows you and your company and always responds quickly. Outstanding customer focus!
Cons:
Nothing, they're exactly what we were looking for and more. If I were looking for a new system, I would implement Namely again.
Nice software for keeping company connected
Comments: It makes it very easy to find my paystubs and benefit information. It also has a nice newsfeed where people can post company updates. Also, if I can't remember someone's name, I can go find their picture on Namely and it has information like their name, the department they work in, and how long they've been with the company.
Pros:
It's really easy and intuitive to use, it has great features, and I use it all the time. It's much, much less cumbersome than most of the cloud-based software of a similar nature that I've used at other companies. I really have hardly any complaints about Namely; I just wish the other software I used at work was this nice.
Cons:
I don't like that I have to go to organization.namely.com instead of going to Namely and just logging in. I'm not sure why this bothers me but I find it frustrating that I often forget and go to namely.com, and then land on a page that's trying to sell the platform to HR professionals. Some elements feel like a blatant ripoff of Facebook, but hey, it makes it easy to use.
Don't Do It
Pros:
I can't even articulate it because there isn't anything. We're stuck with it right now. Really and truly.
Cons:
Their team of 'dedicated reps' is a joke. You need to call them to get any real support. Emailing them never seems to produce a solution to your problem. The person they assign you to act as your advocate/customer success person has changed three times and this new one made all kinds of promises about how available he'd be. Literally every week he cancels our standing meeting. LITERALLY. The software has zero automation and much of your calculations, changes, etc. are manual.