About Paylocity
I needed a payroll app for my landscaping business after my accountant retired last summer. I have three full-time guys and two seasonal workers, so I’m not a huge corporation. I tried Paylocity because my buddy down at Mike’s Auto Body uses it for his six employees. The setup took me a whole Saturday afternoon on my Google Pixel 7, mostly because I kept getting lost in menus that assume you know fancy HR terms. It’s not a simple app for a guy like me who just wants to run payroll on Fridays and send out W-2s at tax time. There’s way more stuff in here — benefits tracking, time clocks, performance reviews — that I don’t need and probably never will. The dashboard is busy. I spent the first week just clicking around to see what did what.
Features & Highlights
The main thing I use is payroll processing, and that part works okay once you set it up. You plug in hours, it calculates taxes, direct deposits go out on time. I like that it handles all the federal and state tax filings automatically — that’s a huge weight off my shoulders. There’s an employee self-service portal where my guys can see their own pay stubs and request time off, which stopped them texting me at 10 PM on a Tuesday. The mobile app on my Pixel 7 actually runs smoother than I expected for a business app. It logs me in with my fingerprint, so I don’t have to type that long password every time. There’s a team messaging feature but my guys ignored it. The time tracking uses GPS which is good because my crew works at different job sites. But you have to pay extra for that GPS feature, which annoyed me.
User Experience
Honestly, the app feels like it was designed by accountants for accountants. I’m not dumb but I’m also not an HR specialist. Setting up my company info took forever because there’s about fifty fields for things like “industry classification code” and “worker compensation class” that I had to Google. The mobile app is cleaner than the website, thank goodness. I can approve time cards on my phone while I’m sitting in my truck eating lunch. But sometimes the app crashes when I switch between payroll runs too fast. That happened last Wednesday and I had to close it and reopen it. The employee side looks simple enough — my guys figured out how to clock in and out on their own phones without me showing them, which is a miracle. There’s a learning curve, but once you get past the first month, it becomes routine.
Pricing
Here’s where my wallet starts complaining. Paylocity doesn’t show prices on their website, which already made me suspicious. I had to talk to a sales guy over the phone — took three calls before I got a straight answer. They charge a base fee per month plus a per-employee fee. For my five people, I’m paying about $180 a month. That covers basic payroll and tax filing. But then they wanted $4 extra per employee for the time clock feature, and another $3 per employee for the mobile app access. I said no to those. I keep my time cards on paper and enter them manually. Save me $35 a month. If you want things like benefits administration or the HR library, those are separate add-ons too. It adds up fast. For a small business owner watching every dollar, it feels like they hide the real cost until you’re already invested.
Updates & Support
I had to contact support once because one of my employees got locked out of his account after changing phones. I submitted a ticket through the app on a Monday morning. Got a reply Thursday afternoon. That’s three and a half days. The person who helped me was nice and knew their stuff, but for a payroll issue, waiting that long made me nervous. What if it was payday? The app updates automatically on my phone, usually once a month. I notice the interface sometimes shifts around after an update and I have to hunt for buttons I used to know where they were. That’s frustrating when I’m trying to run payroll quick on Friday morning. There’s also a chat bot in the app but I never used it. I’d rather talk to a real human even if I have to wait a bit.
Security & Privacy
This part actually matters to me because we’re dealing with social security numbers and bank account info for my guys. Paylocity uses two-factor authentication, which I have turned on. It sends a code to my phone every time I log in from a new device. The data is encrypted, they say. I’m not a tech expert but I haven’t heard of any breaches, and I did search online before signing up. The app logs me out after a few minutes of inactivity, which is annoying when I’m reading a long report but probably smart. I can also set different permission levels — like my foreman can see time sheets but not payroll amounts. That gives me some peace of mind. Still, I wish they explained their security policies in plain English instead of legal paragraphs.
