Rise Reviews

Ease to use it and it is all I need

Comments: It is easy to process the payroll. Time saver.

Pros:

Export input to excel sheet. Import excel to the system. I can generate reports for all departments. The customize functions is very powerful.

Cons:

Sometime the system is too slow. Especially on the rush hours, it is take time to go for next step. on the input sheet for search people, I would prefer more functions to search, for example, employee ID.

Works Great for Payroll

Comments: Getting the Original companies setup. Simple, not complex, great support.

Pros:

Ease of use and Customer support. .......

Cons:

So far everything has exceeded my expectations.

Room for Improvement

Comments: RISE has taken away alot of manual tracking and spreadsheets so it saves time for the HR team and managers with admin tasks. Employees are more in control of their information, and can make changes/requests very easily. The tech team seems to move a bit slow, and not sure if its due to lack of staff or a high number of service tickets, but it can be a bit frustrating waiting for a resolution for 7-15 business days.

Pros:

I like that it is a whole program, meaning admins and employees can go to one spot to get information, and you do not have to deal with multiple platforms and programs. The KB articles are wonderful resources to use to solve problems/issues without having to send in a ticket. However there is still room for improvement, with the functionality of the the various modules speaking to each other. Also needs some simple fixes, like the calendar having a choose the date instead of scrolling month by month; but overall its a great program.

Cons:

The reporting feature within payroll is very complicated, hard to pull data that we need so we end up having to create our own reports. Some of the modules do not speak to each other; changing a start date doesnt flow over the compensation start dates, onboarding defaults to work email and phone number when should go to personal; calendars are tedious as you cant choose a date, but need to scroll month by month. Its definitely a work in progress with areas to improve quite easily.

Everything needed for payroll, stellar customer support

Pros:

Customer support is far and away the best part of this software. If anything goes wrong they will fix it.

Cons:

The main interface hasn't changed a lot since Paysavvy and is showing its age. When I sign in, automatically create the next payroll if it's due soon, rather than making me click "Create Next Payroll". When I add a new rule or click Save, don't force a refresh of the whole page, but persist as is. When I click Submit, skip the need to "View Results" and go straight to a summary report that has all of the information broken out. I always need the invoice data. Detecting statistical exceptions would be great. For example, I once accidentally entered all of employee's time for a pay period as both regular time and overtime. It would be nice for Rise to point out when an employee's hours are significantly different from their median. Web Service API access to the invoice data in particular is something I've wanted for a while. I have a script that scrapes this data and inserts into my accounting system, because it takes a long time to do by hand.

Excellent value, great responsive support with live chat, terrible interface

Comments: Simplicity for small Canadian businesses running payroll.

Pros:

The pricing of this product is great, they were offering free payroll for organizations with less than 10 employees at one point, but now it's something that has to be requested. Great value for the services provided and live chat support is convenient. I do recommend this software to minimize the complexity of payroll functions for small businesses.

Cons:

It is not intuitive to use. Setup is very manual, requiring the user to download pdfs, sign them and re-upload. It's not very friendly towards accountants as the client has to create their own account. Creating a payroll run requires multiple steps, and T4 submission is not automatic. One selling feature of this product was that it integrates with QuickBooks or Xero. There is no integration. There is one guy that can create an Excel macro who requires the exact details of your accounting system setup.

Best cheap option

Comments: Support has always been lacking here it can take days to get a response and payroll is time sensitive. I wish they had a call center or live chat available during business hours. This year the system made an error in my pay cycle dates and it got messed up no one at Rise was here to help i had to reach out several times because i had over laps of pay dates on employees pay stubs my dates didnt match up it was a mess. I got very basic email on how to fix it all MYSELF this was a Rise issue not mine i was shocked no one would help fix this. I also made a comment how this would then effect ROE's and possibly T4's throughout the year and it did. All ROE's were incorrect and again took days for Rise to respond how to fix this and it was again left to me to fix their error.

Pros:

This is the best cheap payroll service on the market. Running payroll is simple if everything is set up properly. On boarding employees is simple

Cons:

Support is not great can take days to hear back from support and when its regarding payroll time is of the essence. Running any type of off cycle payroll is extremely painful and never turns out right, taxes are always wrong and way to high. Having salary and hourly paid employees i have to have two different companies and have to run two payrolls each run would be nice if it was all in one payroll run.

It takes a longer time to download reports.

Comments: Overall, Rise is good. I am very impressed with the customer service. The team sounds professional. They respond to my questions quickly. No matter what questions I have, they fix it right away.

Pros:

I like that I can export the input sheet to excel, I can work on the excel sheet for any adjustments. I can import the excel to the system after I finish all adjustments. It saves a lot of time to process the payroll when I have 200+ payslips to process.

Cons:

There are two things I have to say to get improve. 1) It takes a longer time to download reports. (time-consuming) 2) It is hard to customize the report. For example, I am looking for a report that shows all employees' (Including the termination ) salary changes in a specific period.

Getting personalized customer service is more difficult now than when it was free.

Comments: I was a pretty happy customer initially but after transitioning from the free to the paid service, have experienced worse customer support. I also find it frustrating that the payroll cutoff dates are so far out from the actual pay date. When my staff person was ill with covid, I was forced to predict a full week of work for her, which she ended up not being able to work, and so she was overpaid for 31 hours and her ROE is incorrect. When she was able to return to work over a month later, she was in the position of owing me those 31 hours.

Pros:

I am a first time business owner and first time administering payroll so using Rise was amazing as they took care of the deductions and direct deposits for my team and it was a huge weight off my shoulders. The service was free for companies with less than 10 employees which was amazing. When I needed help I was usually able to get help quickly either by online chat (even though times to access it were quite limited) or by email and I really appreciated getting to communicate back and forth with difficulties I was having or mistakes that I made. I definitely made the most of the system and customer service was amazing and patient with me.

Cons:

The free service was discontinued and now that I am a paying customer, I have a harder time accessing customer support which was disappointing and counter intuitive. I can no longer access online chat at all and the last issue I had, for which I submitted two tickets, was never responded to. And it was a serious issue. I had a staff member fall seriously ill to covid and took an extended leave and I completed her ROE incorrectly which has delayed her ability to collect EI. I initially waited to see if I would get a response before completing the ROE myself, but it was over a week and I had heard nothing back, despite submitting a second ticket, so I just did it on my own, made an error and as I mentioned, delayed her support response. It was a rep at EI who called to clarify the mistake I made so that her application could proceed.

Rise has solved the problem we set out to solve, with good support and a few rough edges

Comments: Rise allowed us to formalize and simplify our payroll system, which has been extremely valuable. Having gone to the trouble of getting set up on Rise, the ongoing work to keep our payroll system running is now quite minimal, which means payroll gets done, taxes get remitted, and we can get back to work quickly.

Pros:

- Rise has spent a lot of time on onboarding and support, and their support has also typically been quite responsive. - While Rise is a fairly complex system, once we got up to speed, our payroll workflow every month is pretty quick and painless. (I would expect this is the case for most users who have extremely simple payroll requirements) - Rise is free for smaller companies, which is a price that you really can't beat.

Cons:

- From time to time it's felt like we were interacting with someone who didn't have a great handle on the nuances of what we were trying to accomplish (particularly when we had questions at tax time), which has resulted in some hiccups around our payroll tax filing. Our support experience has often been quite good, but it's been uneven, depending on who we ended up talking to.

Best Customer Support I've Encountered

Comments: Payroll management is a breeze. We're just starting to use their recruiting and onboarding system and it's fantastic. If you hate doing things manually, Rise's platform will be your new best friend.

Pros:

In the event that I've had an issue, Rise's customer support has responded to and solved the issue within a day or two at most.

Cons:

Mobile functionality needs some love. It's almost completely unusable from my phone.

Great Onboarding, Great Customer Service. Great Products

Comments: The biggest benefit is the time savings in comparison to when we used ADP and spreadsheets

Pros:

Rise's payroll system is super easy to use, reports are provided within seconds of processing, and the customer support for payroll is excellent. In terms of it's Hub/Time Off system, it has been great. No more spreadsheets tracking time off or vacation days!

Cons:

Tracking vacation days actually used in Time Off reporting can be a bit tricky when employees request, get approved, but then cancel that request.

A solid product but the database has many limitations

Pros:

Customer support/service! Submitting payroll is easy. I love how you can download a CSV and upload it again to each payrun.

Cons:

The YTD totals don't get rolled over at the calendar year so we've been caught a couple times with maximums (such as garnishment) that don't finish b/c the system hasn't taken into account deductions from the previous year...yikes! Also, the system doesn't automatically update vacation accrual to 6% after an employee's 3 year anniversary.

They had potential, but proved to be very poor at what they claim to be great at

Comments: I didn't, I only received more costs.

Pros:

I like the platform, it was easy to use and very convenient from anywhere I happened to be. Making changes to payroll on the fly was fairly easy and having support there gave the appearance of having a professional helping along the way.

Cons:

The biggest complaint I have with Rise is that the software itself worked great, but the team behind the software is unfortunately incompetent. There are plenty of staff available to help, but none have the correct training or experience to actually help employers make decisions. On top of that when a mistake is made on their end they do not take ownership of it because "a company this size is unable to absorb a loss like that" is what I was told by the CEO. The blunders made by Rise ended up costing my company a five figure fine with CRA because they were not able to follow properly sent instructions on their intake forms. I have no problems with a smaller company needing to make mistakes in order to learn, but unless you're willing to own those mistakes, learn from them and then improve your systems you will never be sure you do not fall into those same mistakes again. Ultimately we left Rise as staying with a company that treats their clients poorly does not make sense. The costs may be higher with other larger companies, but I can assure you it is money well spent, avoid Rise at all costs.

In the past I had a direct contact for customer support which was excellent! Disappointed in change

Pros:

Software is easy to use, and accessible as long as there is an internet connection. Shows multiple companies on the same profile, which makes it easy to approve for multiple companies

Cons:

The process is very manual for T4s, would be great to have this as a more automated process. I really liked having a point of contact who handled a lot of the issues I had in the past. Not having a direct line has resulted in inconsistent responses and delayed response times. Considering the price per employee I would expect more service.

Have used Rise since it came to us. Some good things and Some not so good things

Pros:

Keeps track of most things for the people that work Monday to Friday. Able to write notes as to why that person had days off.

Cons:

I run a shop that works 24/7. Rise does not keep track of people working on Saturdays and Sundays. Hard to keep track of holidays and missed days.

Usually pretty good

Pros:

Live updates with changes etc. and access to reports of past periods for employees as well as company

Cons:

Duplicating data input for some stuff in Rise and Rise Hub. Also very slow updating reports for annual data.

Satisfactory

Pros:

very handy and useful. It has most of the features I need to adequately control payroll and get things done.

Cons:

if I have 2 compensation policies assigned to an employee, i can't have full capabilities for both policies.

Best intro to payroll ever!

Pros:

The customer service and assistance with setting up employees was amazing. The price is beyond fair and I was so appreciative that I didn't have to figure out all the CRA steps on my own. I'd be lost without them. Even the weekly payroll cut off reminders were helpful during busy months.

Cons:

Truly no complaints. I relied a little too much on the payroll cut off reminder and one time it didn't go through and we missed the deadline but a quick call to the customer service line rectified it immediately.

Good

Pros:

Good customer service, I usually get the response right away or if not the next day. The interface is user friendly. The import function is helpful.

Cons:

Some of the report is not user friendly and require more work to use the report which is not efficient.

Excellent customer support and team

Pros:

They make payroll and HR so easy. Great UX and backend. Very knowledgable team and support. They're able to answer all my questions quickly.

Cons:

No Xero integration for easy payroll reconciliation. I wish I could easily generate a payroll report to be imported into Xero.

Saves me time and money

Pros:

I love that this files and track my government remittance. I like the built in forms and auto fill. It made my year end and T4s super easy and helps when I don't know how to fix remittance errors.

Cons:

It has a beta feel, things don't always flow well and you have to click the FAQ for answers or call support.

In my 20 years of payroll experience, this is the most user-friendly platform and service I've seen.

Comments: Significant time saving in preparing software. Proactive and timely information provided to the payroll staff.

Pros:

Overall, it is very intuitive, with a clean and simple format. There is a very prompt reply to queries for help from customer service. Staff take the initiative to reach out to us and provide useful information - solving our problems before they arise (by offering e-books and webinars).

Cons:

There is some minor redundancies in the system I feel could be eliminated. However, overall it is far better than other systems I've used.

This software is OK but I still need assistance with reports as they are still not built myself

Pros:

I like the export and import of info. I like the way new employees are built in the system as it is a nice flow

Cons:

The need for me to contact them for my reports and I do not like how they took over a year to respond to me about building our payroll system.

Steer clear of Rise

Comments: We were brought on pre-pandemic and things at first were great! The onboarding, service and success teams were all fantastic. COVID hit, and they let go of all of their staff. It is impossible to get any kind of support or service from Rise. Which is compounded by the amount of errors that their system makes. BIG payroll errors. Government reporting errors. Vacation pay errors. We are embarrassed to be using this product because it reflects poorly on our brand to our employees. Do not buy Rise.

Pros:

The benefits admin is fairly straightforward. This is the only decent feature of the system.

Cons:

Mistakes, no service, billing errors, government reporting errors, cannot get a hold of anyone.

As a new business owner, I have had an excellent experience so far using Rise for my payroll.

Pros:

Customer support - they are very responsive and have always answered any questions I have. I love that I'm able to send an email or make a phone call and talk to a real person. I also like how using the software makes payroll seem less intimidating.

Cons:

The interface could be more descriptive and intuitive for users without a payroll background. I'm not familiar with many of the terms but your FAQ and help topics are very helpful for learning the language.