Novatime (discontinued) vs UKG Ready | TrustRadius (2024)

We continue to remain the only professional baseball team that utilizes NOVAtime for our scheduling of staff, mostly because it was designed to schedule hospital workers. The lag time when updating the ASM is extremely time consuming and the inability to work in multiple internet tabs or windows makes it that much more inefficient. I am sure it is a fantastic system for other organizations but it continues to be a challenge for us.

Incentivized

It's amazing for providing data to a location; especially when that data hasn't been available to get before. The reporting ability is phenomenal; some more tutorials on how to get that data out of the system would be wonderful. The user experience is really good - it is something that almost any level of user can easily access and comprehend. It seems to meet users where they are from an intuitive level.

• The report database is very extensive--there is a report for everything
• Easy to use
• Various ways for EEs and supervisors to access information

Incentivized

• I find timesheets to be easy to use and provide good details for employees and employers.
• I love how customizable the dashboard is. This is a time saver for someone working in HR.
• The payroll process was easy to learn. The steps are simple to follow, and changes can be made to the pay statements with ease.

Incentivized

• There does need to be more support and knowledge when it comes to alternate workweek schedule types (9/80, etc.), as there have been a few unique challenges with those.

• I would like to see the balances for PTO described and grouped differently. Employees continue to be confused with the "Projected balances" section. Maybe this can be worded one way for the users and another for the admins.
• The Passwords to access the system, plus the need for a verification code, is a huge pain point for our deskless workers. We have a lot of frustration around accessing the system to clock in and out, request time off, etc. The increase in user adoption is a struggle.
• It would be great to have UKG Pro and UKG Ready in one application on the mobile app; having access to areas to simply punch in and out for your daily shift is counterintuitive.

Incentivized

The overall satisfaction within the organization has been luke warm, at best. The software may be more conducive for a hospital but I believe there is a reason why we are the lone baseball team utilizing it.

Incentivized

We plan to renew our support and use of UKG Ready each year unless it becomes unavailable or the district seeks another vendor. As of now, there are no plans to changes vendors. The district staff is now familiar with using UKG. Another vendor will need to meet the same expectations we have come to enjoy with using UKG

Incentivized

On the employee's side of things, Novatime is pretty intuitive and fairly easy to use. All they have to do is either press a button to punch in or punch out. If they are entering in their hours, all they have to do is type in the number of hours per day. On the manager's side of things, Novatime is also fairly easy to use. It highlights in red any missed punches and in green any OT that the employee has. There are links on the homepage of the manager's page that will lead them to a list of all their employees' missed punches for a pay period and they can fix them all before payroll is due. Novatime becomes a bit more complicated on the administrator's side. The issues I have run into with Novatime normally come after updates/upgrades to their system. They have been getting better, but the administrator's side is still a bit clunky and takes a while to find what you are looking for. It is not as intuitive as the other sides and takes a bit of computer knowledge to figure it out.

For the average user they do not struggle. We do have a handful of users who struggle using their own smartphones, and of course, they struggle with any technology. However, we do not let this sway us from helping them learn. Managers have found the system easy to navigate once fully trained.

Incentivized

The system seems very stable. Being hosted in the cloud, we are vulnerable to internet speeds and busy times. The system has been down a couple times over the 3 months we have been live, but Kronos resolved the issues very quickly. To have access from a desktop, tablet, time clock, or phone app is one of the best features....users have almost NO REASON they can't clock in.

Incentivized

We were always told that Kronos was the best, but there are reports that we got out of ADP and other payroll providers that we cannot get out of Kronos. One example is a report of Productive/Non-productive hours by department. We also need the dollar amount associated with the hours. This is information that is required on our cost report and we were told that that report is unavailable. It is very frustrating when I can't get what I need.

Incentivized

The program itself can be customized in many different ways to meet the needs of the company/organization that it is working with. The charts/graphs on the new homepage are somewhat helpful and link to useful information. It has some really nice scheduling features that allow managers to see the difference between hours expected to work and actual hours worked as well as overtime, absences, and non-scheduled shifts. Processing payroll is quite simple. PTO request off is straightforward.

Incentivized

If I was only rating support itself that would be a 10. Every support case I have entered has been addressed efficiently and with the desired result. On the implementation and transition to support there were multiple issues that those doing the implementation or transition could not answer or workflows and various settings left undone only to be discovered later. We implemented 3 different modules and the expertise we got for each one varied widely.

Incentivized

Our in-person training was a hybrid. Live online training with an instructor. They were very knowledgeable of the product & the area they were training on. I asked several specific questions and if they didn't know the answer immediately they followed up after class.

Incentivized

Pretty good online training, you have many how to options and can watch them several times. It can be hard at times to dig through the amount of data online but can usually find what you are looking for. Also you can download documentation for setting up the profiles and policies.

Incentivized

Make sure the people who are doing the build have extensive knowledge on employment law and asking the right questions. I would bet that the people who helped with our builds did not read any of our employment contracts or ordinances; and when I asked questions about how other companies handled certain basic dictates from federal employment laws, they didn't have any idea what FMLA, FLSA, etc were.

Incentivized

The product is easy to use, and everyone picks up on it quickly. It is less expensive, and has more to offer than any other product I’ve found.

UKG is great for reporting and for having a pleasant UI. I find that Paylocity has a lot more innovation, but sometimes its reach exceeds its grasp when it comes to implementation of those features. ADP is bog standard, and it works pretty well, but there's little interest in looking good, which matters a lot when it comes to the wide variety of users the systems need to handle.

Incentivized

Thus far we are able to add as many users as necessary, implement 3 different bargaining units, 5 different types of user groups. Very flexible.

Incentivized

• We have had a few scenarios where the PTO accrual dropped off and it did take 3 attempts of reaching out to customer service to get it sorted.
• The customer service team has collaborated with me in creating new PTO categories to automate certain needs to save me some time.

Incentivized

• Ability to manage all HR activities within one platform
• Built in Workflows make approval process seamless
• UKG Ready offers a solid solution and ROI on our investment
• Easy to navigate Time & Attendance into Payroll, making processing seamless
• Great customer service offering several methods to contact UKG for support, fast to reply and offer a solution to the issue

Incentivized