What is Bamboo HR?
Formed in 2008 and with more than 200 employees today, BambooHR’s cloud-based suite of HR software has become a go-to product for small and medium-sized businesses, with offerings including applicant tracking and onboarding as well as more traditional performance management.
In 2019, the company expanded its suite to offer Professional Employer Organization (PEO) services, which allow BambooHR to handle payroll, compliance and benefits administration for clients. The move into PEO services reflects the need for a more comprehensive HR offering, allowing BambooHR to draw on its HR expertise and scale with businesses, as well as potentially offer clients a better rate on benefits.
In this Bamboo HR payroll review 2024 we will look closer at what the platform has to offer.
Pros
✅ Intuitive and straightforward interface, facilitating quick adoption and ease of use.
✅ Comprehensive suite of HR tools, for applicant tracking, onboarding, and performance management, all in one system.
✅ Cloud-based, allowing remote access and enhancing flexibility for distributed teams.
✅ Employee self-service feature
✅ Customizable reports and analytics
✅ An application tracking system that makes recruitment easier, as well as other tools to enhance the entire new hire experience.
✅ Emphasis on data security with robust measures to protect sensitive employee information.
✅ Friendly and responsive customer support, and a rich selection of learning materials, such as tutorials and knowledge bases.
✅ Scalable solution that supports business growth and accommodates increasing employee numbers.
✅ Capabilities for integrating with other business tools and systems for centralised HR functions and workflows.
✅ In positive customer reviews, the ease of getting the system set up and running is mentioned
✅ Mobile app
Cons
❌ Limited options for customization in reports and processes to meet specific business needs.
❌ Additional costs for extra modules such as performance management and applicant tracking that bring up the total outlay.
❌ Challenges with integrating specialized or uncommon software, potentially complicating workflows.
❌ Mobile app does not offer all desktop functionalities, limiting access to certain features on the go.
❌ May not scale as well for larger organizations with more complex HR needs.
Pricing and Plans
Bamboo HR does the pricing on a simple per-employee, per-month basis. If your company has fewer than 25 employees, then you will pay a flat monthly rate. Bamboo HR doesn’t ask for an annual contract, and every time your company adds employees, you’ll automatically benefit from a volume discount. Bamboo HR’s pricing is not openly published, so you have to contact one of the company’s Account Executives to get a price quote.
BambooHR has two subscription plans: the Core and the Pro. Each plan is designed strategically to ensure a feature and capability set that is relevant to different stages of business development and HR requirements.
The Core Plan is the basic plan. It has the standard essential HR functionalities that assist in managing administrative processes and tracking employee information. In this plan, you will get the employee database that will house all employee-related information in one place where you can easily maintain confidentiality and access them accordingly, time-off management tools for easy tracking of off-days and leave requests in a centralized place and timely approvals.
It also has an employee self-service portal for HR employee details where you can update your personal details and view different documents, basic reporting to derive meaningful information and make data-driven decisions, and a mobile application so that employees can be able to conveniently access all HR functionalities on the go. This plan works well for all these individuals who are looking forward to the basics of HR, making administration smooth, with the HR team having their workload reduced.
Building on features offered by the Core Plan, the Pro Plan offers an expanded scope of HR capabilities for a well-rounded solution. This plan includes all the benefits offered by the Core Plan, but it also provides more robust reporting and analytics for better HR insights, performance management for reviewing and tracking performance goals, an applicant tracking system for recruitment management, functionality for onboarding and offboarding to ease employee transitions, training tracking to monitor training activities, and enhanced security features to protect HR data.
The Pro Plan is for businesses that require a robust HR solution with a broader set of features to manage a larger workforce and conduct employee evaluations, recruitment, and training.
To learn more about the right plan for your needs and get a firm quote on pricing, you can reach out to BambooHR on their website.
Key features
Customizable Dashboard
Users can tailor their dashboard to convey key metrics at a glance, allowing users to prioritize the most important pieces of data. These dashboards take different forms depending on your role within the organization. For instance, dashboards for HR personnel, managers and executive all convey different important insights.
Payroll
Bamboo HR takes care of the payroll process. They help all kind of businesses, small or medium sized. The platform is integrated with payroll as well as other HR activities, which gives flexibility, and makes it easy for employees to use the platform.
One of the features that make BambooHR such a great product is its ability to automate payroll. You can set the system to run payroll on a daily scheduled basis and never have to think about manually inputting anything for each payroll cycle. It’s as simple as that: every employee gets paid, and gets paid on time, every time.
However, another huge benefit of BambooHR automation is that it automatically calculates your taxes. It calculates state, federal and local income tax as well as social security and Medicare figures based on what is applicable to the employer and the employee’s location. This task alone saves hours of precious time per pay cycle. Even more important, this is a notoriously complex area of regulations that undergo frequent changes and updates. In addition, if you have salaried and hourly employees, BambooHR automatically calculates their vacation time for them.
Payroll (Source: Bamboo HR)
Direct deposit is another critical attribute, allowing employees to collect their earnings securely through electronic transactions. This delivers both ease to the employer as well as the employee, and efficiency in terms of getting funding into the employees’ hands faster.
Integrations
BambooHR is one of the top leaders in the HR software market when it comes to the number of integrations available. It simplifies HR management by linking essential functions with a broad range of software tools, improving both efficiency and user experience.
Important integrations include connectivity with payroll applications such as Gusto, Paychex or QuickBooks Payroll to make managing payroll and taxes easier; with job boards such as Indeed or Glassdoor to expedite recruitment, and with background check services, such as Checkr to ease the recruitment process.
It assists with performance management though tools for reviews and feedback, and it automates benefits administration through integrations with insurance and retirement plan providers. Some services, such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, work with BambooHR to boost productivity by enabling communication among members of an HR system. The service DocuSign helps manage documents.
Furthermore, it fosters employee growth via integration with LMSs (Learning Management Systems), as well as providing API allowance for customized links – essentially, BambooHR is laying down a solid foundation for a comprehensive HR platform that reliably streamlines operations, improves data quality and improves the employee experience.
Self Service Portal
BambooHR has a self-service portal that allows employees access to their pay stubs, check their payroll history, and modify personal information such as addresses and direct deposit accounts. Providing such access not only empowers your employees but also decreases the number of payroll-related questions the HR department has to answer.
In the Pay Info section, you can view your various paychecks (Source: Bamboo HR)
The Paystub document shows what you/your employees where paid, and what for (Source: Bamboo HR)
Moreover, BambooHR generates payroll reports that provide vital information regarding spending on payroll, taxes and other activities related to payroll functioning and processing. Payment reports, summary reports, liability reports and journal vouchers help obtain information necessary for financial planning, budgeting and payroll compliance. These reports are essential for any business as they enable them to make decisions based on accurate payroll data.
Analytics and Reporting
BambooHR itself scores top marks for analytics and reporting, helping leaders get a pulse on workforce trends and adopt best practices in HR to define optimal performance and strategic growth. A full arsenal of analytics and reporting tools, both prebuilt and customizable reports, provides holistic insights into all major HR data points such as turnover, salary histories and benefits utilization.
Under reports you can access employee turnover, showing both yearly and monthly turnover in %. You can also view reasons for termination and length of service (Source: Bamboo HR)
You don’t have to worry about scheduling exports and learning new systems to get HR analytics, because the reporting is baked into every single feature. The reports you need can be delivered in a matter of minutes.
BambooHR offers customizable dashboards where each employee sees the most relevant data in real time. Built-in reporting tools allow companies to take immediate action as a trend emerges or a pain point becomes more apparent. BambooHR have a feature called timeline that tracks and compares employee data over time to spot trends and build strategies for employee retention, engagement and productivity.
Onboarding
New employees are put through a standardized onboarding process: Automated welcome emails are sent out, accompanying the new employee’s first-day itinerary and containing pertinent links to various handbooks and policies for the employee to review in advance.
HR departments can use BambooHR to create custom onboarding checklists, notifying administrators when all those steps, such as filling out forms or setting up desks and first meetings, are complete. As soon as a new hire is set up in the system, the onboarding checklist begins, leaving no room for any steps to be forgotten. Tasks can be assigned to the new hire, their manager and HR. They can check statuses and be notified at every step.
Employees can electronically sign and submit important documents. Upon joining the platform, employees have the ability to log into their BambooHR portal. There, they can finish onboarding so they have access to company documents and have the ability to update the information.
Onboarding progress and tasks to complete (Source: Bamboo HR)
Onboarding isn’t separated out from core HR processes. Instead, it operates within and alongside payroll and benefits enrollment. In addition, BambooHR provides reporting and analytics about the onboarding experience.
Onboarding task list allow you to have specific onboarding tasks for different offices, locations, or roles (Source: Bamboo HR)
Benefits administration
With BambooHR, you gain access to a single digital record for employee directory, HR workflow, benefits administration, and employee database. It’s all a part of the HR software package. Updates to employee benefits information are automatically made. They are rarely overlooked, and employee records are forever kept updated.
A major benefit of using BambooHR to manage benefits administration is that employees can check their benefits information, including making changes and exploring benefits options during open-enrollment periods at any time through an employee self-service portal.
(Source: Bamboo HR)
BambooHR keeps benefits in one location, allowing HR teams to better keep track of enrollees, manage plan changes, and update plan details. Reporting and analytics tools help businesses make decisions on benefit offerings and remain in compliance with regulations.
BambooHR might not satisfy those employers who want the most in-depth features for benefits administration, perhaps if employers had larger teams, they’d seek out a well-designed offering from dedicated technology vendors that serve a larger market and larger enterprises. Often, you’ll find competitors have more broad direct integrations with insurance and financial services providers, more advanced compliance features, and more options for managing highly customized packages of benefits.
Despite these potential limitations, for the SMB seeking a unified system with which to administer benefits alongside other HR responsibilities, BambooHR represents a solid option. Its lean architecture fortified by a suite of essential features such as automation, centralised management and employee self-service provides the backbone of basic benefits administration and should prove serviceable for businesses with more modest needs. Businesses looking to cover more sophisticated needs would be wise to subject BambooHR’s offerings against those of dedicated competitors in order to deliver the most effective fit.
Customer service
Customer service is available via email, phone, or live chat, so users can ask for help in whichever way suits them best. At the same time, a treasure trove of information in BambooHR’s online knowledge base, including answers too frequently asked questions, tutorials and best practices await curious customers seeking to solve problems all on their own. On-boarding assistance with how-tos and step-by-step instructions is delivered through webinars and online instruction sessions to help get the most out of the software from day one.
The company also organizes community forums or user groups for customers to share experiences, solve technical issues and give tips, virtually overcoming the lack of face-to-face contact.
Reviewers everywhere are almost unanimously appreciative of BambooHR’s support team’s direct and helpful responses, even though there have been minor critiques on the response time during peak hour and that there could be more training material on some of its features. Customers also mention the platform itself as being easy to use.
In the end, BambooHR’s brand of customer service stems from its diverse channels of support, a massive library of self-help resources, a training program to support the hiring of account managers, and the dedicated time spent on customer feedback.
What do customers think of Bamboo HR
In general, customers feel good about BambooHR. The reporting and powerful dashboards, as well as saving time with hiring new people, and managing paid time off, are big winners. A wish list that some customers hope is improved is integration with other payroll software, and more features in the mobile app.
Who would be a good fit for bamboo HR?
- Designed for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking for an HRIS system that’s easy to use.
- Suitable for medium to large companies that need to automate HR functions, such as handling employee data, hiring, onboarding, Goal and Performance Management, leave management and payroll.
- Suitable for businesses aiming to automate HR tasks, reducing manual work and paperwork.
- Growth-oriented businesses with scalable solutions that accommodate expanding employee data and evolving HR needs.
- It also fits companies with remote or far-flung teams, because it’s built on a cloud-based platform, accessible through a mobile app that enables participants to reach each other from anywhere.
- A useful tool for HR departments who need a sustainable system to be both efficient and scalable in order to offer more people-focused and engaging experiences, without the time and cost of the huge legacy systems that some organizations still use.
Who would not be a good fit for Bamboo HR?
- Large enterprises requiring highly complex HR functionalities and customization.
- Businesses seeking an all-in-one solution integrating HR, finance, and operations within a single platform.
- Companies with very specific, niche HR requirements not covered by BambooHR’s feature set.
- Organizations preferring on-premise HR solutions over cloud-based services.
- Firms needing advanced global compliance features for multiple countries outside of BambooHR’s coverage.
- Enterprises requiring deep integration capabilities with a wide array of third-party systems not supported by BambooHR.
Conclusion
BambooHR is one of the market leaders for cloud-based HR software solutions designed for SMBs. It stands out because of its ease of use and the breadth of its features. The software covers most of the typical HR functions associated with the employees’ lifecycle, from onboarding to performance reviews, time-off request to scheduling, employee documentation to learning management – all the way to compensation statistical analysis and organizational charts.
If you are not sure if BambooHR is the right fit for your company check out its close competitor Gusto in our review here