When it comes to effective human resources (HR) management, artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic concept. Rather, it is a driving force behind the most innovative HR and payroll platforms. As organizations seek smarter ways to manage their people, the spotlight has turned to two industry leaders: Ceridian and Paylocity.
Ceridian’s Dayforce has introduced Dayforce Co-Pilot, an AI-powered tool designed to automate repetitive tasks, personalize employee experiences, and resolve payroll issues before they arise. On the other side, Paylocity has rolled out AI Assist™, a generative AI tool built in partnership with OpenAI, which empowers HR professionals and employees to craft effective communications and announcements in seconds.

The following blog, Ceridian Vs Paylocity, dives deeper into the features and pros and cons of these platforms, helping you choose the one that best aligns with your needs.

Ceridian Vs Paylocity: A Summary

 

Feature 

Ceridian

Paylocity 

HR Management 

  • Custom content creation
  • Centralized system
  • Task automation
  • Employee self-service module

Payroll Processing

  • Localized payroll solution
  • Continuous payroll processing
  • Supports payroll in 100+ countries
  • Configurable paychecks

Workforce Management

  • Labor cost monitoring
  • Flexible shift scheduling
  • Geolocation and face recognition tool
  • AI-powered shift recommendations

Talent Management

  • AI-powered hiring recommendations
  • Task automation
  • Automated recruitment
  • 360-degree feedback

Analytics And Reporting

  • Customized dashboards
  • Pre-calculated KPIs
  • Custom dashboards
  • AI assistant

Pricing

  • $22-31/employee/month
  • Custom pricing

What Is Ceridian?

Ceridian, also known as Dayforce HCM, is a human capital management (HCM) platform. It is designed to help businesses streamline administrative tasks and reduce human-prone errors. It smartly uses AI and machine learning (ML) and makes data search easier, optimizes administrative functions, and ensures precision. The software serves a diverse clientele worldwide, including Costa Coffee.

Unique Features Of Ceridian

  • Dayforce Wallet: The software offers an advanced feature, ‘Dayforce Wallet’, that allows companies to pay their employees on-demand. Admins can pay employees directly through ‘Dayforce Prepaid Mastercard’ without any extra charges
  • Dashboards Pro: Ceridian allows users to turn their reports into visualizations that simplify data analysis and support informed decision-making. Whether its schedules, payroll data, or time management, admins can easily spot changes
  • Dayforce Co-Pilot: Using the power of AI, Ceridian provides an AI-assistance, ‘Dayforce Co-Pilot', which helps employees streamline tasks, easily find data, and automate manual tasks to save time

Pros And Cons Of Ceridian

Pros:

  • Comprehensive payroll functionality that streamlines payroll and financial data management and saves admins’ time
  • The platform can be easily customized to meet users’ varying needs and helps businesses uphold their work ethics
  • The software provides efficient analytics and reporting tools, allowing users to gain valuable real-time data insights

Cons:

  • Employees cannot run paycheck scenarios and calculate how total tax impacts their pay 
  • The absence of an auto-screening tool can make the candidates’ resume parsing a hassle

What Is Paylocity?

Offering a comprehensive suite of HR and workforce management tools, Paylocity HR & Payroll is a HR and payroll processing software that helps companies achieve more work in less time. Users can expand their workforces, efficiently acquire new talent, and increase their skillset with curated learning paths. Whether it's tax services and global payroll, or labor cost processing, the platform streamlines all these tasks, and more. 

Unique Features Of Paylocity 

  • Modern Workforce Index: The software’s HR intelligence dashboards help companies monitor employees’ sentiments and engagement. Admins can also monitor time and attendance as well as labor costs and savings
  • Wage Garnishment Services: Paylocity enables employers to withhold a certain portion of employees’ paychecks and pay off their debts. By providing these powerful wage garnishment services, it helps companies have a debt-free workforce
  • Expense Management: By leveraging the platform’s expense management functionality, organizations can track their expenses and simplify reimbursement calculations 

Pros And Cons Of Paylocity

Pros:

  • The training modules help new users learn all about the platform and make navigation easier
  • The efficient payroll functionality streamlines multi-national payroll and compensation management
  • All tools and features are housed in a single system – making navigation easy and saving time

Cons:

  • The software lacks the co-browse option that makes the data sharing a bit cumbersome 
  • Intermittent lag in the clock-in feature can result in unregistered punch-ins for users 

Ceridian Vs Paylocity – Core Features Comparison

Human Resources Management

Companies can simplify HR tasks with Ceridian and increase productivity while ensuring accuracy. By offering a single employee record system, it houses all the essential workforce data into a single platform – enabling managers to easily access data. Administrators can also empower employees and allow them selective data access, including payroll data, paystubs, schedules, etc.

Furthermore, the software helps users customize content that meets their employees’ specific needs. Its centralized employee records and intuitive dashboard further makes data evaluation easier, helping employers to make analytical, far-sighted decisions.

Paylocity allows businesses to automate repetitive, manual tasks and maximize work efficiency. Its self-service tool enables employees to safely access their payroll data at any time, both through the web and Paylocity mobile application. This allows the workforce to request leaves, time off, view their paystubs, and stay in touch with teammates.

Moreover, the platform's user-friendly dashboard and relevant HR compliance courses help administrators stay legally compliant and focus on important business strategies.

Winner: This is a tie, as both platforms offer competitive services to automate repetitive, manual tasks and increase employee engagement.

Payroll Processing

Ceridian provides a localized pay solution, ensuring there are no compliance issues for businesses. Admins can run a continuous payroll and pay employees at any time, helping them meet their financial needs. The software also supports global payroll and compliance across 200+ countries.

Additionally, by streamlining financial management and payroll tasks, Dayforce HCM enables HR teams to save time and focus on developing new business strategies and initiatives that warrant growth and success.

Companies can automate and optimize payroll with Paylocity. By automatically adding the reimbursement data to paychecks, the software simplifies payroll calculation while ensuring accuracy. It also eliminates the need for paperwork, enabling HR teams to save resources and digitally get things done.

In addition, Paylocity is a registered reporting agent with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and offers expert advice regarding tax compliance. By leveraging this benefit, organizations can maintain compliance with local and federal laws and regulations.

Winner: This is a draw, as both platforms offer competitive payroll and financial data management services.

Workforce Management

Ceridian provides a set of tools that ensure efficient workforce management. Managers can create and manage demand-based schedules while eliminating the risk of over or under-staffing. The software also allows the automated monitoring of labor costs, helping users easily manage their budget. In addition, Ceridian helps companies make calculated labor decisions and assign tasks that align with the employees’ expertise.

Manual scheduling and time management can spike costs and strain the budget. Paylocity helps users avoid such extra expenses with its intuitive shift-scheduling and time monitoring. Admins can leverage its real-time notifications and automated policy implementation to ensure employees clock in and out on time. Plus, the software offers multiple punch-in options, including biometric clocks, tablet kiosk, mobile app, web app, etc.

Moreover, Paylocity provides AI-powered shift recommendations, allowing supervisors to create shifts based on employees’ availability and convenience. This approach helps increase employee engagement and satisfaction.

Winner: Ceridian wins this round for offering a more strategic and financially grounded approach to workforce management.

Talent Management

Ceridian leverages AI and machine learning to help hiring managers make informed recruitment decisions and hire the top talent for their organization. They can automate tedious tasks to improve work efficiency while speeding up the hiring process. Plus, the software’s onboarding feature assists in the smooth onboarding of recruits and helps them get accustomed to the company’s culture and rules.

Paylocity allows companies to uphold and maintain their recruitment criteria through its powerful talent acquisition functionality. Hiring managers can automate the recruitment process. They can also increase the applicant pool by allowing candidates to scan a QR code or text a dedicated number to get job information and application procedures.

Once hired, recruits can access and complete the software’s pre-boarding tasks via mobile application, and get essential tasks done in no time.

Winner: This is a draw, as both platforms efficiently use AI and provide comprehensive onboarding functionality.

Analytics And Reporting

Ceridian’s pre-built key performance indicators (KPIs) and personalized dashboards help businesses effectively analyze data trends and make data-driven decisions. The platform is connected and allows users to access all important data in one place, leading to better information access and analysis.

The software also helps users make detailed data reports, leading to data-driven decision-making.

By providing personalized dashboards, Paylocity enables firms to efficiently manage their workforce data and gain real-time insights into changing data trends. Administrators can use active and terminated employee accounts figures to estimate turnover rates, identify areas for improvement, and make adjustments in the work culture that foster development and increase employee engagement. Paylocity also helps users analyze the workforce’s performance metrics and reward employees’ hard work to boost their motivation.

Winner: Paylocity stands out for its clear focus on actionable insights and employee-centric metrics.

Ceridian Vs Paylocity – Pricing

Ceridian employs a per-employee-per-month (PEPM) pricing model and costs around $22-31/employee/month. Paylocity, on the other hand, offers tailored pricing plans that can be customized as per businesses’ needs. Some of its plans include Payroll Software, Human Resources Software, Workforce Management Software, Talent Management Software, etc.

Disclaimer: The pricing information has been sourced from third-party websites and is subject to change.

Wrapping It Up

Both platforms offer seamless HR and workforce management experience. Businesses can streamline payroll, monitor time and attendance, sync it with payroll to ensure accurate calculations, and help employees learn and grow.

Ceridian can serve you best if you are looking for configurable dashboards and effective financial data management. Paylocity, on the other hand, is ideal for large businesses needing a comprehensive HR platform.

Your choice depends on your immediate priorities, but either software can simplify your routine administrative tasks effectively.