BambooHR is human resources (HR) management software that brings a large set of features and functionality wrapped in an easy-to-use package.
Pricing is high, beginning at $4.95 per employee per month, which is a possible deterrent for smaller companies.
Despite this, BambooHR's excellent range of intuitive features makes it indispensable, earning it our Editors' Choice designation for all-inclusive HR management systems.
This rating, however, requires some extra explanation.
When you look at the features table in our main HR review roundup article, you'll also see Editors' Choice awards handed out to other products.
So, please note that only BambooHR holds the award in the category of all-inclusive HR management packages because it covers most everything an HR professional might need to do.
These tasks include applicant tracking (AT), benefits administration (BA), employee onboarding, HR reporting, time-off tracking, and performance management.
The reason for the other Editors' Choice awards is that Daxdi reviews many HR products that qualify to fit into the overall HR management category, even though they focus more heavily on one key area, such as performance management (PM).
We've done separate comparative reviews on most of these key HR subcategories and handed out Editors' Choice awards to the winners of those review roundups, which are reflected wherever those reviews appear.
These products qualify to compete in a soup-to-nuts HR management review roundup because their manufacturers have expanded their feature sets, but they really only shine when examined through the lens of that initial, specialty subcategory.
So, for PM, the Editors' Choice winner is SAP SuccessFactors (Visit Site at SAP) while the Editor's Choice for BA goes to Zenefits.
Finally, the current Editor's Choice for HR shift scheduling software is Deputy.
In future updates to our payroll coverage, we'll also be looking at Bamboo Payroll, which the company announced in February 2017.
Bamboo Payroll uses the BambooHR database, so you'll need to be a customer of the standard BambooHR offering to use it.
But, in return, you'll get the same clear user interface (UI) design applied to your payroll tasks, along with mobile support, free time-tracking application programming interfaces (APIs), and trained support personnel.
Stay tuned for hands-on test results in the near future.
Clear UI But Unclear Pricing
We found BambooHR's website to be a bit confusing.
Placing a button that says "Get a Free Price Quote" on your website that only take potential customers to a web form that requires an email or call is annoying, especially if you bump into it in multiple places.
In the world of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, especially those aimed at small to midsize businesses (SMBs), having a clearly defined dollar figure broken down to per user, per month is the generally accepted best practice.
BambooHR should consider at least offering a base number in this format off the main website, even if it still requires additional modification with a sales call.
The company offers a new pricing model that offers greater flexibility, but it did not elaborate on the specifics of that model.
That said, however, we really liked its UI.
Functions and tasks are broken out clearly and in a way that makes long hours of training mostly unnecessary for common HR tasks, such as onboarding and the employee review process.
That's no small feat for HR software because such solutions can easily get visually confusing, with dozens of buttons or tabs to support the minutia involved in managing a business workforce.
The platform has the basic features that most HR software includes: a dashboard home screen with modules for personnel data, time-off tracking, files, and reports.
It also has an add-on performance review function with a stripped-down design meant to simplify what can, especially in larger organizations, be a numbers-obsessed process.
As such, it's well-suited to a growing number of companies that are scaling back performance reviews but not ready to completely throw them out.
The main Dashboard for BambooHR is neatly organized with insights on the left-hand side about who is taking off and icons on the right-hand side for Company Directory, Job Opening, and Reporting.
When you click My Info from the menu at the top, you'll get directed to the employee view of the platform.
There you can add info about Hire Date, Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Code (whether you're exempt or not), employment status, ethnicity, and Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Job Category.
The main Settings gear button on the right provides some important options such as Request Signature, Download Forms such as W-4 and I-9, BambooHR Access Level, Preview as This User, Reset a User's Password, and Time Tracking.
The BambooHR Access Level feature lets you change the permission settings for a user from simply US Employee to also add Benefits Administrator or Finance privileges.
If you want to delete an employee in BambooHR, then you can do this from the gear button on the Settings menu.
The system provides a check that the user performing the employee deletions is a real human by requiring the user to type the word DELETE.
The software has a built-in AT system (AT is yet another HR subcategory in which our current Editors' Choice is Bullhorn Staffing and Recruiting (Visit Site at Bullhorn) ) and can integrate with more than two dozen other HR software providers through an open API, as well as expanded BA features and reporting to track varied benefits packages.
Put together, all those features let it compete head-on with the Editors' Choices in our other HR product categories, but it only wins the award from an umbrella standpoint.
Within each category, the products that best specialize in those capabilities tend to win the EC award, though BambooHR gives all of them a good run for their money, especially in terms of bang for buck.
Like other HR software, BambooHR is an integrated platform with functions allocated by using role-based access methods, with system administrators and managers able to do and see more than run-of-the-mill employees.
Anyone who logs in encounters a well-organized dashboard, accented with splashes of BambooHR's signature bamboo green color.
The dashboard's main navigation bar runs across the top, with tabs for My Info, Employees, Job Openings, Reports, and Files.
Regardless of access level, users also see a vertical column on the left-hand side with their photo, contact information, and available time-off information.
The rest of the dashboard is devoted to tiles that display upcoming trainings, recent activities, and company announcements.
Managers, system administrators, and anyone else in the system can see which employees are out and who has upcoming work anniversaries or birthdays.
Plus, there are various workforce statistics as well as links to benefits providers and the company's website.
Company admins who are new to the software can use a Getting Started tile at the top of the page to launch common tasks such as adding an employee or creating a report, one of several available help features.
Another key feature is the button for Self-Service Access, which lets employees request time off and access the company directory.
Job Listings
As far as HR software solutions that bundle in capable integrated AT systems, BambooHR is one of the few to pull it off.
You can open the tab to get a quick list of all the job openings, the name of the hiring lead, the length of time the position has been open, and how many applications have been received.
We used the Add Job Opening button at the top of the page to create a new job listing, and used drop-down menu options in the listing template to choose title, salary, and other requirements.
This process is quick and easy to repeat for each listing.
Managers will appreciate the built-in text editor that allows them to write a description.
Once our job listing was complete, we could distribute it via social media websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Job listings are also automatically posted to a company's career page and to major job websites such as Glassdoor; this is a major time saver for a busy company owner or understaffed HR manager.
Onboarding a new employee is just as easy.
From the dashboard, to fill in all of the required information, you could use Getting Started Add an Employee or Employees Add Employee to access the template provided.
You could also email new employees a New Hire Packet, which would direct them to log in to their employee file to fill in their own personal information, saving us some time in the process.
A system administrator-level user can also use the Customize Add Employee form link to add data to the form, such as a nickname or information about company-owned equipment assigned to the new employees.
BA and Reporting
BA is one area in which BambooHR has serious functionality.
However, BambooHR is lacking features in BA when compared with competitors such as Editors' Choice winners Rippling and Zenefits.
BambooHR describes the benefits features as like a "file cabinet" and more "benefits tracking" than "benefits administration."
BambooHR lets companies track custom benefit packages, including 12 different benefit types for specific employee groups.
By using future dating, users can also now make changes to benefits before an impending status change, such as an employee getting married and changing their health insurance coverage.
We clicked New from the menu at upper right to add a new employee.
Once you add an employee, you can see a benefits overview for that individual.
Once a new employee's information was uploaded, we used the Employees tab to see them in an alphabetized list, directory, or organization chart, all of which have tools to customize views to show more or less information.
Clicking on any employee's name in the employee list brought us to the worker's personnel file where we could see job information such as title, compensation, location, time-off balances, trainings they needed or had completed, and benefits.
You click on the Benefits Group from top right to select the benefits options for your region.
For each plan there's a small pop-up wheel at right with a drop-down menu so you can mark employees as eligible, enroll them in coverage, or waive coverage.
It's very easy to miss this menu option because it only shows up if you move the cursor over that field.
With the hidden Settings gear button at right, you can Edit Eligibility, Enroll, Waive, or Mark as Ineligible, then it lets you enroll employees in various plans like US Health Insurance.
Once an employee is enrolled, the setting options change to Edit Enrollment, Withdraw, or Terminate Coverage.
Once you enroll the employee in a health insurance plan, then a listing for an FSA option for that plan appears.
You can use the Settings gear button to enroll in the FSA plan.
Then contribution amounts will appear for those plans.
This process seemed straightforward.
The pop-up boxes for each medical, dental, and 401(k) let you enroll in each plan.
You can select contribution amounts for 401(k).
At the bottom of the Benefits Overview page is a Benefit History view.
You have to click the word "Show" to have a history of actions taken by an administrator, such as marking an employee as eligible for benefits.
This is a helpful, detailed documentation of actions that we didn't find as readily in other platforms such as Zenefits and Gusto ($25 Per Month at Gusto) .
We liked the option on the Benefits Overview page to Reorder Fields.
So say you wanted Benefits History to be listed first before Benefits Overview and Dependents, you can drag the items around to change the order.
We then previewed an employee's account under Employee View to see the difference.
You won't find all of the Gear Settings buttons that you find in the employer's page.
But you can still view contribution amounts for benefits and which benefits for which the employee has enrolled.
BambooHR also includes the option to set a variable rate health plan, which lets you track age-based plans and any health benefit where each individual employee pays a different, varied amount.
Users can also use BambooHR's open API to sync the information with Maxwell Health, the company's preferred third-party BA outsourcer.
BambooHR recently introduced some employee satisfaction features that let you ask employees about their experience at the company.
The software then generates a report tracked over time on the company's strengths and weaknesses.
BambooHR also offers courses on its site on how to improve employee satisfaction.
Since our original review, BambooHR has released a newly revamped marketplace that offers a host of new integrations.
While an open API is available for anyone to use, the partners listed on the marketplace have gone through a vetting process by the company.
Like with Zenefits, BambooHR offers numerous integrations.
For benefits management, BambooHR integrates with Benetrac, Maxwell Health, and PlanSource.
Maxwell Health lets employees view more detailed information about their benefits, such as copay and deductible information.
PlanSource is another benefits administration provider that integrates with BambooHR.
Benefits Reports and Mobile Access
We found the main BambooHR mobile app to have limited functionality.
However, it is still a handy tool for requesting time off and viewing the amount of vacation hours left over.
To get started in the BambooHR mobile app, you enter the BambooHR domain for your employer, then log in with your email and password.
The My Info tab in BambooHR lets an employee view basic contact info and has a random surprising field for Shirt size.
BambooHR is apparently making it easy for companies to order team shirts for their employees.
We were unable to view any benefits information in the main BambooHR mobile app as you can in other products like Gusto.
You'll need to use an integrating app from a partner such as Maxwell Health for that.
We also couldn't find any reports in the BambooHR mobile app as you can in Zenefits and Gusto.
To run a report in BambooHR, you select Reports from the menu up top.
Then to customize a report, you click Add Report.
The Reports functionality lets you select the types of benefits you want to include, such as health insurance, health savings account (HSA), disability, and...
