BambooHR Reviews

• We can easily store all the information about an employee in one place
• It is easy to change and update it.
• I briefly used a different system, and it was impossibly difficult to change a simple piece of information such as who someone reports to.
• I find the ATS very useful.
• I like that I can create my own tables and tabs (although would be nice if I could do these myself rather than asking BambooHR to do it for me).

We have become much more thorough about keeping documents and paperwork properly, and ensuring we have the correct documents for everyone. It has also allowed us to report on things easily, e.g., sickness records and keeping a track of holiday.

• The time off area is still rather clunky. It is not as intuitive as other sections.
• People generally need to be shown how to use it. I don’t have the flexibility to handle sickness in different ways, and the number it shows for annual leave available does not show what people expect.
• I can’t do a point-in-time report. For example, "How many active employees were there on 1, Jan, 2017?"
• If I enter something with a date in the future, e.g., a pay raise, it makes it seem as if that is the current status quo. If I do a report of current pay, it will give me the number I entered with the latest date, even if the date of that is in the future.
• I’d like to be able to build my own tables and tick boxes (e.g., an easy way to check how many people have a signed contract).
• I am in the UK, but their support team works US hours.

I have used BambooHR for about three years, across two companies.

We had stability issues once or twice. The most significant issue was when there was an outage for a few hours and there was no out-of-hours support available. It was very frustrating, as I had no backup for all this data.

We haven’t had scalability issues, but I don’t think I would necessarily use it if I had many hundreds of employees. I feel like I have a fairly manual hold over it.

It is a very friendly personal service and they are responsive within a day. The fact that they are in a different time zone on the opposite side of the world isn’t great.

At my previous company, we had no previous solution. At the current company they had Cezanne HR, which was impossible to understand.

I frequently spent 40-60 minutes on the phone to their helpdesk just to sort out what happens when someone leaves and I need to change the reporting structure.

In BambooHR, this takes minutes.

The setup was easy, although it took a while to get all the links for uploading data.

Also, it was irritating as the date format was USA, so I had to reformat ours to fit in with theirs. Even though it displays the date in UK format for me, I had to upload it in USA format.

It does not recognize London as a county, however many times I ask them. I have to put in “City of London” as the county, which is not what people call it here.

Nothing in particular. Seems fine to me.

I looked at People HR. I also looked briefly at some others, e.g., Fairsail and one other, but the price was out of our league.

If you can talk to someone else about how they use it, you’ll get a good idea of the flexibility and what you can control.

The time-off tracking tool has made vacation policies simple. It made it easy for employees to request time-off as well as see what they have used and what is remaining. The downside is that approvers have to be on top of things. Otherwise, things can get messy.

• Time-off tracking tool
• Central place for company files like a handbook of benefits guide

• Benefits enrolment and tracking. There are more robust versions, if you want to buy an add-on.
• There isn't a way to give everyone access at the same time when launching. For groups where they have over 50 employees, turning on access for each person became a tedious task.

I have used it for over a year.

I did not encounter any deployment issues.

I did not encounter any issues with stability that I can recall.

There can be stability issues. It is not a good system for more than 100 employees.

You can really only contact technical support via email. The turnaround time is 24-48 hours. I would say the service is OK. The problems get solved, but just not very fast.

We used HRConnection, but their system was not as user-friendly.

If you don't want to pay for someone to build it for you and you were doing it yourself, the setup was pretty complex. I had to teach myself the system. Even when I was helping people build, there are extensive Excel spreadsheets that need to be filled out which customers didn’t like doing. However, the information has to come from somewhere.

The solution is not too pricey, but with add-ons and having BambooHR do the work for you, it can get expensive.

It will be easier and save you time if you have BambooHR. Go for it. If you want to do it on your own, it can be done. There are a lot of resources in their help center.

Email alerts have been incredibly helpful within the HR organization. We've been able to keep track of our employees’ assets (laptops and other items) using Asset Registration. I also appreciate how professional and organized it is to have a welcome email and onboarding list sent to all new staff giving clear instructions for when they start with us. We use BambooHR to store our HR files and it's incredibly helpful having all HR information in one place as a quick reference tool. There is a great variety of customization available; as an international company I really appreciate that I can adjust lists (onboarding and public holidays for example) to be unique for each country/office in question.

Our company has many employees who have temporary contracts and/or work permits. It's made my life much easier having BambooHR email alerts set up to ensure I schedule renewals before the necessary deadlines. We also use email alerts so that we know when probation periods are about to expire and as a heads up for upcoming birthdays and anniversaries. Keeping track of vacation and sick days is now a lot easier, as well as calculating vacation balances in the future. Giving staff the self-service option has really helped our staff take ownership of their leave balances.

As an international company, there are several administrators in different countries making changes to the system and there is no way of knowing who has made a change, which can be frustrating. It would be nice if administrators could access a log to see who has done what and when.

I have used BambooHR for 9 months.

I am unable to comment on the deployment side.

I can’t think of any stability issues.

I can’t think of any scalability issues.

I rate customer support very, very high. This has been one of the stand-out aspects of using BambooHR. My company is based in Europe and BambooHR Customer Service is in America, so I got used to getting responses to my queries overnight (my time), however the answers were always within the same day and as helpful and friendly as possible.

Definitely put BambooHR in your considerations list. It is perfect for small to medium sized companies and very customizable.

Reports are the most valuable feature.

It made the HR department more flexible. We can track employee records and trace the reports.

We recommend to have your own payroll integration as per GCC norms.

I have used BambooHR for five years.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support is very good.

This was a part of pilot program and, afterward, we decided to use this.

Setup is more or less straightforward. It depends on the company requirements.

We did look at alternative solutions.

This is recommended for small and medium size business. The most important part is the preliminary study of requirements based on which the system is implemented.

Customizability: We can create custom tables, drop down lists, and store any information we want that is in text or number format and export it to Excel. This is extremely useful to an organization that is in high growth mode, as anything we want to track related to employees can be customized.

Not all large products can accommodate this level of flexibility. The permissions are also incredibly customizable. This means we can give very specific access to each employee depending on what they need to view.

It has given our operations team immense value. The departments most impacted are HR, finance, and IT.

All of the employee information is centralized in one space and can be accessed whenever we want it. Team members can create custom reports for any data they want to extract and run those reports when they need to.

There is no more confusion around what information finance has versus what information HR has. It is streamlined and centralized and this saves the organization in efficiency in a huge way.

There is no human capital/workforce planning capabilities at this time. You can keep all of your current employee information, as well as all of your terminated employees.

However, where we really need the product to improve is on planning. We would love to put our upcoming open heads into the plan for the entire fiscal year. We do this to improve our budget planning, as well as also including some forecasted turnover. This type of planning helps us organize our resources and be better prepared as a strategic HR department.

We have used this solution for four years.

Never. It's always available and the mobile app is handy.

Yes, there have been scalability issues. If anything, this is what we are facing now. Some areas are great for scaling, but others, like workforce planning and more advanced reporting, are not available at this time.

When we reach more than 750 employees, we might need to look at an alternative solution unless BambooHR improves.

I would give technical support a rating of 10/10. They have great phone and email service. They also have an extensive support database with videos and articles.

You pay per active employee per month. The cost is very straightforward.

It's very easy and straightforward. The technical support is great and you will have a very stress-free implementation. If you are switching from another product, then I cannot speak about the implementation.

For sure, onboarding, offboarding, time off and benefits are the most valuable features.

BambooHR has streamlined our new hire process by setting deadlines for the new hire and the hiring manager. The new hire gets introduced to the whole staff be for they start!

I would like to see some improvements with custom reports and Signature templates. I would like to have more options for the custom reports. I am finding I have to export and filter things out I don’t need. I would also like to be able to put a date range on my custom reports.

I have been using BambooHR since August 2016.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Amazing turnaround time. I really like that I can search for the answer first and most of the time I find my answer. But incase I don’t, I like that I have the option to email as well.

We didn’t have a previous solution. Since joining my new company, I knew there was an easier way to have all our HR information in one place and paperless. Using BambooHR has stopped me from nagging my managers for what is missing when we hire a new employee.

Setup is very straightforward. I was able to easily upload the information needed for implementation.

The pricing is very reasonable. Just think of the money you are saving down sizing your HR department to one employee to manage BambooHR.

We did look into Krono, but it wasn’t a fit for what we wanted.

Take that next step now. Not only are you going paperless, but you are streamlining your HR department.

• Reporting and different roles (Manager, HR, Self-Service view)
• Change History documentation
• Leave approval
• The API

It provides one place to document all employee information; no Excel tables are needed anymore.

Saves loads of time, because every manager can create a report by themselves.

Integration with other systems saves time because we can have automated processes.

Effective dates: the system cannot exclude from reports the changes that will be effective in the future: e.g. salary, new joiners.

It is not possible to have automated adjustment of vacation according to the work time: Part time employees who work less than 5 days a week shall get automatically less vacation. Some employees have changes in their working hours more than once a year; there is still to much manual work.

The system allows to book vacation and sick day at the same time. There should be a warning in case somebody overlooks it.

I have been using BambooHR for three years.

We have not had any stability problems.

We have not had any scalability problems.

It takes a day to get a reply. In many cases, it is possible to add some fields. For more common solutions, we are asked to fill in the form to put it on the road map (not really helpful, costs time for us to do additional requests).

We did not have previous solutions.

I was not there at the time of the initial setup. Our internal IT supported us.

This was decided by the management.

It depends on their requirements. Bamboo seems to be a good solution for administration documentation stuff. It is not useful for performance management, training management and working time management for part time employees.

It is VERY user friendly. We are constantly getting unsolicited positive feedback from employees. I also really like that organizational charts and welcome emails that are sent out during onboarding.

It has given us a single source of data and has given our employees a central hub for their information. Employees can now access everything for themselves instead of calling HR.

I would love to see employees able to upload documents to their own profiles. Also, the training feature can use some improvements. There needs to be a place where information (videos and presentations) can be stored and shared.

I have been using BambooHR for three months.

I have not seen any stability problems. It is a pretty stable product.

This is MUCH more scalable then what we used to have.

Responses are always prompt and thorough. No complaints here!

I have used Kronos, but at my previous employer they were using Paychex (but not really as an HRIS). Paychex is a nightmare to work with, and our employees hated it. We needed something that gave us more value and was easier to use.

Initial setup was pretty straightforward. We were able to implement it ourselves, which was nice!

It is a great price in terms of quality, but once you start adding payroll and benefits, it starts getting pricy. It would be great to have packages to help alleviate that cost for smaller businesses.

I was not involved in the evaluation of other products. I started after BambooHR had been selected.

It is a great quality product, but make sure you have a payroll system and benefits admin that will integrate/work together.

I really value the onboarding and offboarding checklists. This once was a painful paper process that relied on memory or making many calendar reminders for each new starter. Now, it’s all automated and automatically assigned to the right people. It’s so easy to use that we’ve made it work for our international teams too.

The other feature I value is the reports. They makes it so easy to get current information, easily filtered, to anyone who needs it. It’s a brilliant tool that makes our lives so easy.

It automates a lot of manual processes that we had and also automates communication between HR and people managers. We are able to communicate new starters and leavers to payroll with all their information automatically and to remind managers what needs to be done for them. We are also able to share reports with any business function that needs them.

It’s a great product, but it’s not perfect. There are some areas of reporting that could be improved, as well as features and functions of the ATS/recruitment, as this is a newer function in general. But BambooHR are really happy to hear your feedback and I’ve even had them reach out to discuss some feedback I gave in more detail.

I have used BambooHR for six months with my current company on Professional and two years prior with my last company on the Standard BambooHR version.

We did not encounter any stability issues that were concerning.

I have no problems with seeing how BambooHR will scale as our business does.

Technical support is great. They are based in the US so my responses always come overnight. However, I can always count on the response coming. They also have great “how-to’s” and instructional videos.

We were previously using Excel spreadsheets for employee records and LinkedIn for recruiting. The reasons for moving away from Excel are fairly obvious. The reason we moved from LinkedIn for recruiting is BambooHR offers better candidate management ability and integration with our hiring managers.

Setup took a long time, but it was fairly simple. We took our time with implementation and I know they can go quicker as they did with my previous company. However, company size might have had a lot to do with that. They will do all the data inputting you need during implementation and then will continue to do so afterwards, but for a fee.

The pricing is great and having looked around at a lot of other options, you really can’t beat it.

We looked at many that are geared toward large enterprise businesses that just didn’t suit our needs and budget. For what you’re paying, you get a great employee system and a developing recruitment system in one.

Consider what payroll, leave and IT systems you use and learn if they can be API integrated. A lot of the reason we picked BambooHR was for its ability for integrate with these systems for us in the future.

Signature templates made it much easier for employees to fill out necessary forms, policies and agreements. It was highly customizable and efficient.

Onboarding efficiency was increased.

We had to use separate software for scheduling as well as payroll. We are moving away from BambooHR because we need an all-in-one solution.

I have been using BambooHR for four months.

We have not had stability issues.

We have had scalability issues. It is not ideal for companies operating in multiple regions.

Technical support is good.

We did not have a previous solution.

Initial setup was average. Implementation support could use improvement.

• ATS: Much better than our previous manual system where all candidates applied via email.
• Reports: We can pull reports for nearly everything in BambooHR, employee lists, contract dates, etc.
• Customization: BambooHR can create custom tabs and functions for each company’s needs. We have used this for a lot of things, like tracking contract end dates.
• Performance Management: We added this module and it has been very helpful in performance management.
• Email alerts: Workaversiares, birthdays, contract end dates; we have email alerts for everything which means we never forget.
• Time off: Employees can book their time off in BambooHR, and the approval process is very seamless for us.

We used to use spreadsheets for everything from tracking contract end dates to time off. This has made everyone's lives easier.

• Performance Management: Only 1 reviewer per employee. The performance module only allows 1 reviewer (manager) to review each employee. We typically need to gather feedback from multiple people, so we have to create Google forms to gather the data from the others.
  
  There is a peer feedback portion which does help.

• ATS: Improved tracking of source of applications. The ATS has been very helpful, but it doesn't do a great job of determining where our applicants are coming from in terms of job boards. This information is very useful in determining what sources are effective for quality candidates, so we have resorted to manually tracking this data.

I have used it for 1.5 years.

We have encountered stability issues. The product can be unstable at times. We have voiced our concerns with minimal improvement.

We are encountering any scalability issues at this time.

Technical support is moderate to high. They are usually quick to reply and keep you updated on status.

Initial setup was straightforward. We took our time to ensure the integrity of the data.

Pricing is quite good; no feedback to give.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated other options. We chose BambooHR for its UI, ease of use, size of a product for our first HRIS/ATS, and cost.

Always best to still do your research to find the best product for you. We are still quite small in size, so this works for us.

The most valuable feature for us is the time off request. It is very practical and useful.
Also, we signed a contract for the professional version in order to use the new hire packet and e-signatures. We haven’t tried the new features yet, but we think they will be pretty useful for our operation.

The time off request is the official way to request for time off in this company. However, if we compare the accrual balance days from Bamboo versus real days, sometimes we have to reconcile it by manual adjustment.

User manual in Spanish: It's hard to update because there are updates in the website constantly.

It would be useful for our company if BambooHR could have an updated procedure manual in Spanish for employees, with descriptions of the steps to perform tasks. In our company, we have developed a procedure manual and we frequently update it, in order to simplify the procedure for the employees, because there is no Spanish manual.

I have been using it from 2011 until now.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 10/10.

We did not previously use a different solution.

Prices are good.

It is justified in cases of large companies, to manage human resources.

The job openings are the most valuable for me because I use it the most. The BambooHR system makes it a lot faster for me to review and follow-up with candidates and it saves me time from having to print or distribute candidates that need to be reviewed with executives.

The most valuable feature is the ability to comment on candidates in the job openings program. That way, it’s easier to communicate with managers about new candidates or how their interview went, etc. Instead of me having to email or call to get feedback, it’s right on the screen in one central place.

The system has helped me personally with tracking of candidates for job opportunities and has helped streamline the process of candidate reviews with our executives.

We are now able to see who is in the office and who isn’t. We have better vacation tracking for employees and it’s easier to find who is an active or inactive employee (since a lot of our employees are project specific and are not in the head office, etc.).

Specifically, I work for 2 managers. In my profile, our administrator wasn’t able to add 2 managers. So when I put in a request for vacation time, it only goes to one of my managers for approval and not to the other one, since it only allows one manager in my profile.

It would be great, if there is a function to add another manager to my profile.

I have been using BambooHR for less than a year.

Technical support is great from my experience. I have only needed support twice, but I was helped very quickly.

We did not use anything else before.

It is very user friendly. It’s easy to teach new hires how to use it. It is very easy to navigate features and show them how to use them, such as finding benefits they are entered in, PTO requests and training information. They can see what they have completed.

We are able to better track our employees’ trainings, PTO, etc. So we work much more efficiently.

Sometimes, the email alerts act funny and do not show up. If I put a new date in for, say a child abuse clearance, before the previous one is expired, it will not send an alert for the new date, but the previous date.

Also, when I send an electronic hire packet, if there are forms that the employee and myself have to sign, after I sign, it comes back in my email twice for each form. It should only come back once with all signatures attached.

Almost one year for me. Almost two years for the company.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

On a scale of 1-5, I would rate it a 6. Technical support is always efficient in getting back to me when I have an issue.

We did not have anything previous to BambooHR.

I was not here at the setup.

I did not handle that.

It is a great HR product for your business. It’s very easy and user friendly with great reporting capabilities.

• Time off requests: Very easy to keep track of them.
• ATS: Time saving having all applicants in one place, and the email function is very useful.
• Onboarding and Offboarding: Task reminders are very useful, and means we can use as evidence for areas of ISO 27001.

BambooHR has streamlined HR for us. We are an SME and growing rapidly. BambooHR has helped us keep on top of HR, which is essential.

Training: To allocate a new training course, you can only add it to a job title, and not to individuals. This is not very useful to us.

I have been using BambooHR for 2 years and 10 months.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support is good. We have a slight delay in response due to our location and time difference. But generally, support is very responsive and good.

We didn't have an HRM system prior to using BambooHR.

Initial setup was pretty straightforward. There are options to import data when you start off, and there is a function to use power-edits to update information for more than one employee.

Depends on what features you need. We started off with the basics and added ATS later. There is an upgrade that costs more, but at the moment it is not cost effective for us, as we handle some of the features it offers with other software.

We looked at other options.

I would recommend this product. I think it works for small- to medium-sized companies. It might not be so great for large organisations.

• Onboarding features
• Documents section
• Calendar + holidays

It has improved our record-keeping abilities. We can easily search for documents pertaining to employees. Employees are able to record their goals and receive feedback from their managers/peers.

We are also able to use the calendar function to track vacation days and personal holidays.

Their integration with formal HR systems and the payroll.

I have been using this product for more than two years.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not yet encountered any scalability issues, but we are a fairly small organization.

Unknown: We haven't used the technical support yet.

We did not previously use a different solution; I've only used this one.

I did not participate in the initial setup so can't comment.

This is not my area of responsibility.

Bamboo was onboarded before I began to work here.

I would advise others to implement it. It is a very helpful people management tool.

The 13 months feature is valuable.

It provides great applicant tracking and documentation for our needs.

It is good for keeping most of our HR functions online and available for our small and nimble office.

It allows us to share emergency contact information with fellow staff members decreasing the time to get hold of emergency contact persons if needed.

The performance appraisal system is too static and limited. It doesn't leave room for different questions other than those provided.

I have used it for 2.5 years.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We only encountered scalability issues with the performance appraisal system, which we used for a while, then we turned it off.

We have only used technical support by email. If you can't put your questions into a clear format that technical support can help with, then it may be harder to get your problem or issue solved.

Most of our previous activities were performed using Word, Excel, and PDF documents.

It was easy to upload lists and employee information. Also, it is quite easy to highlight information you are collecting which is not standard.

We looked into others like Paychex and ADP. They seemed too large and bulky for our needs.

Use your network to find the best vendor that works for you.

I like that it keeps everything easily accessible, from signed documents to outlines of our benefits plans, etc. It is really a one-stop shop. What is needed for my company, it does, and does it well. I enjoy the new UI/UX push they did.

I think it is just easiest to sign electronically and focus on the ease-of-use. It is very simplistic and allows everyone full transparency.

• Days off to be redeemed do not appear when a user cancels the days when people are off.
• Have an integration to Slack or 3rd-party network to notify with fewer emails sent.
• Ability to control what is sent to you.

• Make it easier for a user to view others in the organization.

I have been using BambooHR for about two years.

I rate technical support 4.5/5.

We previously used 7Geese.

Initial setup was pretty easy, but it's complicated when switching systems, no matter what. Customer service was great, though.

We used an in-house team for implementation.

Just be ready for a bit of a switch. Have all your exported files ready to go!