Experiences when payroll screws up, other good payroll providers

[Decades]

I’m wondering if anyone out there has had our recent experiences with payroll which in a word have been unbearably frustrating.

We switched our bank account that we are making payment out of.   Square tried to debit our old account, failed, turned off two day payroll processing,  wouldn’t draw from the new account due to validation, and when we cleared that up, ended up holding our deposits anyway, which, as I understand, they could keep for up to 90 days.  

We have talked to no less than 5 Customer Service reps, all of whom have been completely useless.   Asked to talk to a customer service supervisor, one will not be found and they can only talk to us in 2-3 days by email.   Promised to provide a response in 24 hours, good luck, didn’t happen.   

We are a small fry, but have processed over $700,000 with them over the last five years.   This is the first snag we hit.   Their response has in a word been atrocious. I have to pay my employees, I have now been forced to write out checks, and then request a refund from Square, which will not be forthcoming for a while.   I think I can honestly say they just don’t care.  Even threatening to move to another payroll provider and another POS app, seemed to create no motivation on their part.  

Can anyone recommend another payroll provider that might actually have good customer service ?  Has anyone actually outright canceled their Square account completely because of payroll issues ?   

In my view, the merit of a payroll provider is not established by the ease, with which their automated systems allow you to accomplish your job. The merit of a payroll provider is determined when things go south, and what their ability and care is in responding. Square has in my opinion demonstrated absolutely zero care or concern for anything that happens to us. Given that they don’t care about my account, clearly, I need to move to another provider who hopefully will.

[Lovewell]

@Decades Hi! I am so sorry you are having such a bad experience right now. We switched to square payroll a little over a year ago and it was one of the greatest decisions we have made. When we very first switched over we ran into a small hiccup- can’t even remember what it was- but customer service was extremely helpful and we were able to get it fixed. 
about 7 months ago we had to change all our bank account info as our bank had merged into a different bank and it was smooth daily with square- the bank… not so much but we got it settled. We have not had any problems with square payroll. It’s made our lives way easier. 
I’m sorry you are thinking about switching. I would say wait it out because I think switching to a different POS system and pahroll could be a bigger hassle, and this is the only to one you have had in 5 years. 
but I do completely understand that you have to make the decisions you think are going to be best for your business. 

I wish you luck in whatever decision you make! 

[Decades]

Customer service rep #7.   Maybe people can start to understand why if you have a problem with payroll that the automated system can’t handle you will unfortunately be completely out of luck. 

And perhaps this lends further credence to my statement above that Square Payroll really couldn’t care less if you are a customer with them or not.  

Perhaps customer service just got replaced with ChatGPT ?  Nah, I believe it would do a better job than this. 

On Jan 18, 2024, at 4:45 PM, Square <square@help-messaging.squareup.com> wrote:

Hi,

Thank you for the confirmation. I will go ahead and retry the debit to your linked bank account.If the debit is unsuccessful I will reach back out.

Your direct deposit has been re-enabled as of 1/16/24, however, if the debit fails again we will need to disable it until the debit is successful.

If you have any further questions or concerns, feel free to let us know.

Thank you,
Square Recovery


--------------- Original Message ---------------
From: 
Sent: 1/17/2024 5:09 PM
Subject: Re: Message From Square Payroll

Hi Payroll,

This does not solve our problem as requested. The payroll for THIS WEEK needs to be paid on Friday. I processed it on Monday 1/15 when we were told BY SQUARE that our direct deposit was re-enabled after having been erroneously disabled by Square. I just called in to your support line and was told that there was NO EMPLOYEE available who could make this payroll deposit Friday. I could run a new payroll today that would deposit on Friday, but the one I ran Monday can't be paid until next Monday? This makes zero sense.

Most likely we'll be transitioning our business away from Square completely as a result of this experience.

[alexandriak]

I've been using Square payroll since 2019. I don't use the automation for it because I do need to correct employee time cards at times for forgetting to clock in or out. If you turn off the automation I think you'd like to much better honestly. 

I've swapped accounts a few years ago during covid when I had PPP money. I had that money in it's own account and wanted to pull the payroll from there. I called into CS and they told me the best day to do it to avoid any interruptions, worked perfectly. Same thing with switching the account back.