Rippling HR Software Review

• Rippling is a robust cloud-hosted human resources software platform.
• The software can manage your onboarding, benefits administration, payroll processing, and time and attendance.
• Rippling has an easy-to-use interface that makes it simple to get up and running.
• This article is for business owners who are considering using Rippling for their HR software needs. 

Rippling is an employee management platform that turns the often arduous task of people operations into a seemingly effortless digital experience with the help of intuitive automation. With the platform, you can send an offer letter and new-hire paperwork; run background checks; complete e-verify documents; add onboarded employees to payroll; enroll them in health insurance; order and ship computer equipment; and set up Google Workspace, Slack, and Office 365 – everything they need to be successful. And with Rippling's optional professional employer organization offering, smaller businesses can access enterprise-level benefits, including large group health plans, 401(k)s, commuter flex benefits, health savings accounts and flexible savings accounts – all for less than you'd pay on your own.

Rippling HR Software Pricing

The basic service starts at $8 per user per month. Rippling does not offer the standard monthly service options often seen with other providers in this category. That means most businesses will need to explore custom pricing options with a Rippling sales agent.

Basic features include a unified employee database, onboarding/offboarding automation, e-document management, time and attendance tools, workflow and approval automation, customizable reporting, an open API, and more than 500 third-party cloud-based application integrations.

Usability

We found Rippling to be one of the more user-friendly HR software solutions in terms of day-to-day navigation. Once setup is complete, administrators can use the "Quick Action Springboard" on the left side of their dashboard to jump to tasks, including onboarding new employees, creating custom reports or syncing new third-party applications. The home dashboard view keeps administrators on track with a to-do list that's tied to high-level deadlines, approval requests and significant milestones.

Key takeaway: The to-do lists are designed to ensure employees, managers and admins are notified of the goals they need to hit or any tasks they need to complete.

Rippling provides you with easy access to their applications for payroll services, onboarding and even preconfigured company devices to ship to your different facilities or the home of your newest remote hire.

Rippling apps are followed by a list of third-party software applications, letting admins manage user access across the organization from a single sign-on page. The App Shop layout makes it easy to find and sync essential business tools, including Slack, Zoom, Asana, Zendesk, Dropbox, Adobe, HubSpot, and other business software solutions and service providers – all of which are manageable from the administrator's dashboard.

Source: Rippling

We like how easy it is to create any number of valuable reports and visualizations that can lead to better business decisions across the entire organization. For new reports, administrators are prompted with six report types, each of which has a seemingly endless list of customization fields. While it may seem like it's easy to get lost with so many options, the layout does a good job of presenting you with useful fields to explore your data. Each time you make a selection, the dynamic reporting tool populates the selected variables in the top right corner. If you don't see which variable you're looking for on the left-hand navigation menu, you can use the available search function to find it. Once you've identified the raw data for analysis, you can then hone in on details such as your desired date range, group variables or rearrange your data sets to your liking.

Source: Rippling

Rippling HR Software Features

Onboarding

Every HR software platform places a strong emphasis on speeding up the onboarding process, but nobody does it as well as Rippling. With their highly automated software, administrators can accomplish everything from new-hire paperwork and payroll to benefits enrollment and comprehensive software access management in less than a couple of minutes from the home dashboard.

Source: Rippling

Third-Party Integrations

Rippling's open API allows you to share information with the applications your business already uses daily. Your team has access to more than 500 third-party cloud-based tools, all accessible with single sign-on functionality from one location. The administrator's dashboard makes it simple to modify access to the software and apps your employees need to get the job done.

Benefits

Rippling makes it incredibly easy for administrators to auto-enroll new hires, update payroll deductions, define contribution strategies and complete other tasks from the home dashboard. New employees and existing team members with a qualifying life event can find guided enrollment features, with intuitive navigation and side-by-side comparisons of the health and financial benefits your company offers. All of your employees' benefits automatically sync with payroll deductions for seamless management.

Did you know? With Rippling, you can shop for more than 4,000 health and financial benefit services.

Device Management

With the platform, you can manage all of your company-issued laptops and devices from the dashboard. Admins can view equipment inventories, set password policies and configure hard drive encryption. You can purchase and ship equipment through Rippling's online store, as well as preconfigure software based on the individual's role in your organization. You can also remotely wipe and reassign a device upon the termination of an employee.

Reporting

Make better business decisions for your organization with easy access to built-in reports. There are also customizable reporting options for companies needing more in-depth information. You can visualize data from any endpoint tracked within the platform. This includes a wide array of data, including payroll, documents, time off, hardware, insurance and much more.

Setup

According to Rippling, the average time to implement the platform is two and a half weeks. While that may sound like a long time, think of it as an investment in future time savings.

Reaping the massive time-saving benefits that this, or any automation-heavy platform, requires that you lay a solid foundation, which then allows your repetitive processes to run smoothly and accurately. You're not building everything on your own from scratch, as Rippling's intuitive forms will guide you through the most common processes, with easy-to-answer questions and preconfigured fields for every aspect of your HR tasks.

Key takeaway: Once you and Rippling have your systems dialed in, you'll easily make up for the initial time investment of implementing Rippling with any HR compliance task you need to perform.

Customer Service

During setup, you'll work with a dedicated contact who is available by phone and email; once your system is up and running, you can use email or use Rippling's self-help tools, which are available with your login information. Your employees will need to reach out to your team's Rippling administrator to troubleshoot issues that come up.

Drawbacks

The lack of phone support could lead to frustration, especially for smaller teams without a tech-savvy HR administrator on staff. This means your admins should dedicate time to understanding how the system works and anticipate what issues or concerns employees are likely to have accomplishing tasks or understanding their benefits. For some employees, the option to speak with someone outside your organization about a technical HR issue is usually the most attractive solution, which is something we'd like to see improved with Rippling. If you are looking for a platform that provides 24/7 phone support, you might be better served with Paychex Flex. Accessibility aside, Rippling's preconfigured fields and intuitive navigation will likely reduce the need for most users to contact support for troubleshooting.

Very small businesses may not find the benefits of automation worth the time it takes to build the right workflows. For example, if your company is onboarding and offboarding only a handful of employees each year, the time you need to spend building a custom workflow for a single position may only be used once or twice each year.

Summary

Who we recommend Rippling for:

• Any business looking for an automation-focused, all-in-one HR software platform that can integrate with all of your existing business software, benefits and apps
• Midsize businesses that want to save time and ensure accuracy with all of their HR-related tasks, from onboarding to offboarding and everything in between
• Any business looking for the flexibility provided by a highly customizable HR software platform with endless reporting options 

Who we DON'T recommend Rippling for:

• Small businesses that do not have a high frequency of repetitive HR tasks, including hiring, onboarding, equipment allocation, benefits management and offboarding
• Small and midsize businesses that need a lot of help from customer service when managing or modifying their operations-related tools and software