Paychex Reviews 709

Do. Not. Do. It.

It took us over 6 months to onboard into all the “modules” and it still wasn’t smoothed out. Everything is so disjointed and everything is an extra add on with yet another representative assigned to you (I think we had 7 different people assigned to us at one point for the various modules). And their turn over internally isn’t great either, so you’ll connect with a rep and then they leave and you’ll get assigned someone else and have to start that relationship building over again just to get reasonable support.

All that, and then we have dealt with multiple tax issues, while with them and since leaving, from them not filing on our behalf as they were supposed to. We just received (another) tax bill for 10s of thousands for employer withholder taxes they never paid but had withheld, and never returned to us when they didn’t pay it. It’s 2026, we worked with them in 2024….. when we called to remediate the situation, they tried to blame it on our current payroll company that we weren’t even with at the time and passed us through multiple people. I’m sure we’ll be working on this for weeks before we potentially see our money returned to us

I have been with paychex since 10+ years and in the last 3 years company has gone downhill. They don’t process payroll correctly miss employees; deduct incorrect taxes; issue wrong year end summaries , I have deducted payroll specialist package and the payroll specialist is never available. Calling general line involves a minimum 30 min on regular days and 1 hour during tax season.
No one is looking at your account not even your dedicated specialist. Random people are processing your payroll despite having a dedicated specialist. For the ridiculously high price they charge for payroll specialist- The specialist does not know what’s going on with your account , never is available and doesn’t even look at your account. Lodging multiple complaints over the years with their customer service is useless as nothing changes.
This company does not know how to run a payroll or file taxes correctly
We have enough chances to them and are finally fed up so looking to change to another company

This place has the WORST customer service. There employees will talk to you however they want and really don't care. There is no supervisor to speak with and there is no accountability to these agents. I cannot stress how archaic their system is and what a piece of garbage everything is from the software to the customer service is. Stay away from them.

I am super frustrated with the lack of capabilities with Paychex. You cannot change termination reasons in their system? What is that all about. Also, they are a payroll system, but you cannot print PTO balances on pay stubs? When asking our support rep they really have no interesting in resolving the issues. The last response "I believe it is due to a update in the system, use to we could add a reason, looks like that has been removed for both of us." Wow, just wow.

This is a fraudulent payroll company. They signed up my company and worked with us for almost a month before running our first payroll setup. They took all of our company’s financial information and the financial information of our employees. A few hours before the first payroll, they deactivated our account. When we reached out, they claimed there was no one who could help us and refused to give us our records. We are working with the Federal Trade Commission to take action against the company. They are the cheapest payroll company because they are committing fraud. Do not use them; you will regret it.

The worst app and service you can imagine! Nothing but a pile of junk never get my stuff on time. Slowest app I have ever used save your time and money

Called Paychex today to speak with a payroll specialist. I sat on hold almost 30 minutes. When a representative answered the call at 2:06pm est, he (Robert) was very dismissive, unprofessional and rude. I asked to speak with a manager and he said “provide a client id number if you wanna speak with a manager. Or call back once you have your client id number.”

I asked him if he was denying my request to speak with a manager. He then replied with the same nasty, dry, monotone voice and response. I told him that it doesn’t matter if he didn’t connect me with his manager as I was going to report my experience regardless.

Paychex, please do better and hire qualified individuals to speak with your clients. Your customer service overall has gone downhill over the past 4 years and it’s getting worse. This is why you all are loosing business!

Quick to extract funds from your account. No resolution when it comes to refunding you for their error. Stay away from them and their affiliates for other services like 401k and workers comp. You will be billed for the service and an additional fee for pennies on the dollar amount goes to Paychex. Reps are aggressive to enroll you but go silent when issues arise

This company deserves ZERO stars. Awful. Truly awful. It has been a month since we have received calls to accept our payroll hours. I have had to call customer service 4 weeks in a row to track down someone to take hours in order for my employees to receive their checks. Online services are not working but we cant get a single person to actually help. Many promised calls and emails that never happen. Unanswered emails. To top it all off their numbers are continually off for things like sick hours. Save yourself endless headaches and go with a different company, any other company.

My company Papa Murphy's/ Dancer Corp uses this horrible company to show me my pay stubs and my W2, etc. The "Help Desk" people are incompetent, rude, uncaring, SLOW and unintelligent. I spoke to TWO people today and neither of them could help me. Neither of them cared about me or my problem either. I was locked out of my account because of a password issue and they kept telling me I was giving them the wrong information about security questions, which I was not! The one guy just flat out told me he couldn't help, rudely told me to contact my employer and ended the chat.

My employer solved the problem for me in two seconds.

So, if you're unfortunate enough to be stuck with these incompetent and unfeeling people don't bother asking them for help. Go right to your HR person at your work and ask them for assistance.

The reviews say all that needs to be said.

RUNNNNNNN! Stay away from Paychex at all costs, you have officially been warned!!!!

Paychex is completely incompetent. The situation gets even worse when there are consistent payroll errors that are beyond negligence. The payroll errors on a constant basis from their dysfunctional team making mistakes that are beyond negligence. What’s far more concerning is when the mistakes are brought to their attention they are not acknowledged and they adamantly refuse to resolve the issues.

The lack of accountability, ownership, or professionalism is appalling. They rather embrace excuses then find solutions. Paychex has no remorse for any damages.

Do yourself a favor and stary far, far away.

From initial start up had continual incorrect auto drafts. My fee, which was under contract, was continually not honored. This always led to an attempt to contact customer (which was not a quick call) to eventually having to work w a supervisor. The high fees they drew eventually were returned but my business checking account was treated like a “free for all” like they believed! Secondly, trying to reach your customer care rep is next to impossible. Actually in the last year I never could! Would go to her voicemail and Ide get an email with half my answer. Terrible terrible terrible customer service. Lastly, when I no longer employed employees, I called to shut the account down. This company kept taking draws out of my account with no notices but the worst was they sent me an email and dropped all the required state and federal tax filings. Remind you that they opened ONLY every accessed these accounts so I knew ZERO! So I had to figure out state and federal tax forms, logins (including annual IRS 940 filing etc) - which was extremely stressful! Why wouldn’t they finish their job?? Absolutely worst payroll company for payroll which I will never ever to business with again! Go find a good payroll company! Paychex is THE WORST!

Stay away from Paychex! What I was sold and what I’m getting is complete opposite.
The clock in app is horrible
The job cost report are worst
They dont pay my Workers comp as agreed
They dont file the RT6 reports with the state of Florida
They have early termination fee of $4000
Stay away!!!

Update: I want to share a follow-up: Paychex responded to my concerns, acknowledged what went wrong, and worked to fix the situation. While I ultimately did not stay with them, I appreciate that supervisors stepped in, listened, and made it right. Accountability matters, and I do give them credit for the resolution. (Updating to 3 stars.)
__________________________________
We used Paychex for about six months and experienced repeated issues (PTO balances were repeatedly wrong even after “fixes,” tax/payroll accuracy concerns, and benefits/insurance admin failures that increased our costs). Support was slow and inconsistent, and problems only seemed to get attention after I gave notice to cancel on 12/9/2025.

Now Paychex says billing continues during a 401(k) transfer and that a $1,500 transfer fee applies if we’re not using Paychex payroll. They also required a live phone security step to initiate the transfer, but when I called 855-776-7929 and pressed “1” for Retirement Services, the call disconnected repeatedly (I tried four times and recorded it).

I’m requesting clear itemized billing, a working transfer process, and waiver/reduction of the $1,500 fee given the service failures.

PaychexFlex is in serious decline. It never has been great (14 years), and it is now much worse. I am a small company 6-15 employees over the years-- seems a dedicated rep for our account lasts fewer than 3 months. I can NEVER get THAT person on the phone. EVER! The general que is always 5- 30 minutes long. Each transfer internally requires the SAME answers to the exact same identity questions. Typically the person you get can NEVER answer questions without putting you on hold. So-- the odds of getting any help involving state taxes, 401k rollovers, and even adjusting a date for the next payroll period... is a very time-consuming process. You pay for this sub-standard service in multiple ways... from VERY high front-load fees for 401k contributions, to interminably long wait times. GO with a newer start-up service that isnt bogged down in legacy old-school processes. They will try harder to earn your respect. Paychex gives ZERO effort. I would change-- but THAT is a miserable process... expecially when no-one answers the phone. Oh-- like everything else-- the hold music is from the 80s. This company deserves it's current trajectory....to rot into oblivion.

This company has horrible customer service; they have been giving me the run-around on a refund for over 2 months. They have no problem taking money out, but when we are owed money it's very difficult to get it back. I would stay away from this company and never ever do worker comp with them either. Terrible experience with your company.

If you’re an employer Do not USE This company!! Ask HR to change very bad experiencing, they will not provide a W-2 for 2024 due the fact that they have an issue with my past employer for a bill for 2025.

Customer service has been extremely disappointing, and I would not recommend this company. I left several messages for my account representative and never received a callback. On the few occasions I did hear back regarding assistance with my payroll template, the changes made actually worsened the issue rather than resolving it.

Given this experience, it’s hard to see a positive future state for the company without significant improvement. Ironically, service would likely improve with fewer errors and better responsiveness if these functions were replaced or augmented by AI. As technology advances, many of these roles will inevitably be replaced, and in this case, that shift may lead to better customer service overall.

Total time on the phone was over an hour. The 1st employee wasn't able to help me with my question and said they would put me on hold and connect me to "payroll". They accidentally transferred me back to the automated start. After pressing the number sequences the 2nd time the person transferred me to "payroll" but it took about 45 minutes listening to hold music for someone to pick up. She was also not able to help me. I'm trying to find out why the paychex website says "I haven't worked this year" even though I have and everything is blank including my retirement balance. I was most interested in my May 2025 stubs and the woman said I can't get stubs that far back now that it is Dec 2025 which was interesting because in Dec 2024 I was able to print my stubs from Dec 2023, Dec 2022, Dec 2021. Ultimately when I asked for the woman's name at the end of her not being able to help me, she hung up on me.