People management is the bane of every business' existence. That is, unless you've found a great human resources software that works for your team – something that covers all the common tasks of HR at your company.

Payroll is an essential and vital aspect of people management. Yet, so many startups choose basic accounting software products to manage this repetitive, laborious HR function.

Some entrepreneurs only hire a Human Resources professional much later in their startup journey and push payroll onto their CFO or financial manager.

The problem is that payroll can get really technical, and it's not just a numbers game: payroll is directly tied to each employee's work life, home life, and professional development. Payroll is, essentially, a people problem.

When looking at payroll providers and business payroll software, you need to consider all aspects of your employee's journey at your company.

Shift work and weekly wage-earning, overtime, absence request management, benefits and compensations, reimbursements, tax, labor law compliance management, and hiring budgets all form part of payroll tasks.

To manage your team well and drive efficiencies, you also need advanced HR features on top of your payroll software. This includes key features for document management, job scheduling, time and attendance tracking, performance management tools, managing employee data, collaboration, fault-logging tools, etc.

It can be difficult to find all of these crucial features in a single application. flair is an all-in-one HR platform that offers these tools and more.

Business owners now understand that a comprehensive HR management system is a valuable asset. They also know that it's in their companies' best interests to automate as many repetitive tasks as possible.

Simplified management workflows mean more time for your management team to do what is really important: help your company grow.

Paycor is an automated HR and payroll solution with nearly 2 million users across 50 states in the United States. flair is an up-and-coming competitor in the Core HR management software category.

Paycor prides itself on being a "unified system for everything HR". flair makes an equally bold statement by saying that our platform offers "HR flawlessly automated."

Paycor is a full-fledged Human Capital Management (HCM) platform with core product capabilities for payroll, talent management, workforce management, employee experience, and benefits. They've been in the payroll software space for over thirty years.

Paycor is ranked best-in-class by third-party reviews sites like Software Advice, Capterra, and Sierra-Cedar. However, recently many of their user reviews include negative feedback on their customer service and user experience, despite the great additional features they offer.

HR & Payroll Software

• Paycor payroll provides a real-time, guided payroll experience with many ways to pay, available in their premium packages as well as their basic package.
• Simple payroll and tax reports to keep track of payments.
• In-product compliance risk feedback for HR managers to maintain a high level of compliance at all times.
• Employee self-service with access to payroll information and payslips on their mobile phones.
• HR managers can update employee information as well as time cards and pay rates.
• Unlimited workflows to automate repetitive HR processes such as performance reviews.
• Online document storage space for a paperless office.
• Built-in COVID-19 immunization tracker and vaccine reporting.

Talent Management

• A comprehensive applicant tracking system to recruit, retain and develop people.
• Job listing platform and custom reports monitoring employee turnover.
• Acquired 7Geese performance review software as a feedback tool.

Workforce Management

• Core workforce management solution that offers shift management and shift swaps via the employee self-service dashboard.
• Automatically send shift reminders to employees.
• Set budget caps to control labor costs.

Employee Experience

• Employee recognition and custom survey tools to understand employee experience at your company.

Benefits Administration

• Design and implement benefits that motivate and reward your team.

More Consumer Benefits

• Paycor Marketplace helps you find partners and plug in third-party apps to bolster Paycor's offering.

Pricing

• Tailored pricing to your needs based on industry and company size.
• HR consulting, time tracking and scheduling, benefits administration, and recruiting are all added extras but the additional cost is not available on Paycor's pricing page (you need to request a quote).
• Paycor offers small businesses one month's license for free.

flair is a core workforce management solution that provides an all-in-one tool for your HR team with a user-friendly interface and powerful features.

flair's configurable HR platform is well-suited to various industries and requires minimal training – enjoy customization capabilities and comprehensive reports from the moment you start your account.

Explore our employee self-service tools (Employee HUB) that allow your current co-workers and potential new team members to be on the same page. We offer easy-to-use onboarding tools that you can tailor to create a positive employee experience from their first day.

flair's suite of tools includes recruiting features that will help your HR team be more efficient during the job posting process, such as candidate application tracking, interview scheduling, and administration management.

A few of our standout features are Shift Planner for dynamic work scheduling, Skills Matrix to help manage team and project skills more efficiently, and international payroll management software.

Employee Database

• The Employee Center is a user-friendly and intuitive employee self-service HR platform.

• Give employees control over their own HR processes, so you don't have to follow up constantly.

• Employees can update their own profiles and toggle their notifications settings to be aware of their progress.

• Cloud-based 360-degree feedback management solution that enables you to run performance reviews and 1:1s, schedule feedback meetings, manage private notes, set personal goals, and write resolutions, all within flair's Employee Center.

• Save time using Salesforce's smart bulk uploading tool to automatically attach documents to your employees' profiles based on predefined file patterns.

Image source: flair Changelog

• Manage your documents on the Employee Hub mobile app.
• Upcoming address change or promotion? Schedule employee profile updates for future dates so you won't have to set up reminders for yourself.

Payroll Software

• The power of Salesforce for payroll in a neat, easy-to-use package with flair.
• Collaborate by adding notes, attaching files, and requesting approvals. flair highlights changes so you can easily track payroll updates.
• Pay hourly, weekly, and bi-weekly wage workers, and make one-time payments even in multiple currencies. Rely on automated overtime compensations to do the admin for you.

Image source: flair Changelog

Absence Management

• Immediate Slack integration – if you use Slack as a collaboration tool, you can plug in flair for seamless attendance management and approvals.
• Manage overtime and vacation requests and check on the status of jobs to understand how your employees like to work.
• Filter absences based on multiple locations, teams, absence types, and time frames.
• Integrate your absences calendar with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, and iCal.

Time Tracking & Shift Planner

• Tracking flexible work hours just got easier: Managers can assign flexible hours, and employees can log their time at work using the Time Tracking tool.
• Empower shift workers to choose hours that suit them with the Open Shifts feature. Leave notes on shifts for smooth asynchronous communication.

Image source: flair Changelog

• Connect a global workforce – multiple timezones supported for shift planning, so no team member is left in the dark.

Recruiting And Onboarding

• Create an SEO-friendly careers page for almost effortless recruiting and a simple job application process.
• Track your recruitment process at all stages with insightful reports.
• Schedule interviews and make them more inclusive: Assign team members to evaluate candidates and choose the right talent together.
• Use the workflows tool to automate new employee onboarding and create a personalized "welcome experience".

Image Source: flair Changelog

• You can use multiple formats for your careers page, including embeddable iframe and API. You can also use the Google Jobs format.

Performance And Goals

• Make use of flair's Skills Gap Identifier feature to hone the right skills and optimize client projects.
• Use automated workflows to assign tasks to specific team members or employee groups and watch work happen with a click of a button.

Pricing

• flair's transparent pricing details enable you to use a cost calculator to know exactly how much you need to spend on your team size before you sign up.
• We offer a 14-day free trial to give you time to try flair before you upgrade.
• More users mean more savings – our subscriptions get cheaper per person per month based on the volume of your workforce!

flair is a fantastic product for budget-conscious companies likestartups and NGOs, offering special pricing for inspiring new companies. For €4 per user per month (for one year), startups get all the premium features they need to get their HR teams started.

Whereas Paycor is backed by many years of experience and enterprise-level resources, flair is a strong competitor offering robust features that you might not expect from a new player in the Payroll & HR management software market.

Paycor creates much value for SMBs, mid-market companies, and enterprises. However, you might be looking for something simpler and easier to use.

Leaders don't often emphasize the value of having an intuitive, user-friendly employee management platform for everyday HR and performance functions. Still, we all know what it's like to use clunky, archaic systems that just don't sit right.

Even though Paycor holds much more market share in the Payroll software space than flair does, it might be time to consider an alternative to Paycor.

As you can see from the comparison in this article, flair matches up with Paycor's core HR features, except for specific tools such as employee recognition and LMS.

If these two features are not high on your priority list, or if you've tried Paycor but found that it's not suitable for your company – make use of flair's 14-day free trial to test our platform out for yourself.

flair is also better suited for international teams who would appreciate an employee self-service platform available in their own language – we're working hard to be the best at this!

Lastly, if you're already using Salesforce CRM or looking into it, we're especially well-suited for your company's workflow because we're seamlessly integrated with Salesforce.