Home > HR Management Software > Ascentis > Ascentis vs PDS Vista

Ascentis vs PDS Vista

Last Updated: November 18th, 2024

Our analysts compared Ascentis vs PDS Vista based on data from our 400+ point analysis of HR Management Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

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Product Basics

Ascentis offers HCM services to companies of all industries via its cloud-based suite. Its five modules include time and attendance, payroll, HR and benefits, talent, and recruiting. Users can choose to pick individual functionalities or the entire package of services, depending upon their needs.

It facilitates process automation for several complex business processes and transactions, reduces the probability of errors, offers real-time analytics, eliminates manual work, and helps talent managers and organizations cater to their human resources and talent management requirements. It also provides ease-of-use through an interface that can be accessed anytime, anywhere on a desktop, tablet or smartphone.

PDS Vista is an integrated human capital management (HCM) system for streamlining HR functions, including hiring, onboarding, human resources, benefits, payroll and time and attendance tracking. It automates core processes, empowering organizations to minimize the time allocated to routine HCM and payroll tasks.

Highly customizable, it lets users tailor it to their needs. It also records crucial business strategy and decision-making data, giving employees and managers self-service access to payroll and workforce management features. Companies can opt for on-site or cloud deployment, ensuring flexibility during implementation.

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Product Insights

Optimized Team Performance: Gather information and feedback for each employee, from all sources. Uncover talent and top-performing employees as well as facilitate planning that results in optimized team performance.
Quality Applicants: Showcase an employer brand when seeking new employees to encourage the maximum number of quality applicants.
Efficient Employee Onboarding: Eliminate duplicate data entry and leverage the cost saving benefits of switching to an online application process instead of an offline process. Cut costs, make onboarding more efficient and reliable, and gain complete access to data 24/7.
Regulatory Compliance: Stay compliant with all essential employment regulations such as FMLA, FLSA, and other local and state laws that require consistency and vigilance.
Real-Time Payroll Processing: Ensure accurate, efficient payroll processing and audits. Run payroll processing anytime, from any place, as many times as required.
No Tax-Related Penalties: Remove the stress of incurring accidental late filing penalties by ensuring timely payroll deposits and filing.
Complete Customization: Tailor the system in ways that best suit company needs, enabling maximum usage and functionality.
Automated Benefits Administration: Save time and reduce manual effort by automating benefits management, administration and employee enrollment processes.
Data-Driven Decisions: Compare metric goals with data insights to make data-driven decisions that lead to improved overall performance. Leverage more than 300 templates for standard reports or customize reports to suit organizational requirements.
Real-Time Self Learning: Cultivate and encourage self-learning and employee development through training resources that are available in real time.
Enhanced Employee Experience: Users can access upcoming schedules, select open shifts, view and request leaves, check paycheck history and statements, punch in and punch out, find co-workers, receive important notifications and alerts, and much more.
On-the-Go Access for Managers: Stay on top of tasks from anywhere. Manage employee schedules, check notifications for employee requests, and approve or reject leaves and expense reports from the user-friendly mobile app.

Track KPIs: Drill into data and export it to a spreadsheet with a single click. Access over 100 pre-built tools, visualize data via comprehensive analytics and review insights through various charts and graphs, like scatter, line, column and pie charts.
Comply With ACA Regulations: Handle responsibilities related to ACA seamlessly. Use a comprehensive tracking tool to monitor the 30-hour mandate, ensure compliance with ACA requirements for health care plans, determine employee eligibility with automated tools and generate critical documents like 1095-Cs.
Develop Reports: Simplify requesting business-centric data with the intuitive EasyAsk query tool, enabling users to select questions from a drop-down list. Enhance data generation with public or private lists of predefined questions. Choose which fields to include with a tool that supports synonyms (e.g., department or division) via a well-articulated dictionary. Access reports in multiple formats such as Excel, HTML and Word.
Reduce Manual Work: Automate approval processes with a workflow engine, streamline employee transactions like time-off requests, define conditions for multi-step operations and enable data filtering while maintaining transaction histories for auditing..
Go Mobile: Enhance workplace flexibility by providing remote access and editing capabilities to employees anywhere through the HRMS mobile app. Employees can view paycheck details, request time off and update data from their mobile devices. Equip managers to find employee contact info and approve job openings, vacation requests and raises.
Meet Compliance Regulations: Stay compliant with U.S. and Canadian laws via various reports and analytics, including OSHA, EEO, HIPAA, FMLA, IRCA, ADA, Vets-4212, AERS and ROE.
Support a Connected Business: Integrate with other systems for better business functioning. Configure data extracts using SQL (Structured Query Language) and effectively interface with any system. Retain absolute control over data, using various tools to process information automatically.
Maintain a Secure Environment: Control the information workforces see via robust security templates based on designated authorization and roles.
Get Help When Needed: Product users consistently commend the support. Users can access support staff and educational resources like product videos and demos. Online tracking, technical assistance, user group membership and emergency support also ensure clients receive the assistance they need when they need it.

Time and Attendance: Offers several functions such as leave management, time tracking, employee scheduling, advanced scheduling, a mobile app and compliance.
Employee Scheduling: Provides management automation for several key aspects like split shift intervals, leave balances, overtime, expenses and total work hours.
Advanced Scheduling: Helps schedule workflows and optimize all scheduling processes end to end. Evaluates unique rules and requirements within an organization and then auto-generates schedule recommendations based on that information.
Payroll: Payroll processing occurs in real time, offering maximized accuracy, compliance, control and flexibility.
HR and Benefits: Provides functionalities such as benefits management, HR compliance, HR solution customization, employee self-service, reporting and more.
Talent Management: Customizable and user-friendly module. Capabilities include succession planning, compensation planning, performance management, learning management, check-ins, 360-degree assessments and real-time feedback.
Recruiting: Acts as a dynamic career portal, helps with social media outreach, enables efficient onboarding and improves workflow management for HR-related functions.
Ascentis Mobile Application: Two types of access are available — one for employees and another for managers and supervisors. Based on their role, users can share messages, update and access information, and perform other activities, all through a smartphone or a tablet.

Human Resources: Boost employee management with onboarding, learning, safety and performance tools. Develop engagement, career planning and risk management programs. Create a historical data snapshot at any given point with the Point-in-Time builder tool.
Recruiting: Provide a wide range of recruiting functionalities by leveraging hiring tools. Track and capture recruitment data to maintain crucial applicant information. Enable HR teams to quickly analyze costs, manage applications, foster relationships with candidates and handle less paperwork overall.
Onboarding: Streamline onboarding by digitizing essential documents and providing access to a digital to-do list, a FAQ section and company content with simple configurations. Fast-track document signing through Adobe Sign or DocuSign enables new hires to electronically sign required HR, benefit and payroll forms before their first day, saving time and paper.
Workflow: Oversee staff transaction approvals with approval process automation and digital forms. Track transaction activities, reroute essential activities and information to participants and automate notifications.
Reporting: Combine pre-formatted, parameter-driven HR data into a single report. Automate reports scheduling and create historical and metrics data to give managers an understanding of accepted company procedures.
Analytics: Make smart strategic decisions and evaluate business data leveraging data. Seamlessly turn this data into valuable insights for better decision-making via the Vista Analytics component.
Benefits Administration: Support various procedures and policies surrounding benefits administration. Offer a host of plans and coverage levels to the workforce. Take payroll deductions and premiums into account to automatically determine eligibility with the benefits administration tool.
Payroll Management: Complete all payroll activities with various tools like time collection, tax maintenance service, auto-pay, reporting and a general ledger. Enable advanced functionalities, including retroactive pay, historical tracking and electronic documents and checks. Track and take action on data with an intuitive dashboard.
Time and Attendance: Streamline attendance monitoring capabilities like time entry, reporting, payroll integration and multiple time collection methods. Gain advanced time tracking attributes with the cloud-based Vista Time tool. Offer geofencing and geolocation, a drag-and-drop schedule, message alerts, dashboards for employees and managers and accrued time forecasting.
Self-Service Portal: Support HR activities and tasks with a range of company-wide and individual tools delivered through a comprehensive portal.
- Provide a company directory, calendar events and company news.
- Employees and managers can access information required to request, review and approve things like vacation or time entry.
- Enable employees to manage their career goals and apply for internal job openings.
- Includes a self-service tool to guide employees through benefits election and enrollment.
- Effortlessly add links and relevant icons to content and implement manager self-service features in a protected manner, such as time approval, org charts and dashboards.
Career Portal: Create a branded individualized career portal. Include filters, categories for ranking applicants, automation, and employee requisition attributes. Facilitate the entire application process for candidates with the job center tool and allow them to complete applications anytime from any location, leveraging a mobile interface. Supports multiple languages for enhanced self-service.
Mobile App: Leverage a mobile app on Android and Apple devices to remotely access MyVista, including the mobile-optimized Vista Onboarding and Vista Recruiting Career Center.

Product Ranking

#13

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#65

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Analyst Rating Summary

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User Sentiment Summary

77%

of users recommend this product

Ascentis has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 77% when considering 626 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

84%

of users recommend this product

PDS Vista has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 67 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

4.0 (251)

4.3 (22)

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3.7 (323)

4.0 (29)

Awards

Professional Services and Maintenance Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Customer Service: All reviews mentioning this aspect indicated that the customer support services quickly resolve all user issues.

Ease of Use: An easy-to-use interface helps new users to quickly learn and understand its versatile features, according to 85% of reviews on this element.

PTO Calculation: 90% of reviews that mention PTO noted that all employees can send PTO requests via self-service and easily calculate their PTO earned by the end of the fiscal year.

Less Data Input: 100% of reviews on integration noted that the smooth integration between payroll and HR modules allows information to flow easily between systems, without feeding data in multiple times.

Comprehensive Suite: PDS Vista offers a wide range of modules, covering everything from core HR functions like payroll and benefits administration to talent management, recruiting, and learning management. This comprehensive suite eliminates the need for multiple, disparate systems, streamlining HR processes and data management.

Customizable and Scalable: The system's flexibility allows organizations to tailor it to their specific needs and industry regulations. Whether it's adding custom fields, workflows, or reports, PDS Vista adapts to evolving requirements and growth, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes.

User-Friendly Interface: PDS Vista is known for its intuitive interface, which reduces the learning curve for HR professionals and employees alike. The system's ease of use promotes user adoption and engagement, leading to more efficient HR operations.

Reporting and Analytics: Robust reporting tools provide HR teams with valuable insights into workforce data, enabling data-driven decision-making. From standard reports to ad-hoc queries and dashboards, PDS Vista empowers HR to analyze trends, identify areas for improvement, and measure the impact of HR initiatives.

Inaccurate Reporting: 100% of reviews on reporting indicated that the software sometimes creates random reports or files that are outside the set criteria, and that it’s time-consuming and confusing to create new reports or look through report history.

Password Reset: Employees are unable to reset their own passwords for the employee self-service functionality, according to 60% of reviews on the element.

Implementation Process: 85% of reviewers who mention this feature indicated that Ascentis has a time-consuming implementation process, due to the numerous features it provides.

Data Entry: All reviews on data entry observed that the ATS feature sometimes has multiple data entries of the same information.

Clunky Interface: Navigating PDS Vista can feel cumbersome and outdated, often requiring multiple clicks to accomplish simple tasks. The interface appears visually dated, which may deter users accustomed to modern software design.

Reporting Limitations: Generating custom reports or extracting specific data sets can be challenging due to the system's rigid structure. Users often find themselves exporting data to external programs for further analysis, creating an extra step in the workflow.

Ascentis provides à la carte solutions for human capital and workforce management. It can be a good pick for companies that are looking for software that has an intuitive interface, seamless integration between payroll and HR, PTO, benefits calculation and responsive customer service. However, several reviews mentioned reporting is inaccurate, challenging and cumbersome. There are also issues with duplicate data, and implementation is time-consuming. It can be a good choice depending on company needs and priorities.

PDS Vista appears to be most suitable for mid-sized to large companies with complex organizational structures and a high volume of employees. The software's ability to handle intricate HR processes, such as onboarding, benefits administration, and payroll, makes it a valuable tool for organizations with diverse needs. Additionally, PDS Vista's scalability ensures that it can grow alongside a company, accommodating increasing demands as the workforce expands. Smaller businesses with simpler HR requirements might find the software's extensive features to be overwhelming and may prefer a more streamlined solution. One of the key strengths of PDS Vista is its comprehensive suite of features. Users appreciate the software's ability to manage various HR functions, from recruitment and onboarding to performance management and employee development. This all-in-one approach eliminates the need for multiple HR systems, streamlining processes and reducing administrative burdens. For instance, the performance management module allows managers to set goals, track progress, and provide feedback, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. However, some users have noted that the extensive features can lead to a steeper learning curve, requiring dedicated training and support to fully utilize the software's capabilities. When compared to competitors like Workday and SAP SuccessFactors, PDS Vista stands out for its robust reporting and analytics capabilities. Users can generate custom reports to gain insights into workforce trends, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. The software's ability to track key HR metrics, such as employee turnover and engagement levels, enables organizations to proactively address potential issues and optimize their HR strategies. While Workday and SAP SuccessFactors also offer reporting features, PDS Vista's user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards make it easier for HR professionals to access and interpret data.

Screenshots

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FAQ

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