Polaris Payroll

This company and their employees are very difficult to work with.
* They do not pay out all the money that is owed to you. You read that right! They keep YOUR money!
* They do not process and pay taxes on time. Therefore, your clients incur penalties.
* They do not provide assistance when you ask for it. They are in general a nightmare to work with.

If you are looking for a payroll system, please continue to look at other companies. Do not select Polaris Payroll!

Polaris Payroll has failed to provide a fully functional payroll processing system as they promised to in the contract.This is from the letter that I sent to Polaris Payroll on September 30 2014 to explain my complaints and express concern for them not holding up to their end of the contract: After 9 months of working with your payroll platform it has become apparent to me that although you state the following in Section A Part 5 of the contract, "The Service: Polaris provides a hosted platform, including the Application, operating system, database, and utility software that together form a fully functional payroll processing system." You, in fact, do not have a fully functioning system. I have reported several critical bugs and have not had them all addressed. I requested a pay code to be written in January and to date that has not been completed. I reported that when processing from two bank accounts, the account changes in the cash management file without notice after processing has been completed. This caused issues with my clients since tax monies were being debited from incorrect account numbers. This problem was never resolved after originally being reported in January. More recently, I discovered that taxes weren't being calculated on an employee's check that had always had taxes calculated previously. I also discovered and brought to your attention that two employees had taxes calculated incorrectly based on their earnings, but the correct amount of tax was deducted from the gross pay. Resulting in underpaid taxes and miscalculations and ultimately an underpaid employee based on the deductions. This was brought to your attention on September 9, 2014 and I still don't have a resolution from Polaris. These types of errors are costly and I can no longer afford to take this type of risk for my company or my clients. Empay Systems, LLC has failed to keep their end of the contract by not providing a fully functional payroll processing system. Empay Systems, LLC has also failed to fix critical bugs in a timely manner. I have emailed you and [redacted] on multiple occasions to report issues that I am having in processing an accurate payroll due to systems glitches or bugs and have not received responses. This is unacceptable. Due to the negligence on your part, I have had no other choice than to close the Fee Account in which you were debiting and terminate the authorization for debits from my bank accounts. I gave Empay Systems, LLC 9 months to fix bugs reported in January, create pay codes requested in January, as well as fix critical additional issues that have been brought to your attention in the last 20 days. Because you have failed to comply with your responsibilities as the payroll processing system manager, I have been forced to terminate the contract before it causes any additional concern from my current clients and prohibits me from growing my business. The time, money, penalties and interest that Empay Systems, LLC have cost me are unacceptable in what should have been a mutually beneficial business agreement. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. Desired SettlementI am seeking a refund for the cost of the system that has been paid thus far and to terminate the contract from any further payments being made. This company has cost me so much more than just the price of the product and a refund is a fair request. I have paid $9750.00 to date. Business Response This letter is in response to your letter and complaint filed with the Revdex.com as referenced above. First, we are certainly sorry that you have made the decision to terminate the Agreement and somewhat surprised given all the positive feedback we received during the time you were evaluating the Polaris platform. We respectfully disagree with the comments and related conclusions included in the Revdex.com Complaint and have provided detailed replies to each below. First, it is important to detail the foundation and facts surrounding your review, evaluation, selection and corresponding training at the outset.Review and Evaluation: You initially contacted us on 11/05/2013. We provided you with an online demo of the platform on 11/12/2013. Next, on 11/13/2013 we provided you with complete "hands-on" online access to one of our demo platforms so you would be able to do a complete and thorough evaluation on your schedule and at your leisure and we kept this access open for as long as you needed. On 11/25/2013 you requested via email some licensee references that you could speak to. The same day, 11/25/2013 you were forwarded an email containing a licensee reference sheet with two references for you to contact.Training: Pursuant to Section 8 "Training" of the Agreement we provide for 5 days (or 40 hours) of training on the platform. Our records indicate that your training sessions began on 12/09/2013 and ended 12/26/2013 and only totaled 11.0 hours. When trying to schedule additional time for more thorough training you declined, stating that you did not need to spend the time on training.In response to your specific comments relative to your decision to terminate the agreement:1. "After 9 months of working with your payroll platform it has become apparent to me that although you state the following in Section A Part 5 of the contract, "The Service: Polaris provides a hosted platform, including the Application, operating system, database, and utility software that together form a fully functional payroll processing system." You, in fact, do not have a fully functioning system. Reply: For the nine months you refer to, you were able to on-board 30 Employer Clients, processed payrolls for the 30 clients, with total wages of approximately $10,550,000 including nearly 5,300 paychecks, 2,130 DDA and 300 agency checks/payments. In addition, you processed and generated approximately $9,700,000 in ACH transactions, all I would say via a fully functioning payroll platform.2. "I have reported several critical bugs and have not had them all addressed. I requested a pay code to be written in January and to date that has not been completed. I reported that when processing from two bank accounts, the account changes in the cash management file without notice after processing has been completed. This caused issues with my clients since tax monies were being debited from incorrect account numbers. This problem was never resolved after originally being reported in January."Reply: During your nine months of processing payrolls we opened a number of tickets on your behalf. There were no bugs classified as critical. Furthermore, all tickets classified as bugs were resolved within 24 hours. Regarding "a requested pay code to be written in January", I am not sure what this even means and am unable to reply specifically to it. Regarding "account changes in cash management file without notice after processing has been completed", due to having to process with two bank accounts for one employer with multiple locations and related bank accounts - the application does not support location bank accounts for Employer Clients and that was made clear during the evaluation time period and training. If you set-up a "work-around" as you detailed in your 1/13/2014 email to us and the steps in processing were not followed, then it is certainly possible that the funds could be debited and/or credited from the wrong account simply because the "user" did not follow the process of changing the bank accounts when switching from one Client to another. 3. "More recently, I discovered that taxes weren't being calculated on an employee's check that had always had taxes calculated previously. I also discovered and brought to your attention that two employees had taxes calculated incorrectly based on their earnings, but the correct amount of tax was deducted from the gross pay. Resulting in underpaid taxes and miscalculations and ultimately an underpaid employee based on the deductions. This was brought to your attention on September 9, 2014 and I still don't have a resolution from Polaris. These types of errors are costly and I can no longer afford to take this type of risk for my company or my clients. Reply: We did in fact receive this and opened a ticket for this bug on 9/09/2014 and provided the corrective action the same day. After receiving additional information on 9/16/2014 we were able to isolate and correct the issue that triggered this incident. 4. "I have emailed you and [redacted] on multiple occasions to report issues that I am having in processing an accurate payroll due to systems glitches or bugs and have not received responses. This is unacceptable."Reply: the assertion that you have not received timely response from our support staff is absolutely not true! You had a dedicated person assigned to your account from the very first day of the relationship. According to our time tracking records, your phone calls and/or emails were always promptly handled and responded to, and in most cases immediately.In conclusion, we have demonstrated our commitment to meeting our obligations under the Agreement and our actions are supported by the facts relative to all allegations. You were provided with full transparency and hands-on methods for complete evaluation of the platform. You failed to complete the training on the platform at your choosing and this could have certainly contributed to some of your comments and issues. To be fair, additional training will not resolve the issue of a software bug. These are our responsibility and we resolved each one promptly. Although we disagree with your allegations for termination, we accept your decision to terminate the Agreement and we reserve the right to pursue collection of any unpaid balance due Polaris.