173 complaints extracted from 173 reviews of ADP TotalSource between 2018-10 and 2026-02, average rating 4.2/5, grouped into the problems users report most. Each problem links to the market it belongs to and to startup ideas built on it.
The problems ADP TotalSource users report
Opaque ADP billing small businesses can't decode — 31 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 70 complaints across 3 products · market pageSmall businesses paying $45,000/year for fewer than 50 employees can't figure out what they're actually being charged for — complaints describe 'hidden and unexplained costs,' services bundled together so you can't see line-item pricing, and annual increases sneaking in even on multi-year contracts. The core frustration isn't just cost — it's that users can't tell whether they're overpaying or what they'd have to give up to pay less.
HR support that never resolves anything fast — 30 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 433 complaints across 3 products · market pageUsers consistently can't reach their dedicated rep, get routed to an undertrained general pool, and watch urgent issues sit unanswered for days or weeks. Complaints like 'they regularly did not respond for over a week' and 'representatives managing too many clients' aren't isolated incidents — they describe a structural support model that prioritizes coverage over resolution. Every time a rep turns over or someone calls the 800 number, the HR team has to re-explain their setup from scratch, burning hours on problems that should take minutes.
HR reporting too hard to use without training — 13 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 204 complaints across 4 products · market pageHR professionals across multiple major payroll and HR systems consistently can't find the reports they need, can't build custom ones without hours of trial and error, and frequently end up exporting to Excel to get what the system should have given them. Complaints include 'custom report building is complicated and requires countless hours,' 'reports don't speak to each other when pulling from different modules,' and 'reporting is clunky' — problems that persist across ADP's own product lineup, meaning this isn't one vendor's bug but a structural failure of how HR reporting is designed.
ADP support black hole for HR teams — 6 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 49 complaints across 3 products · market pageHR practitioners using ADP's managed services products spend hours on hold, bounce between siloed departments that don't talk to each other, and get different answers from different reps on the same question. They're locked out of making configuration changes themselves — things like payroll setup or role assignments — and must submit written change forms or wait for an ADP rep who may not understand their account. The recurring complaint isn't one bad experience; it's a structural dependency on a support org that's understaffed, siloed by module, and indifferent to urgency.
Payroll processing is opaque and error-prone — 6 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 39 complaints across 2 products · market pageUsers consistently struggle with payroll steps that are non-sequential, undocumented, and unforgiving — once something goes wrong, there's no clear path to fix it. Specific complaints include being unable to pull up pay data after a payroll is completed, not knowing which date to adjust back to when correcting an error, and having no way to recover from a payroll that's stuck in an error state. The system is built for specialists, but it's increasingly being operated by HR generalists or small business owners with no payroll background and no safety net when things break.
Too many clicks to find anything — 5 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 53 complaints across 2 products · market pageUsers across both ADP products consistently describe the same experience: they know what they need but can't find where it lives, end up clicking through irrelevant menus, and either give up or spend several minutes hunting. Complaints range from 'still trying to remember the 28382 steps to create a report' to 'tools are hidden and hard to navigate; too many links going to different places' to features being 'buried and requiring several links/categories to access.' The problem compounds for new users, who describe it as a guessing game, and resurfaces every time ADP reorganizes its interface — which it does frequently enough that users note 'things that were previously in the same sections are now split up.'
ADP cost opacity and poor fit for size — 4 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 21 complaints across 3 products · market pageUsers across all three ADP products repeatedly describe costs that are hard to predict, hard to justify, and structured in ways that punish smaller organizations. Specific complaints include charges for individual reports, fees for add-ons required to make the core product useful, an 'early termination' fee charged when upgrading to a more expensive product, and one company discovering ADP was missing 4 compliance trainings that cost them an additional $20k/year from an outside vendor. The underlying pattern: buyers don't know what they're actually getting until they're already locked in.
Time clock failures with no fallback — 3 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 79 complaints across 3 products · market pageEmployees across all three ADP products regularly cannot clock in or out — the mobile app glitches, the website crashes during shift changes, biometric readers freeze, and geolocation gets misconfigured org-wide. The result is missing punches that require manual correction through a manager or admin, and when the system is down entirely, teams fall back to paper. Users describe being 'unable to clock in most of the time,' sites going down 'frequently in the middle of the workday,' and apps that double-punch or silently fail to register the attempt at all.
Payroll tax issues that never get resolved — 3 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 31 complaints across 3 products · market pageUsers can't get timely help on state and local tax problems — complaints include amendment processes taking 'multiple years,' quarterly filings that require manual requests, and local tax setups (Ohio locals, NY forms) that take weeks to get a human who understands them. The underlying frustration isn't just slow support; it's that there's no visibility into where a tax issue stands, no way to self-serve simple changes, and no accountability when nothing moves.
Employee onboarding that HR can't control — 3 complaints about ADP TotalSource; 15 complaints across 2 products · market pageHR teams using ADP products consistently hit the same wall: onboarding is either too rigid, too broken, or handed to the wrong people. Specific complaints include new hires being locked out until their actual start date (delaying benefit elections), zero ability to make fields required during data collection, and the onboarding module letting managers control functions that should stay with HR. One user noted they weren't even trained on features they'd paid for — meaning the problem compounds from day one.
In their words
“Every time there is a question or issue, it takes longer than expected to resolve.”0/5 · 2019-01-28 · HR support that never resolves anything fast
“ADP has not filed our taxes to one of our states, and despite raising a ticket in November 2023, they have not taken action.”0.5/5 · 2023-08-01
“If you experience any problems you have to go through so many different departments/people to try and get it resolved, which takes forever.”1.5/5 · 2023-08-07 · HR support that never resolves anything fast
“The cost was outrageous for the service.”1.5/5 · 2022-05-25 · Opaque ADP billing small businesses can't decode
“The response time is not acceptable; things take forever to get resolved.”2/5 · 2020-08-13 · HR support that never resolves anything fast