The user interface can be a little daunting to the user initially, it's menu based and there are so many menu options that familiarisation will take considerably longer than either Favour or SapphireOne. During testing we found the software has exceedingly robust bounds checking on the fields, for example we tried to save an employee record with the salutation "Mr" and the gender "Female", but the save could not proceed until we had corrected one of the other of the fields.
In a nutshell, Greentree is a very powerful and full-featured HR package and is not lacking in payroll features.
The employees' pay can be split amongst any number of accounts and portions can be provided as cash or cheque. Accruals of benefits can be transferred when moving from a sister company, for example.
However, this is not automatic and must be carried out through journal entries. If an employee's award or the hours they work has changed, the changes are automatically reflected in leave accrual and payroll, and while the system allows awards to be backdated, currently the arrears must be arranged through manual journal entries.
The system alerts the HR manager if an attempt is made to include leave in a pay run that exceeds the employee's leave balance, even if the system is configured to allow negative leave balances. However, there is no automated alerting of excessive annual leave accruals, although the system is able to automatically expire sick leave, for example, if it is not accrued over year boundaries.
One-off group certificates are not a problem and should an employee require a group certificate from several years ago, it is a simple matter to provide a reprint. The system does not currently provide employee self service but Greentree intends to release a Web interface for self service later this year.
The HRM implementation is very good and includes tracking for grievances, disciplinary actions, committees, and appraisals with quite flexible data fields that should not be too difficult to dovetail into most companies' procedures. And, in most cases where you might want to record items that the database does not have specific fields for, it's easy to create a new field under the Custom tab. Attachments are broadly catered for. For instance, in the Certification section under CV details, in addition to the type, dates, and general details fields for inputting data, you can also attach a copy of the certification documents.
Favour arguably has more "ready made" fields for recording a myriad of staff bio details such as blood type, allergies-both useful to know in emergencies-but these can of course be catered to by creating custom fields in Greentree.
After exploring Favour's OH&S functionality, Greentree's OH&S seems quite lean in comparison.
Greentree really only has incident tracking, whereas Favour has dedicated functions for tracking hazards, OH&S equipment, and OH&S committees, and is definitely the superior of the two packages in this regard. And we must say just tracking the incidents is not sufficient for OH&S; you really need to get a handle on hazards and equipment to hopefully reduce the number of incidents that occur, so this is an area where Greentree can definitely improve.
Where Greentree excels is in the maintenance of the system. Its wealth of system maintenance functions can be daunting and will require a good deal of familiarisation, but it provides power HR users with the means to tweak and modify to their hearts' content without needing to approach the vendor. We definitely found Greentree the most powerful in this regard.
Various security categories can be setup in the system, for example the demo database supplied had categories for job cost, sales person, sales manager, Greentree user, and contact and relationships. The system includes a large number of preset reports but they are text only; if graphical reports are needed they must be generated through an ODBC link to Microsoft Excel.
Should you require a report that Greentree doesn't include, all is not lost as there is a Report Writer to create and generate custom reports that can be based on any fields in the database. However, this is not as simple as some of the other products as quite a deep understanding of the database structure is required.
| Product | Greentree Front Office Edition V2.1 |
| Price | AU$4400 for up to 100 users, AU$1100 for every 100 additional users; HR modules AU$2200 each |
| Vendor | Greentree |
| Phone | 03 8415 8315 |
| Web | www.greentree.biz |
| Interoperability |
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| Integrates directly with Greetree Accounting and can exchange data with accounts systems via GL Posting files. | |
| Futureproofing |  |
| The product supports up to several thousand employees but typical installations are around 500. | |
| ROI |  ½ |
| Extensive features and expansion modules, reasonably priced. | |
| Service |  |
| Ninety-day warranty, support options from AU$880; upgrades under a maintenance agreement at 15 percent of purchase price per year. | |
| Rating |  |
