What is the isolved HCM platform?

isolved is a human capital management (HCM) platform that combines payroll, HR, time and attendance, benefits administration, onboarding, and applicant tracking in a single system. Paper Trails runs client payroll on isolved, and employees of our clients access their own information through the People Cloud self-service portal.

Looking to log in rather than read about the platform? Our isolved login help page has the links and password reset steps.

Key Takeaways from this Article

• isolved is an HCM platform, meaning it handles payroll and the HR functions around it in one system rather than several disconnected ones.
• Employers use it to run payroll, track time, administer benefits, onboard new hires, and manage applicants.
• Employees use the self-service portal to view pay stubs and W-2s, update direct deposit, clock in, request time off, and enroll in benefits.
• isolved is the software. Paper Trails is the service provider that configures it, runs your payroll on it, and answers the phone when something goes wrong.
• The main argument for an HCM platform over separate tools is that the data only gets entered once, which is where most payroll errors originate.

What is isolved?

isolved is a human capital management platform that brings payroll, human resources, time and attendance, benefits, and hiring together in one place. Rather than running payroll in one system and tracking hours in another, an employer manages all of it from a single record for each employee.

Worth separating two things that often get conflated: isolved is the software, built and maintained by isolved. Paper Trails is a service provider that runs payroll on it. You can think of isolved as the platform and Paper Trails as the team configuring it for your business, processing your payroll, filing your taxes, and answering questions about it.

What is HCM Software?

Human capital management software is a category of business system that handles the full employee lifecycle in one platform, from recruiting and onboarding through payroll, time tracking, benefits, and performance. It is distinguished from standalone payroll software by scope: payroll software pays people, while an HCM platform manages the employment relationship that payroll sits inside.

The practical difference shows up in data entry. When your time clock, your payroll, and your benefits enrollment are separate systems, someone rekeys the same information into each one, and every rekeying is a chance to introduce an error. In an HCM platform the hours flow into payroll and the benefit election flows into deductions without anyone retyping them.

What Can Employers Do in isolved?

Employers, HR directors, and office managers use isolved as the central place for workforce administration:

• Process payroll and file federal, state, and local taxes
• Track employee time and attendance
• Administer benefits and open enrollment
• Onboard new employees, including new hire paperwork
• Build and publish employee schedules
• Post jobs and track applicants through hiring
• Pull reporting on labor cost, turnover, and overtime

The value is less in any one of those functions than in the fact that they share a record. A new hire onboarded in isolved already exists in payroll, in the time clock, and in benefits enrollment without being set up three times.

What Can Employees Do in isolved?

Employees at businesses on the platform get their own login to the self-service portal, where they can:

• View and download pay stubs and W-2s
• Update their address, tax withholding, and direct deposit accounts
• Clock in and out
• Check their schedule
• Request time off and see their balances
• Enroll in benefits and make changes during open enrollment

Every one of those is a request that would otherwise come to whoever runs payroll at your business. Self-service is often framed as an employee benefit, and it is, but the larger effect is usually on the administrator's inbox.

Why Use an HCM Platform Instead of Separate Systems?

Most small businesses arrive at an HCM platform after outgrowing a patchwork: a payroll service, a separate time clock, a spreadsheet for PTO, and a filing cabinet for onboarding paperwork. Each piece works. The problem is the seams between them.

Consolidating has four practical effects. Data is entered once instead of several times, which removes the most common source of payroll errors. Employees answer their own routine questions instead of asking you. Compliance-sensitive records such as time cards, tax elections, and benefit enrollments live in one auditable place. And reporting becomes possible, because labor cost, overtime, and turnover can finally be looked at together rather than reconstructed from three exports.

How Can Paper Trails Help?

A platform is only as good as its setup. isolved can run a restaurant with tipped employees across three locations or a two-person S-corp, but those look nothing alike once configured, and getting that wrong is what makes people say the software is complicated.

At Paper Trails, we configure and run payroll and tax on isolved for Maine and New England businesses, which means you get the platform plus a team in Kennebunk who knows how your business is built. Our pricing is published on our pricing page, no quote request needed.

Updated: September 2026

Written by: Jon Portanova