Almost every HR software demo starts the same way: a deck with polished screenshots and a feature list read out loud. The problem is that a slide says nothing about how many clicks it takes to onboard someone, or what happens when a manager approves a leave request by mistake.
If you're comparing systems, change the question you ask the sales rep. Instead of "what features does it have?", ask "show me how this actually works, live, with test data." That's exactly where a well-built system and one that only looks good in a marketing video start to diverge, not in the brochure's feature list.
Workflow 1: onboarding a new hire
Ask to see the whole process, from creating the employee record to that person having access to what they need. Do you have to re-enter the same data across different screens? Can you bulk-upload several new hires from a template, or does everyone have to be created one by one? Is someone assigned to guide the new person through their first weeks inside the system, or does that live in a separate document nobody updates?
Workflow 2: approving time off
Ask what happens when someone requests vacation, and separately, what happens when someone reports sick leave. These shouldn't be treated the same way: something that's reported — like a medical leave — shouldn't need approval at all, because it isn't a request, it's a fact. Something that requires a decision — like a vacation request — should sit pending until a manager approves or rejects it, with the person's remaining balance visible at the moment of deciding. In Spain, for example, sick leave is communicated to the employer, not requested — a system that forces every absence type through the same approval step is modeling the wrong reality.
Workflow 3: closing a payroll month
This is the workflow demos skip most often, and the one that causes the most pain in production. Ask: where does the overtime rate come from — is it typed in by hand, or calculated automatically from annual gross salary? What happens if someone goes over the legal annual overtime cap — does the system flag it before approval, or just wave it through? Can a payroll record still be edited after the month is closed, or is it locked for good?
There's one more check worth adding to the list: ask for the demo to cover an edge case, not the picture-perfect example the sales rep has rehearsed. Ask them to correct a clock-in that's already saved, reject a leave request and show what the employee sees afterward, or try editing a payroll record from a month that's already closed. Edge cases are what actually separate a mature system from one that only works well on the happy path.
Every one of these questions has a correct answer and a slide-friendly answer that falls apart in production. Watching the full flow, live, with real data, is the only way to tell them apart before you sign — not six months in, once you already depend on the system for everything.