I love getting my finances online. I can look up info on my WAMU Checking account, Citibank credit card (with ThankYou Rewards), my 401k, and my direct deposit paycheck stubs. ADP iPayStatements provides the paystub in PDF format, but it is an awful website. I can review my Pay Statements or my W-2 forms, which is great. I can also get email notifications when new statements are available. Since we no longer get paper copies, this is great. The only issue is the way the website is constructed. They don’t let you ‘Open in New Window’! So my multi-tasking browser is stuck dead in the water with the following message: “To protect your sensitive information, you cannot access iPayStatements from this browser window.”

Okay, so no second browser window is not the end of the world. But they are going further and screw with Adobe Acrobat’s settings. So Acrobat’s default setting is to “Display PDF in browser”. This means that the browser window is open, and the PDF is displayed within Internet Explorer or Firefox. I hate this concept because it limits the toolbar, can crash/stall your browser, and is usually inefficient since I usually download the full PDF so I can view later. This ’security’ limitation is a pain, and will cause me to hate the site. I went to look for help on the topic at ADP’s website since the PDF was not displaying initially, but the only answer I got was to either install Acrobat (meaning I didn’t have it already) or upgrade to the newer version.

Someone over at ADP needs to learn how to make a website more user-friendly. Until then, I am only going to visit to get my W-2 and 1099 forms once a year.