Patriot Payroll Reviews

Pros

The service was very easy to set up (that said, I did choose to move from my prior online payroll service, to Patriot Payroll, on the beginning of a tax year). Running a payroll takes fewer steps than Intuit QuickBooks Online Payroll, which I've previously used. The user interface is intuitive with a ready help function. Good reporting capabilities and it's easy to see what taxes were taken and when they were remitted to taxing authorities. Quarterly reporting is very easy.

Cons

Customer service at implementation was very good. However, subsequent interactions with customer service have been inconsistent in that sometimes their response has been slower or less complete than I'd like. Also, although I don't consider it a "con," Patriot Payroll does deduct from my corporate bank account all payroll taxes the day after each payroll is run, rather than waiting until they are due to be paid to taxing authorities. This means taxes due quarterly are deducted from the corporate account as many as three months in advance. I assume Patriot is making some interest income off holding these monies. This early deduction is something QuickBooks Online Payroll did not do, in my experience.

Alternatives Considered

Gusto and Paychex Flex

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

The monthly service fee for QuickBooks Online Payroll makes no sense for very small businesses such as mine.

Switched From

QuickBooks Payroll

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Price and available reviews for the service I was seeking.

Pros

Turn-key payroll, I just have to remember to push the button.

Cons

I have yet to have any issues. The name of reports are kind of vague but that is a minor issue.

Alternatives Considered

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

QuickBooks is expensive and obtuse, it is over complicated for a small business and wastes a lot of time trying to do simple things.

Switched From

QuickBooks Payroll

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

I worked from the first minute, Setup was easy and it literally takes me seconds to process the week's payroll.

Pros

It is very inexpensive and takes on clients that have very few employees. Customer service reps are EXTREMELY HELPFUL, polite, and very knowledgeable of the program abilities and shortfalls.

Cons

You can cancel ANYTIME, but then you have to send all the State/Government taxes collect to their respective agencies with the appropriate paperwork. Patriot sends all the taxes back to you to deal with. Some taxes are due annually, due the end of January, so if you want Patriot to file it, you have to keep the subscription until that date. Nickel and diming. If you want them to track sick days, accumulated vacation days etc, it is included. If you want your employees to be able to track it through the online portal, that will cost you additional per month. Check out the list of add-ons to determine what is important to you.
They offer QuickBooks import of data, but I have yet to see how anything matches anything on the bank statement. Like taxes are deducted from payroll, they show in a different month than the payroll, and the payroll imports as the gross amount which is not the amount sent to the employee by NatPay. If you use a dummy account in your accounting software (QuickBooks) to run all the payroll functions through, this will not bother you and your accountant will made the journal entry additional adjustments. I could not get my first payroll to reconcile, and it was determined that Patriot made an error and did not collect $ 3.60 in taxes somewhere. I am going with when the taxes were going to be sent to the agency, the error would have been found and corrected (depending on the tax agency, some are sent monthly, some quarterly, some annually.) The next payrolls were done correctly.
NatPay is a 3rd party vendor that facilitates the employee direct deposit. If you enter a payroll incorrectly and want to cancel, even seconds later, Patriot says it is canceled, but you have to CALL NATPAY otherwise it goes through. Be sure to not miss the pop-up warning. I was advised they are working on a better solution to make sure it is clear what to do in order to cancel a mistake payroll that was submitted.
The site is not all that easy to navigate. There are report and default options that may not be easy to locate how to set. Strongly suggest that you contact customer services and they will walk you quickly through the process.
I have worked with 4 different Payroll service companies over the last couple of years. They are not all the same, they each have strengths and weaknesses and wide range of costs. From what I can tell, they all do the payroll functions of collecting and distributing employee payments and taxes correctly. The big difference, besides costs, is what they include in the base price, and if/how they enter this information into your accounting system like QuickBooks. With any payroll service, you always have the option to enter it manually into your system from the paystubs which ensure it is entered how you want it.

Pros

It's Simplicity! Very user-friendly. Good support resources as well.

Cons

I would like to receive a notice when my tax reports have been uploaded to the site each quarter.

I would've also liked more help with the initial setup of my company.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Time and ADP Workforce Now

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

Cost, complexity of their product. We only have a handful of employees and didn't need much of what they offered.

Switched From

Proliant

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Simplicity. You cut all the bells and whistles I don't need. Cost was important for management, as well.

Pros

Patriot's customer service is HANDS DOWN the BEST customer service I have ever experienced in my life. Every single person I have ever talked to has been helpful and kind! Their software is also super user friendly!

Cons

I can't really say that I have anything that I dislike. I have run into an issue with one of my client's (based on their service industry), but even with the problem at hand, Patriot has been amazing at coming up with interim solutions while they work on a permanent fix. I dislike the issue, but really can't complain since they are rectifying it!

Alternatives Considered

Gusto, QuickBooks Online and ADP Comprehensive Services

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Honestly it was the price at first. After my demo, it really stood out to be a good company. Easy to use, supportive and they truly care about their customers.

Pros

Ease of use. They reply promptly with any questions and work to make sure I understand resolution

Cons

Some interactive details could be tweaked but I’ve seen many improvements already.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Payroll

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

They made co start errors. It was a nightmare.

Switched From

Paychex Flex

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

I started with quickbooks and had several extremely rude encounters with their employees and mistakes they made.

Pros

Customer service is fantastic, I have called and spoken to a representative and also did the online chat. Both of my experiences were great and solved my issues.

Cons

There is nothing that I would change at this current time.

Pros

ease of use and customer support

Cons

not much. terminating employee was challenging and took 3 calls to c/s

Alternatives Considered

Paychex Flex

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

frustrated about late tax filings, poor customer support, complicated system

Switched From

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

price, ease of use

Pros

They handle all submissions at the federal and state levels. No filing of anything from me!

Cons

Finding the right report to generate, based on their brief two word name, is often challenging. Is it a report? A tax filing? And how to set it up? For example, our yearly workers comp insurance audit requires squaring with quarterly submissions across two years. Generating the right report is tricky!

Pros

I enjoy that it is user friendly and easy to add a new employee.

Cons

I wish that it had GPS tracking on employees for their location when clocking in.

Pros

We use Patriot Software in a wide variety of industries (restaurant, retail, day care, and more). I love how I can set it up for a client, and show them briefly how to run their own payroll. Very easy for simply payrolls.

Cons

My biggest pet peeve is the inflexibility of making tax adjustments. For Example: a restaurant where they pay out tips each night means that a check would be for sever hours only, usually about $40 for the week. The tips justify enough taxes that they end up with a negative paycheck. In any other system I can manually adjust the taxes held to get the check to zero or close. (the server ends up owing money at the end of the year). With PS, I have to come up with other options for getting the paycheck to zero (like getting the business to cover the taxes in the meantime).

Alternatives Considered

Gusto

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

We wanted to automate the tax collection to improve cash flow for some clients.

Switched From

QuickBooks Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Price point.

Pros

I love how organized it keeps all of our data and the ability to send our hourly time clocks straight to the payroll.

Cons

I wish that you could hide inactive employees from the reports drop downs, and wish that you could create groups within the reports so that you dont have to hunt and peck for certain employees when running reports. I also wish that there was a way for the managers to view hourly time clocks without needing access to the main admin account.

Alternatives Considered

Gusto and Square Payments

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

For us we had the desk top version of QuickBooks and it was starting to crash, so I had to call their help line (which was a terrible experience every time, I always got bounced around about 4 times before ending up on the phone with someone who could actually help) . We were eventually told that we used to much data and would need to upgrade to a plan that was $600 a month ( we are a small company with only 12 employees, so to us that just felt like we were being taken advantage of). I got on line and researched alternative's and patriot was the one that we found most appealing- and previously we were paying more for QuickBooks and had to file our own taxes (which resulted in quite a bit of stress and uncertainty). Overall patriot seemed like a much more reasonable, and better option for our company than QuickBooks

Switched From

QuickBooks Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

When doing research we found the patriot interface more appealing, and the way that it layed out its features made it stand out as the best solution.

Pros

You can't beat the price point for the technology. it's a solid platform for a small business. They are constantly developing new features that enhance the experience. Their customer service is the best in the business, by far! I don't know how they do it but they hire the nicest most helpful people out there.

Cons

Their reports are somewhat limited and the ability to capture history for changes is non-existent.

Alternatives Considered

Evolution Human Capital Management, Ascentis and RUN Powered by ADP

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

I wanted more reporting capability and the ability to track history of changes (salary, titles etc...)

Switched From

Evolution Human Capital Management

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Patriot's price point is great and their customer service is amazing!

Pros

Their support! After leaving Intuit Payroll for Patriot, their "knowledgable" and available help was a refreshing change!

Cons

There is not an "auto" payroll for my clients that have the same payroll each time. With that added feature, Patriot Payroll would just about be perfect in my opinion.

Pros

The product is very easy to use, especially without having too much experience with payroll processing. Adding all our historical records for the year was very easy, it easily creates journal entries that can be imported directly into Quickbooks!

Cons

There really isn't any con. The ONLY thing that is frustrating at times - it has nothing to do with the service itself, however, when I process payroll before getting approval from my boss (oops!) i've had to void the full payroll only to process it a day or two later (cash flow) - the taxes are deducted from our account 2x, then refunded after 1-2 days. This is our fault when this happens, but if I had to list a con I guess that would be it :)

Alternatives Considered

Gusto, Paychex Flex and Square Payroll

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

I was looking for a "cleaner" interface, a more user-friendly program that allowed for my beginner skill level - I enjoy it even more as I become more experienced as well!

Switched From

QuickBooks Payroll

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

I did the trial for a couple others just to play around with their program, interface, features, etc. (without having imported any info yet) - Patriot was the one I felt the most comfortable with. I continued my trial with Patriot and imported all our data over - we purchased the subscription before our trial was even over.

Pros

Quick and Easy to learn and set up.
For someone who does not like to give up control this software lets me keep control of payroll with no worries

Cons

Setting up Vacation time has been a little tricky
Sometimes i vary this policy a bit and hard to keep the service and actual time off correct.

Alternatives Considered

Sage Accounting, Gusto, QuickBooks Online and monday.com

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

QuickBooks Customer service stunk, was switching to QB online and decided to try something else, looked around and found Patriot to be the best and in my budget. Tried a couple other at the same time and Patriot was the easiest to pick up and did all i needed it to do.

Switched From

QuickBooks Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

It offered what i wanted, was affordable other products wanted more control of my books besides payroll

Pros

Patriot Software Payroll is very easy to use! It is very simple to make any adjustments to the employee files and also to print off any necessary reports. I can always find what I am looking for!

Cons

The only feature that I find frustrating, is when I am inputting the information for payroll and then I need to back out of the screen to update an employee file for whatever reason and all of my information that I have entered has to be deleted. It would be better if the information was able to be saved and then edited later, if needed. It is frustrating when you need to make one small change to one employee file and therefore you lose ALL of the input you put in for the other employees and have to re-enter all of the information.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

Paychex was too expensive and was not very user friendly.

Switched From

Paychex Flex

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Patriot Payroll appeared more simple and more appropriate for my business needs.

Pros

The best things about Patriot are (1) the customer service - always pleasant and get our answers easily, (2) the price - it really can't be beat for full service payroll, and (3) ease of use - their web portal is very easy to use and navigate.

Cons

I do wish there was an actual app for mobile phones to more easily run payroll that way. Going through a browser on a phone can sometimes be clunky. I would like to see more options for customizable payroll reports.

Alternatives Considered

Gusto and RUN Powered by ADP

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

Better price, better functionality.

Switched From

OnPay

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Better pricing, didn't have a bunch of features we don't need.

Pros

Having tried filing payrolls documents myself, I found it to be a nightmare of paperwork, made that much more difficult by the State of Maryland, who seems to thrive on making things complicated. Enter Patriot Payroll to the rescue! They make payroll easy and even stay on top of the ever changing requirements doled out by the State. A huge timesaver!

Cons

As a sole proprietorship, I don't have a lot of super complicated payroll tasks, so I likely don't take advantage of the many features. I can't think of anything that I'm lacking as it takes care of 401k, taxes, and all of the straightforward payroll items I need.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Payroll and Wave

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

Wave wouldn't file in my state, making Patriot the clear winner.

Switched From

Wave

Pros

The software covers most of the frequently payroll needs.
The price is according for what you get.
Customer service is quick response, helpful and kind.
Easy to navigate between companies.
Easy to set up, the steps guide you very well to avoid any error.
Contains value information of how to get tax account from other states.
The blog contains value HR information.

Cons

The 4 days direct deposit.
It does not notify that the date to run is coming up.
Prefund next day payment.

Alternatives Considered

OnPay, Gusto and RUN Powered by ADP

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

It more expensive for the basic runs I do every week.

Switched From

QuickBooks Payroll

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Price, recommendations and is perfecto for the size of my cleints.

Pros

I love how easy it was to switch my payroll from an annually purchased in-house software package, to the Patriot system. I love that I no longer have to open a file, save a backup, and process each employee individually, print tax reports monthly, quarterly, and annually. I wasted so much time in the past. Besides being easier, this payroll system is actually less expensive in the long haul for hours of work saved.

Cons

Having to modify my in-house record keeping on Quicken software. I'd been set up for my manual payroll previously, with automated entry system in quicken. I've had to modify that process over time to be sure and track my tax payments. Not a huge deal, more of a process of transitioning from one system to another. Still a WHOLE LOT EASIER to manage than all the work I did before.

Pros

Very easy and user friendly. Love not having to process all Q and YE reports and W-2s. The W-2s are ready right away which our clients love!

Cons

That it does not integrate with QB so we manually need to do JE. The time tracking is cumbersome with accruals for time off.

Alternatives Considered

SurePayroll

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

Ease of filing Q and YE and W-2s. Has employee portals and employer portals for access.

Switched From

QuickBooks Desktop

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Cost

Pros

Patriot is an easy to use, basic payroll program that allows the user to customize many aspects of their payroll processing. The customer service and support at Patriot are top notch!

Cons

I would appreciate more comprehensive reporting and the ability to somewhat customize report layouts to present the relevant information for the end user.

Alternatives Considered

Paycom, Gusto and RUN Powered by ADP

Reasons for Choosing Patriot Payroll

Xero phased out US payroll.

Switched From

Xero

Reasons for Switching to Patriot Payroll

Patriot offered the lowest cost solution for our needs with all of the features. I called and spoke with a representative from each company prior to implementing set-up and was impressed with the representative from Patriot compared with the other companies.

Pros

The customer support is very effective and made Implementation process very smooth. The process for logging employee hours and applying deductions are very easy to understand and straightforward. This product has a very user-friendly UI that is clean and very intuitive, this makes reporting very flexible. This is a cost effective solution for small companies as long as you do not need extensive job costing integration into an accounting system.

Cons

The direct deposit functionality is very restrictive at times and they require that the payroll is processed by Monday for it to be distributed to the employee's account on Friday. Patriot Payroll does use ADP as a third party to do the direct deposits. This doesn't really work well with our paperless environment. After you have entered hours you can not go back and correct any mistakes you may have made on a payroll deduction. This is frustrating at times. You have to delete the entire payroll, edit the deduction and then re-enter the payroll. This makes the software feel very clunky, an alternative would be to approve the payroll void the incorrect check and then re-run another payroll.

Pros

When I joined Patriot as an affinity partner, the software discounts were too good to ignore, especially from a company who offered equal functionality as other top providers in the market. My favorite feature about Patriot Software is the 100% automated payroll tax filing and payments. Other software companies that I have used claimed full automation, but there would inevitably end up being at least one or two tasks that had to be completed manually, which was frustrating. Patriot lived up to and continues to satisfy its promise.

Cons

My least favorite thing about Patriot software is that credit card accounts have to be set up as negative asset accounts versus liabilities, as Patriot (at least at the time of my first company's onboarding) did not accommodate positive liabilities.