Patriot Payroll Pricing, Features, Reviews & Comparison of Alternatives

Pros
I was paying over $300/mo for a full service payroll for myself + 3 employees to a CPA. I now pay under $40/month for full service payroll with Patriot, and their software is a joy to use. Running a quick payroll, and handling bonuses, benefits, and deductions is so straight forward. The setup and support team is easy to access, quick to answer, and in the US!

Cons
Just because I like to have all of the information, as a feature suggestion, it would be nice to have a tax portal to see my balances and standing all of the state/federal tax accounts.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It is super easy to use from setting it up. Once set up it is quick complete and a truly perfect solution for a smaller business.

Cons
Not really a con, but sometimes I have to look around to find what I need, but it's all there and easy to use even for a non accountant.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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.

Rating breakdown

Pros
Patriot Payroll has many great benefits including direct deposit, not only for employees but also for contract workers. The Cost of the software is not even a comparison to the rest of the companies out there. Patriot Payroll is extremely affordable, no hidden cost, excellent customer service, and will even track your 1099 workers pay for the IRS and so much more... I would recommend Patriot to every business owner I know

Cons
The only con to this software is not being able to split direct deposits for contractors. However, I was told they are working on that feature.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I love how easy it was to set up Patriot for our small business. I needed help with some things and I got prompt and excellent customer service -- even during COVID-19 madness! We are only using the payroll feature, but may explore the other accounting services soon.

Cons
We didn't set up the Quick-Books connection, so I have to manually enter the paychecks into QB each week. The instructions on how to do that with journal entry was informative and made that process easy, too.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10