Likelihood to Recommend Frontline is well suited for an organization such as a school district where teachers sometimes need to put in for a substitute at the last minute or especially early in the morning. The system also helps with substitutes in picking up the jobs when a teacher puts in an absence.
Read full review Patriot PAY is well-suited to a company that has a 10-day window between the end of the pay period and the payday. The company size makes very little difference and it is easy to use for any company. It is also very progressive in development and improvement. If a company has a small window for turn-around, but fairly consistent payroll amounts (such as a lot of salary workers), Patriot PAY might also be a good fit for them. Companies with tight turn-around times or payrolls that vary significantly in direct deposit amounts might have difficulty using Patriot PAY.
Read full review Pros Easily submission process. Select the day you need to schedule on the listed calendar, mark the type of request, and submit. Works on different digital devices including phones, tablets, and computers. Easily track your balances by looking at your account history. Delete requests you have already submitted. Read full review It is simple, intuitive and straightforward in its design. Someone with little experience with roles in human resources roles, bookkeeping or payroll can quickly learn how to set-up the software and run payroll regularly by reading through the support portion of the site, or by contacting the helpful staff at Patriot. Patriot staff have walked me through issues or guided me on the phone as I learned how to use a function of the software. Patriot provides comprehensive quarterly tax filing records, including 941s, state unemployment compensation tax payments, state employer's tax and local employer's tax filings. You can also generate payroll or tax deposit reports over a specific time period or per employee. The support and FAQ pages available on Patriot are very practical and written in an easy to understand manner. Using the information provided there, I was able to properly set up new employees according to local and state filing requirements. Read full review Cons Teachers cannot cancel their own absence. We have to ask the office staff to do so. This is irritating when an absence must be canceled (Due to a canceled professional development, for example). Sometimes absences go unfilled. It would be great if AESOP could have a roster of qualified substitutes to cover absences. You cannot assign your absence to a particular substitute if you know he or she is available and a good fit for your absence. Read full review Connecting with outside software - we have an issue of Patriot not recognizing donors when connected to other websites when all the information is the same minus a middle initial Giving an error page when something small is off. Instead of giving an easy to fix error notification, Patriot brings the user to an error page and they have to reenter everything. Fixing dates easily. If a date is entered incorrectly, 8/13/21 instead of 2021, an error pop up appears but the user has to click enter/okay many times or refresh the page in order to fix this issue. Enter vs Tab key - Patriot loves the tab key but if the user clicks enter instead, many times it brings them to the home page. Read full review Likelihood to Renew Long time customer with Frontline Absence Management. Product support has been excellent, integrations easy to work with, & suite of products mesh together well.
Read full review It works well because it is cheap for us.
Read full review Usability While we have had minor issues logging in as our organization has its own login page, the site and its application are very easy to use. So long as members of a group log in through the appropriate page, navigating and using this site is quite easy. With the transition from Aesop to Frontline, the page also seems to have worked through any glitches found with the previous page and its app.
Read full review I think it is great once things are setup as for general user looking to look for simple things like a copy of a paystub or a current pay rate for an employee. However, to find specialized things like a state withholding number or payroll integration settings those do require a bit more digging to find or possibly a call to customer service for help.
Read full review Reliability and Availability There have been several times the system was unavailable. When there has been an issue, Frontline HAS NOT notified us....which has been disappointing.
Read full review Performance No issues reported by end users of slow or not loading pages.
Read full review Support Rating Internal support is provided by EDU Staff based out of Grand Rapids. Whenever I have had an issue they are very responsive to my needs. For instance, there may be conflicts in the amount of money that was listed for the contract. There may be questions about the length of an assignment such as 1/2 day, full day, or early dismissal. The school will sometimes enter the wrong information. Very good IT support, but sometimes you are on hold for 5 to 10 minutes because they do not have enough workers in their Call Center
Read full review Generally speaking it is pretty good that when I need to call somebody up for a payroll question I can generally within five minutes get somebody on the phone and they can help me resolve the problem or specify where specifically I need to go or contact to find my answers. However, that being said, for my specific situation as a partner my assigned contact has not always been very responsive.
Read full review In-Person Training Our Implementer/Trainer was a product line expert. He (Connor) walked us through every step with confidence and explained everything in detail. Frontline provided written documentation, cut-n-paste emails to staff, and a test environment for us to play in. We were able to test unique scenarios without actually sending emails, notifications, alerts to staff. This was very useful.
Read full review Implementation Rating Our Frontline implementer was an expert in the field & knew the product in & out. We had very little issues going live.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Frontline seems to be the industry standard for this software in the education industry. I am not familiar with any competitors or what was evaluated prior to implementing Frontline. For it to be the industry standard, I would assume that its cost is fair in relation to competitors and that the onboarding process is simple.
Read full review I briefly used Intuit Online Payroll, and it was expensive, had no support, and was very frustrating to use. I also used 3 local tax companies for payroll - they were extremely expensive and messed up all of the time. Their employee turnover was very annoying (and it seemed to happen every other month) and each employee did things differently. When I let one of my employees go, the last company paid them after termination (2 weeks of salary), and had to get into a legal battle because the employee would not give the money back.
Read full review Scalability Our district has approximately 300 substitutes & 1,800 employees. Size has never been an issue with Absence Management. There are other districts much larger using Absence Management with no problems
Read full review Return on Investment It's given staff direct access to inputting their absences and secure coverage quicker, whereas before they had to make a call to a person. That person had to secure coverage for the entire district at different levels. Sometimes that person was absent or unable to provide coverage. Read full review It boosts my time available for client-facing activities by not having to spend as much time processing payroll. It helps me deliver accurate reports to my CPA at tax time regarding employee wages and employer taxes. Through the online portal, I can easily track year-to-date taxes my company has paid. Read full review ScreenShots Patriot Software Screenshots