Patriot Payroll vs. Sage People

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.

Incentivized

Sage People is well suited to small-medium sized organizations that would like a cloud-based HR solution with no need for servers or software to install. I really like the fact that it is based on Salesforce.com so you know that it will be extremely reliable and well supported. It is very flexible and customizable and can work in complex HR arrangements. For example, we have employees in nearly 60 countries and multiple HR jurisdictions and we are able to make it work for us. However, if you are moving from a traditional or customized HR system there may be a steep learning curve and you should be prepared to spend a lot of time setting up and customizing to your needs, in addition to training.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Sage is highly flexible and configurable, allowing us to manage the variety of geographies and functional units in one platform.
• Sage is highly customer focused, with great CSM support.
• Sage People will be able to integrate with other Sage pillars such as Accounting and Payroll.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Training manuals are not much useful. You always need a helping hand to move forward.
• When you have to look up employees, we have to provide their job title which I feel is not an efficient way.

Incentivized

It works well because it is cheap for us.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We moved to Sage People from a 20+-year-old internally developed HR software. We also evaluated other HR software such as Kronos, SAP, and BambooHR. Ultimately, we chose Sage because of the extensive support they provided to us and the ability to customize to fit our organization's needs. We loved the fact that they were completely cloud-based and built on a reputable platform (Salesforce).

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Has significantly improved our team resources by having one system and set of processes, rather than managing duplicate entry in multiple systems
• Has allowed us to finally have a process for ensuring we can approve, manage, track and report employee PTO liability in one system
• Improved HR Data reporting and Data Analytics for both HR and for managers, so that we can make better people and business decisions
• Better manager and employee experiences by eliminating paper based request forms and automating workflows

Incentivized