Patriot Software headquartered in Canton, Ohio offers Patriot PAY, their benefits administration and payroll software.
$17
per month
QuickBooks Online Advanced
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
QuickBooks Online Advanced is a SaaS-based accounting software designed to scale with growing businesses. It includes the functionalities of QuickBooks Online, as well as more robust business analytics, customization, and resource management.
N/A
Pricing
Patriot Software
QuickBooks Online Advanced
Editions & Modules
Basic Payroll
$17/mo + $4 per employee/contractor
Accounting Basic
$20/mo (unlimited use)
Accounting Premium
$30/mo (unlimited use)
Full Service Payroll
$37/mo + $4 per employee/contractor
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Patriot Software
QuickBooks Online Advanced
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
Patriot Software has two payroll options to choose from: Basic Payroll, and Full Service payroll software. Both start with a simple three-step payroll process. With the Full Service Payroll, Patriot will collect, deposit, and file federal, state, and local payroll taxes on the customer's behalf; end-of-the-year payroll tax filing is included at no extra charge.
Print W2s on 8 x 1/2 x 11 plain white office paper to hand to employees, or post to the free employee portal. Also, Patriot Software offers free direct deposit.
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.
I gave this rating more from the standpoint that I enjoy using other bookkeeping platforms more than I enjoy QuickBooks Online Advanced. While QuickBooks Online Advanced is a solid platform that I have no issue working in, there are some areas that could be improved. The biggest of these areas is the overall design of the platform. I feel that when you first log in and are brought to the home screen, everything just looks cluttered.
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.
It allows us to link to bank accounts in order to get up-to-date, real-time information, which is so important in today's lightning speed work world.
The "canned" reports are excellent and allow for extreme customization also. This makes them very helpful to both me and my clients.
The user interface for QuickBooks Online Advanced is easy to navigate and is intuitive for novices. The screens are well laid out and have cohesiveness on each screen to match tasks with others that match up well.
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.
QuickBooks Online Advanced is not like any other accounting software. With how great the software is now, I would definitely renew QuickBooks Online Advanced
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.
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.
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.
I have not evaluated any yet. I have used QuickBooks since 2008 and I used Sage in the corporate environment before using QuickBooks. Honestly, I can't remember it because it was early 2000's. I thought about evaluating and looking because of the issues I've had with QuickBooks, but I haven't really investigated.
Positive - time and accuracy: Improved bank feeds with rules for automating categorization (expense account) of transactions.
Negative - time and efficiency: Very slow response in data entry such as estimates, purchase orders, invoices, sales receipts, bills & bill payment, and even check writing.
Negative - time and error correction: Payroll taxes and sales taxes remain in their own silos and are very difficult to correct OR wrong to correct with regular ledger and transaction entries.
Negative - time and reporting: Customer activity cannot be tracked using deposits or JE'd transactions. Reporting and research require the use of transaction forms such as invoices, sales receipts, payments, and credit memos. As an example, the transaction register for a customer can be sorted by various parameters. A default is "All" transactions but does not include all transactions -- you have to select "All plus deposits" and you will also not see checks. This is about the same for Vendor activity, where deposits (e.g. refunds) will not show in the vendor's activity register. A vendor credit memo is required, then the refund can be pushed against that credit balance. The credit memo will appear in the vendor register, but a deposit will not.
