Likelihood to Recommend 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 We don't use the clock in and clock out feature so I can't speak to that. It works best for our exempt employees and is a little harder for our non-exempt employees. We allow employees to enter their start and stop times but some of our non-exempt employees have trouble logging their meals properly. If they did it incorrectly, they can't always fix it and it has to be fixed by an admin (often by deleting all the time entered for that day).
Read full review Pros 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 Reporting on employee time and attendance data. Stratustime offers biometric clock in and clock out options. Employees have the ability to view and confirm their hours before payroll is completed. Read full review Cons 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 While you can future date many changes in an employee profile, you can't change all of them. A big one that I wish you could future date is manager changes. There is not a way to have the project codes/cost centers automatically accessible for employees. New employees have to go in and activate them. It's a small thing but people just don't pay much attention. They could really improve their training materials. Some short videos to share with employees on entering time would be really helpful. They don't have a mobile app. They have a mobile website but it isn't great and our employees really want an app. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It works well because it is cheap for us.
Read full review Usability 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 Support Rating 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 Alternatives Considered 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 Stratustime's GUI is better, but Kronos seemed more stable
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Overall, it has really helped us streamline our timekeeping process by allowing managers and employees to approve their time electronically from anywhere with an internet connection. The ability to reconcile time sheets in a timely manner as also allowed us to process payroll a few days earlier than we were able to with our previous system. Read full review ScreenShots Patriot Software Screenshots