Patriot Software Payroll is affordable, thorough, and well-designed. The online payroll software excels at helping small businesses create employee records, process payroll runs, and submit payroll taxes. The latest version introduces many more enhancements than in recent years, including auto-payroll, better document management, employee self-onboarding, geolocation for Time and Attendance, and new health benefits integrations. This combination of capabilities, along with Patriot Software Payroll’s tight integration with Patriot Software Accounting, makes it an excellent option for small businesses that want to keep costs down. That said, Gusto is our Editors' Choice winner, thanks to its fantastic usability and smartest set of payroll processing and HR tools.

Pricing and Subscription Plans: Affordable Plans That Scale With Your Team

The Basic version of Patriot, which requires you to file payroll taxes on your own, costs $17 per month, plus $4 per worker per month. The Full-Service tier ($37 per month, plus $5 per employee per month) handles payroll tax filings and payments. Patriot Software offers a 30-day trial for both tiers, and you can access a demo account for both desktop and mobile platforms to see how they work before committing. Patriot Software charges a modest fee for HR and Time & Attendance add-ons (each is $6 per month, plus $2 per employee per month).

Despite those additional costs, Patriot Software Payroll is the most affordable payroll service I tested. OnPay is still $49 per month, plus $6 per worker per month, but it now charges $15 per month, plus $2 per worker per month for many of its HR tools. Square Payroll is $35 per month, plus $6 per worker per month. On the high end, QuickBooks Workforce Premium costs $88 per month, plus $10 per worker per month, while Gusto Plus goes for $80 per month, plus $12 per employee per month.

As mentioned, Patriot Software offers an integrated accounting application (Patriot Software Accounting), much like QuickBooks Workforce does with QuickBooks Online, though it's not nearly as capable. If Patriot Software Accounting handles all your business needs, you should consider adding it for $20 (Basic) or $30 (Premium) per month. Patriot Software Payroll also integrates with QuickBooks Online.

Interface and Ease of Use: Clean, Intuitive, and Easy to Navigate

Patriot Software Payroll's setup wizard outlines what you must do before your first payroll run. It also provides links to helpful resources, such as how to get a state unemployment tax number. Like other payroll software companies, Patriot Software provides payroll experts to help you with setup, which you might need for complex tasks like entering payroll history. Unlike some other payroll software companies, like ADP RUN and Gusto, Patriot doesn't allow you to import historical payroll data automatically. That said, it will help you understand what you need to provide. A multi-company access feature allows you to use a single set of login credentials to manage payroll across multiple businesses.

I’ve always liked Payroll's user experience. It’s the simplest, most intuitive payroll application I've reviewed. Its design isn’t flashy, but pages are attractive, easy to understand, quick to advance, and spacious. Whether you are a novice or an experienced payroll manager, an effective user experience can make an unpleasant job just a little more tolerable.

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In addition to the extensive help you can get during setup, you can reach out to Patriot Software via chat, email, or phone for free. Excellent step-by-step guides for using the application are available, too.

Employee Records: Detailed and Customizable Profiles

Creating employee records is simple but time-intensive. These thorough profiles include pay options, personal details (which employees and contractors can add themselves), withholdings for benefits, and W-4 information. Patriot now integrates with Simply Insured for medical insurance. You can easily access all of this information from an employee's homepage, which is actually a collection of pages that each provide details about a different element of payroll and HR. Employees can access their profiles via an online portal.

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Running Payroll: Versatile Options for Complex Pay Scenarios

One of Patriot’s major new features is support for auto-payroll, which some competitors offer. You can set payroll to run by itself unless there are changes that require your attention.

I like the way Patriot Payroll handles its unlimited pay runs. The software supports all pay frequencies and lets you pay groups of employees on different schedules. You can pay employees for multiple roles (up to 25) in the same pay run, too. The site offers exceptional flexibility in a critical area: earnings types (Patriot Software calls these Hours and Money Types). Depending on the type, you might be able to change the factor the software uses to calculate earnings, create a new description for payroll and reports, indicate which ones you use frequently, and track non-worked hours and time off. You can add custom Hours and Money Types, but you can’t create free-form custom fields like you can in OnPay and other payroll apps.

All employees, both salaried and hourly, appear on the first page of a payroll run page, along with contractors (though you can pay them separately if you want). If you pay for Patriot Software’s Time & Attendance add-on, the software fills in hours automatically. This tool now offers geotagging for time punch employees. If you don't use the add-on, you must enter hours manually.

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It’s challenging to list all a company’s hours (regular, overtime, and vacation) and money types (bonus and commission) on one page. If you need to see more options for a specific pay run, a toggle reveals them. You might need to scroll horizontally to view all of them. The app lets you change pay rates on the fly (one-time or current and future). You can't view employee records in the middle of a pay run like you can with OnPay and others, but it's possible to save your entries in case you need to leave and go review those. Some alternatives don't offer the latter feature.

Once you enter all employee and contractor hours, you advance to the payroll preview page. This provides a thorough breakdown of your pay run before you approve it. Employee paycheck information is available in detail by category, such as deductions, hours, earnings, and taxes, or in summary. You can view these details directly on the page and download them as a PDF. Your company costs for the pay run appear here, too, including employer contributions and taxes. The final page of the payroll run contains a link to this information after you approve the payroll, along with your payroll tax bill, Payroll Register Report, and a check summary.

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If you need to fund a payroll quickly (like at the last minute) and you’re using direct deposit to pay workers, you can take advantage of Instant Payments, which moves your money from a bank account to Patriot Payroll instantly via a Real-Time Payment (RTP) network. This costs an extra $5 per payroll run. Gusto offers a similar service.

Reports: Improved Access and Solid Coverage

Patriot Payroll's reports have a new landing page that makes it easier to see at a glance what reports are available and what data they produce. You can run, print, and export these reports, which fall into several categories: 1099 Contractors, HR, Payroll and Payroll Tax, and Year-End. Individual reports include Check Payment Detail, Deductions & Contributions, Payroll Tax Liabilities, and Preview Current Payroll.

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The app also provides a W-2 preview report and handles W-2 and 1099 preparation and filing. The new Payroll Ledger Transactions report allows you to confirm that transactions were sent and correct missed entries, which helps you keep payroll and accounting in sync. A new page centralizes all documents that employers (and now employees) upload.

HR Tools: Robust Resources at a Low Cost

Mineral, a leading provider of compliance and HR resources, now powers Patriot Software Payroll’s HR data and tools, adding an impressive volume of useful materials. For example, you get access to constantly updated state and federal regulations that affect your business. You can build job descriptions based on models, create and modify employee handbooks, and choose from voluminous training courses.

Templates for forms, letters, and policies are available, along with Q&As, targeted checklists, videos, and more. You should pay for this very reasonably priced HR add-on if you want your company to stay compliant and have access to expert guidance. Unless your business is large enough to have a full-time HR manager, Patriot’s HR tools and data should serve you well.

Mobile Experience: A Full-Featured Experience on Any Device

Patriot Software Payroll allows you to access the site through a mobile browser. The mobile version of the site largely looks and works like the desktop version, which means it is attractive and user-friendly. The company does an especially good job of designing data-heavy pages, such as employee profiles, for smaller screens. You can do everything on your phone that you can on the desktop, including creating and downloading reports and running payroll, though these tasks are, of course, much easier on a larger screen.

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Patriot Software offers a separate employee app, however. My Patriot (available for Android and iOS) lets employees punch in and out, submit time cards for payroll, track work and time-off hours, and view current and historical pay reports. This combination of tools and data should serve workers well, but it’s not as comprehensive as QuickBooks Workforce's mobile app, which provides access to W-2s, for example.

Security: Strong Protections and Verified Standards

Patriot Software says it uses a diverse set of technologies to safeguard your data. It claims to implement policies that ensure the proper installation and maintenance of these technologies. Third-party audits verify that the company meets industry standards. (You can request these by contacting the company.) The service requires multi-factor authentication.