Running payroll and accounting can be an extremely tedious and complex process for small businesses.
However, Patriot Software makes managing critical back-office tasks surprisingly straightforward with an affordable, easy-to-use solution...
Offering robust payroll processing, invoicing, expense tracking, and more, Patriot enables you to focus on growing your business rather than wrestling with administrative burdens.
Introduction to Patriot Software
Patriot Software is an affordable and easy-to-use payroll and accounting solution designed for small businesses. With features like running payrolls, calculating taxes, generating reports, invoicing, expense tracking, and bank reconciliations, it aims to help small business owners manage critical financial operations themselves without needing extensive accounting expertise or relying heavily on external accountants.
Overview of Features
Key features of Patriot Software include:
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Payroll processing: Automatically calculate paychecks, tax withholdings, direct deposits for employees. Supports various pay cycles and pay types.
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Tax filing: Handles tax form preparation, e-file and payment of federal and state payroll taxes. Ensures tax compliance.
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Reporting: Real-time reporting for payrolls, taxes, expenses, invoices and more. Export reports to PDF or Excel.
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Accounting: Create and send invoices, track expenses and accounts payable/receivable, reconcile bank accounts.
Simplicity and Ease of Use
Patriot Software uses simple terminology and has a user-friendly dashboard, allowing business owners to manage payroll and accounting without specialized training. Support options include context-sensitive help, chat support, email and phone assistance.
The software is designed to be intuitive even for those without an accounting background. The interface uses plain English labels rather than technical jargon across features.
Scalability
Patriot Software can scale to support small businesses from just a few employees up to those with 100+ employees. Available plans are based on the number of employees and payrolls managed per month. Volume discounts also apply for larger businesses.
With robust features supporting various organizational needs, Patriot Software is suitable for most types of small businesses looking for an easy-to-use and affordable financial management solution.
Payroll Features and Capabilities
Patriot Software provides robust payroll processing suitable for most small business needs, including:
Multiple Payroll Runs
Ability to process payroll on weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly, and monthly schedules to accommodate different pay cycles. This allows businesses flexibility in setting up pay periods based on their specific operations and cash flow.
For example, a retail business may opt for biweekly payroll to align with their 2-week schedule rotations. While a SaaS startup may prefer monthly payroll given revenue fluctuations. Patriot Software can handle it all.
Payroll Tax Calculation and Filing
Automatically calculates payroll taxes and supports tax form filings for federal, state, and local jurisdictions. This ensures full compliance and eliminates the hassle of manual tax calculations.
Key highlights:
- Automatically calculates income tax, Social Security, Medicare and other applicable taxes
- Supports filings for forms W-2, 940, 941 and other tax documents
- Integrates with accounting software like QuickBooks for seamless tax reporting
Direct Deposit
Supports direct deposit of employee payroll into multiple bank accounts per employee. This brings convenience, reliability and faster access to pay.
Employees can split deposits across checking, savings or other accounts. Funds are immediately available on pay day without having to wait for a check to clear. Direct deposit reduces the chance of lost or stolen checks and eliminates trips to the bank.
Accounting and Financial Management Tools
Beyond just payroll, Patriot Software provides a range of accounting and financial management features including:
Invoicing and Billing
Patriot Software offers professional invoicing and billing capabilities to help businesses track revenue and get paid faster. Key features include:
- Customizable invoice templates to match your branding
- Recurring invoices to automate billing for regular services
- Online payment processing to get paid faster
- Accounts receivable tracking to monitor unpaid invoices
- Sales tax calculations based on location
With Patriot's invoicing, you can look professional, automate routine tasks, and accelerate your cash flow.
Expense Tracking
Properly tracking expenses is vital for tax reporting and deductions. Patriot Software makes it easy with:
- Mileage tracking for vehicle expenses
- Receipt uploading via mobile app
- Categorization of spending for reporting
- Expense report generation, review, and approval workflows
Stay organized and capture every eligible business expense with Patriot's simple but comprehensive expense management.
Bank Reconciliations
Reconciling your bank statements with accounting system transactions is crucial for identifying discrepancies and preventing fraud. Patriot Software provides:
- Direct bank data imports for quick reconciliation
- Automated matching of imported bank transactions
- Tools for adding missing transactions
- Audit trail reporting for transparency
Streamline this critical process and ensure your books match real-world banking activity with Patriot's robust reconciliation features.
Reporting and Analytics
Patriot Software provides various reporting tools to help small businesses analyze their finances, including:
Standard Reports
Common reports like profit and loss statements, balance sheets, payroll summaries, and tax summaries. These provide an overview of key financial metrics to monitor business performance.
Custom Reports
Businesses can create custom reports tailored to their specific needs. For example, pulling data on sales by product line or expenses by department. This flexibility allows deeper analysis from multiple angles.
Visual Dashboards
Interactive dashboards track KPIs in real-time with charts and graphs. View payroll costs over time, sales by region, expense breakdowns, and more. Visualizations make complex data easy to digest.
Overall, Patriot Software's reporting provides actionable insights from multiple lenses. Standard reports establish a foundation while customization and visuals allow businesses to slice data to uncover trends and opportunities. Together these tools help managers make informed decisions to improve operations and strategy.
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Supported Integrations
Patriot Software integrates with several other business systems to streamline payroll and accounting operations:
Bank Feeds
Patriot Software can automatically import bank transaction data from all major U.S. financial institutions. This eliminates the need for manual data entry and ensures payroll records stay up-to-date.
Key benefits include:
- Automatic imports from over 16,000 U.S. banks and credit unions
- Secure bank connection using bank-level 256-bit SSL encryption
- Automatic categorization of imported transactions for easier reconciliation
- Customizable transaction mapping to general ledger accounts
By integrating bank feeds, Patriot Software customers can save significant time on data entry and focus more on analyzing financials rather than collecting data.
Accounting Systems
Patriot Software seamlessly integrates with popular small business accounting platforms like QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop.
Key features include:
- One-click export of payroll journals into QuickBooks
- Automatic transfer of employee, tax, deductions, and other payroll data
- Option to map payroll accounts and items to QuickBooks lists
- Support for multiple QuickBooks company files
This simplifies accounting by eliminating duplicate data entry between the payroll and accounting systems. Customers can automatically post payroll transactions to QuickBooks without manual intervention.
Time Tracking
Patriot Software can import timesheet data from time tracking apps like TSheets. This automatically pre-populates payroll details like hours worked and job costing allocation.
Benefits include:
- Direct integration with TSheets to transfer approved timesheets
- Option to map TSheets data fields to Patriot Software payroll fields
- Eliminates duplicate time entry for payroll staff
- Enhances accuracy of hours worked and job cost reporting
By integrating time tracking software, customers can further automate payroll processing and reduce manual tasks for the payroll admin team.
Suitable Business Types and Sizes
Patriot Software is designed for small businesses in the United States across most industries, including:
Service Businesses
Consultants, agencies, law firms, healthcare providers, contractors, and other service-based businesses can benefit from Patriot Software. As a cloud-based solution, it allows remote teams to access payroll and accounting tools from anywhere. Features like time tracking, invoicing, expense reporting, and project costing make Patriot Software useful for service businesses that bill by the hour.
Retail and Ecommerce
Patriot Software works for brick-and-mortar retail stores, online stores, marketplaces, and other retail/ecommerce businesses. It includes point-of-sale integration, inventory management, and other retail-focused features. As an affordable solution, Patriot Software is ideal for small or medium-sized retail companies watching their bottom line.
Manufacturing and Wholesale
Light production companies, craft businesses, wholesalers, and similar organizations can use Patriot Software. Although manufacturing-specific features are limited, it handles basic accounting, payroll, HR, and tax needs for production and distribution businesses. The software scales from 1-100 employees.
Pricing and Plans
Patriot Software offers affordable pricing tiers to meet the needs of small businesses. With no long-term contracts or hidden fees, you only pay for what you need.
Basic
The Basic plan starts at just $10 per month plus $4 per employee. It includes payroll for 1-4 employees along with basic payroll tax forms. This lightweight option is ideal if you just need to run payroll for a very small team.
Plus
The Plus plan is $39 per month plus $4 per additional employee. It supports mid-sized businesses with 5-49 employees. You'll get everything in the Basic plan plus quarterly and year-end tax forms, contractor payments, and HR support. Upgrade to Plus if you need more robust payroll features.
Premium
For larger businesses with 50-100 employees, the Premium plan starts at $89 monthly plus $4 per staff member. It has all the features of Plus along with multi-state tax forms, custom reports, and time tracking. The Premium tier removes limits on employees and includes priority support.
Ease of Getting Started
Patriot Software is easy for small businesses to get up and running for core payroll and accounting activities with:
Fast Setup
Intuitive step-by-step setup guides you through entering your business details, making the initial configuration smooth and straightforward. Users appreciate the simplified process that allows them to quickly establish their account.
Employee Onboarding
Built-in templates for employee profiles facilitate rapidly adding new hires to the system. The streamlined employee onboarding saves managers time and effort when expanding their staff.
Live Support
Friendly and knowledgeable Patriot Software support agents are available to provide personalized assistance with getting started. Users benefit from being able to easily get answers to their questions during onboarding from the helpful live support team.
Conclusion and Summary
For most small businesses, Patriot Software strikes the right balance of affordability along with having the essential payroll, accounting, and reporting features needed to manage finances and comply with regulations.
Key Takeaways
In summary, Patriot Software's strengths for small businesses include:
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Affordable and predictable pricing: Patriot Software offers affordable pricing plans starting at $10/month, with no hidden fees or upcharges. This allows small businesses to effectively budget for the service.
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Ease of use without extensive training: The software provides an intuitive interface and helpful resources like setup wizards, making it easy for non-accounting users to learn quickly without formal training.
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Core features suitable for most basic business accounting needs: Key features like payroll, invoicing, expense tracking, and financial reporting cover essential small business finance needs for most users.
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Scalability from 1 to 100+ employees: Patriot Payroll seamlessly scales as your small business grows from just a few employees up to over 100, making it a suitable long-term solution.
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Good onboarding support: Patriot Software provides phone, email, and chat support during initial software setup and implementation for a smooth transition.
In summary, Patriot Software hits the mark for most small business owners simply needing a basic, affordable, and easy-to-use payroll and accounting platform to manage their finances and remain compliant without breaking the bank. For more advanced users, it may lack some features available in higher-end market solutions.
