GoCo vs. Patriot Payroll

GoCo is a complete package that meets our needs for hiring onboarding and payroll processing. The platform is well suited for both hourly and salaried employees and allows for many options based on work schedules and PTO accrual. It is an intuitive platform and has increased our efficiency with payroll processing and benefits selection.

Incentivized

Patriot is well suited for an office with a small staff without complicated tax issues to manage. My office had 2 employees: one full-time and one part-time. There were no 1099's issued, and no special tax exemptions or other special tax situations for employees. The owner was a sole proprietor, so she was not paid as an employee through Patriot. It was easy to quickly run simple payroll tasks on a bi-weekly basis in my situation. However, I believe a more complex situation with more employees would still be suitable for this software if there was an employee dedicated to performing payroll and human resources tasks. Information must be manually entered each payroll period and submitted before 8pm to process at the scheduled pay date, so if there was not a dedicated employee for the task, it would be easy to end up paying employees a business-day late. I know that Patriot offers add-on services for human resource tasks, such as time sheets and tools to manage sick days, benefits, and record employee attendance. I did not require these extra services, but I like that Patriot offers services a la carte so that there is no need to pay for tools you do not need

Incentivized

• Benefits enrollment! We've received compliments on how easy it is to enroll each year in benefits.
• New hire onboarding. All information is sent to new hires and they can seamlessly enter their information and read and sign all documents and agreements.
• For the most part, the reports are easy to configure and use.

Incentivized

• Patriot's software is very easy to use for running payroll. It takes about 30 seconds to do.
• The payroll reports are abundant, easy to find and print, and make my accounting very easy.
• Having a full service payroll provider as easy to use as Patriot leaves me with more availability to focus on treating patients and running other aspects of my business.

Incentivized

• Handling exceptions for staff PTO requests for employees in their 90 day probationary period
• Ease of managing different hourly work week exceptions

Incentivized

• The third party direct deposit processor Patriot previously used was not particularly easy to work with...but Patriot just brought all direct deposit processing in house.
• Clergy housing allowance has to be manually entered each payday. They tell me they're close to adding the capability of making it (and other similar pay types) as a recurring item.
• The setup process is geared toward novice users who need to be hand-held through the process. That's great for those who need it but a more streamlined, no-frills process payroll pros would be welcome.

Incentivized

It works well because it is cheap for us.

Incentivized

I really like GoCo. There are a few things I wish could be improved and have talked with our rep about them. They are very receptive to ideas and have made changes based on some of my suggestions.

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

GoCo has done a great job of being responsive to us in working through issues in the system.

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

We really wanted an HRIS that also did benefits open enrollment. GoCo was able to provide both of those in one system. And, the open enrollment process is pretty slick for employees.

Incentivized

Cost is the major factor here, but the ease of use (and design of the interface) is a big advantage for Patriot PAY. Items are (ironically) more "intuitive" to find and manage in Patriot PAY than Intuit.

Patriot PAY is closer to ADP/Gusto/Paychex in how it looks and feels and operates in a full-service capacity, but it is much more affordable.

Incentivized

• Productivity has gone up in the HR/Payroll department. GoCo has helped us streamline our processes, what used to take us three days to complete manually, we can now do in one day, leaving time to focus elsewhere.
• What used to take our campus administrators a day to approve time off requests (paper) it now only takes a click of a button and staff are notified immediately.
• Staff Self-service is huge as they can look up their own information quickly at anytime of the day.

• Patriot allows the entire team to be on the same page when it comes to a campaign or donor. All of the information is in one place to see how much a donor gave or communication with that donor by a specific team member.
• It provides comparative historic data and donor analysis. The organization of donations by appeal allows teams to know which campaigns were successful in previous years.

Incentivized