ADP Vantage (legacy) vs. Patriot Payroll

[ADP Vantage HCM is] great for big organizations with complex processes and who need all the features/functionalities provided by the platform. May not be very suitable for smaller companies who aren't as elaborate in terms of their HR processes and the enterprise licensing costs can be slightly prohibitive. Great for companies looking for plug-and-play solutions which need minimal/no customization off the shelf.

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

• EPIP batch uploads are customizable. Each payroll processor was given their own upload template so they could input all of their changes on it, and then upload at payroll processing time.
• We had multiple pay groups. ADP Vantage makes the ability to submit and close multiple pay groups individually very easy. This was a big pain point for us and we were able to speed our timing up by opening and closing our pay groups individually.
• Report writing in ADP Vantage is a breeze. It has the ability to drag fields into the report writer, so you don't have to remember the exact fields you need. You can literally go to the screen you want to report off of, and drag the field into your report.

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

• [The] tax setup section needs more work, it is unclear sometimes if we need to set up tax in Smart Compliances or somewhere else, and then the rode to make that tax active and add it to the employee.
• [The] payroll audit could be more clear and include more data from all adjustments, for example, if there is [a] salary rate change, there [are] not flags to check that in [the] audit section of the payroll.

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

Because we have only been using the system for 5 years, we will continue using this service until our business outgrows the support we need or is unable to meet our needs. we need a system that will integrate with our carriers and well as our general ledger system. We are currently looking for another GL system to fit our needs that will need to integrate with ADPVantage

Incentivized

It works well because it is cheap for us.

Incentivized

It's a great product and the enhancements make it better all the time. I feel there are some areas that are severly lacking attention, such as Garnishments. This area of the product is not user friendly at all and ADP has not made an enhancement here since we went live 2012.

Incentivized

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

The software just works. I can count on one hand the number of actual outages I have experienced in the last 10 years. We have had slowdowns, where response/processing time was slow, but those too are few and far between. The redundancies and backups they have in place at ADP mean my resources are available all the time. The only reason I say 9 of 10 is because there are times when an update or patch will cause an issue in another part of the system that usually isn't discovered prior to the patch/update's implementation. These have happened several times. The plus side is that these are almost always resolved immediately.

Incentivized

Pages do load pretty swiftly, and reports do not take too long. However, I have noticed that most reports become available sooner than some. Which if you are trying to process payroll, it may slow you down and tends to be time consuming when you're in a crunch

I think it's important for other companies to do their research and to make sure to not be oversold like we were. We needed to have an implementation expert with the sales person who could have explained some of what we wanted was not doable without costing extra. It's for this reason that I'm giving ADP Vantage HCM this rating. Everything is a project and comes with an additional cost.

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

I personally did not receive in-person training. I do know that person to person interaction is more efficient versus self taught and online training. The instructor can work at your pace, and you will be able to ask more questions to better understand the system and how it works. I also prefer in person training overall.

super easy to follow along. I loved that I was able to move along with the instructions without feeling overwhelmed and lost. Being able to go back as many times as I needed really helped when I was helping my co-workers stay on task with the training.I love that ADP

It was a great implementation, ADP went above and beyond to ensure it was successful. ADP hosted modeling sessions that included the subject matter experts from all areas. It was helpful that the implementation was all inclusive as we received indepth detail of how each area affects another.

Incentivized

I inherited this system when I came on board. Most recently I had been using ADP Enterprise, along with eTime and Virtual Edge. I have also used home-grown systems. I know there are some limitations between Vantage vs Enterprise, but I really haven't noticed them working in Vantage. It gives me a very similar experience to what I was used to, so it was simple for me to adapt. I am always aware of other systems that are being developed, but I am pleased with what I have right now with Vantage.

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

ADP Vantage is able to scale to our needs. As your organization's payroll and time and attendance needs grow, ADP has optional modules (scheduler, HR, ect.) that can be purchased. The basic reporting and metrics are nice add-ons.

Incentivized

• Positive - saving the admins time by allowing EE's to access their own information.
• Positive - Managers being able to use Vantage easily to manage their employees.
• Negative - would probably be when the system gives you errors randomly that are not true errors. Once you refresh the page or log out and back in then the error does not come up. Not sure if this has to do with connection as well.

Incentivized

• 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