Frontline HCM (Aesop Online) vs. Patriot Payroll

Frontline is well suited for an organization such as a school district where teachers sometimes need to put in for a substitute at the last minute or especially early in the morning. The system also helps with substitutes in picking up the jobs when a teacher puts in an absence.

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

• Easily submission process. Select the day you need to schedule on the listed calendar, mark the type of request, and submit.
• Works on different digital devices including phones, tablets, and computers.
• Easily track your balances by looking at your account history.
• Delete requests you have already submitted.

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

• Teachers cannot cancel their own absence. We have to ask the office staff to do so. This is irritating when an absence must be canceled (Due to a canceled professional development, for example).
• Sometimes absences go unfilled. It would be great if AESOP could have a roster of qualified substitutes to cover absences.
• You cannot assign your absence to a particular substitute if you know he or she is available and a good fit for your absence.

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

Long time customer with Frontline Absence Management. Product support has been excellent, integrations easy to work with, & suite of products mesh together well.

Incentivized

It works well because it is cheap for us.

Incentivized

While we have had minor issues logging in as our organization has its own login page, the site and its application are very easy to use. So long as members of a group log in through the appropriate page, navigating and using this site is quite easy. With the transition from Aesop to Frontline, the page also seems to have worked through any glitches found with the previous page and its app.

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

There have been several times the system was unavailable. When there has been an issue, Frontline HAS NOT notified us....which has been disappointing.

Incentivized

No issues reported by end users of slow or not loading pages.

Incentivized

Due to our organization having its own page, the support needed from Aesop or Frontline has been limited. However, individuals who need support from this site have found their interactions with tech support to be quick and easy. Frontline employee responses are timely and very helpful, providing quick and knowledgeable support.

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

Our Implementer/Trainer was a product line expert. He (Connor) walked us through every step with confidence and explained everything in detail. Frontline provided written documentation, cut-n-paste emails to staff, and a test environment for us to play in. We were able to test unique scenarios without actually sending emails, notifications, alerts to staff. This was very useful.

Incentivized

Our Frontline implementer was an expert in the field & knew the product in & out. We had very little issues going live.

Incentivized

Frontline seems to be the industry standard for this software in the education industry. I am not familiar with any competitors or what was evaluated prior to implementing Frontline. For it to be the industry standard, I would assume that its cost is fair in relation to competitors and that the onboarding process is simple.

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

Our district has approximately 300 substitutes & 1,800 employees. Size has never been an issue with Absence Management. There are other districts much larger using Absence Management with no problems

Incentivized

• Old technology that needs to be updated
• It is a web based system, unless you want to pay for the app which is a waste of money
• Does not offer a global view of all activity such as new assignments, cancelled assignments and modified assignments.

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