Patriot Payroll

Price is the argument here and it is a strong one. Full Service Payroll lists at $37 a month plus $5 per worker paid, Basic Payroll at $17 plus $4 if the firm would rather file the returns itself, and partners buy below those numbers on a discount ladder that runs from 5 percent up to 30 percent at the Diamond level of 100 or more clients. Patriot bills the accountant on one consolidated invoice at the discounted rate, and the firm then invoices its clients on whatever fee schedule it likes. That is a genuine wholesale arrangement rather than a referral, and the spread belongs to the practice. There is no revenue share component, so the margin comes entirely from the gap between the discounted cost and the firm's own fee. Once a partner has six or more active clients, Patriot gives the firm its own payroll and accounting software free.

Operationally the product is deliberately small. An Umbrella Login switches between client accounts, unlimited firm users can be scoped per client, and billing is in arrears on workers actually paid, so a seasonal client that runs nothing in February costs only the base fee. The workflow is three screens: enter hours, approve, pay. Data migration and USA-based support are included, and co-branding with the firm's logo is free.

Two limitations decide whether this fits. The first is multi-state work. Patriot charges $12 a month for each additional state, so a client with employees in four states carries $36 a month of surcharge that OnPay would not charge at all. The second is that Patriot has no batch processing across clients and no after-the-fact payroll module. Each client is opened and run individually, which is fine at 15 clients and painful at 80. The integration list is also short by modern standards. QuickBooks Online is the only mainstream general ledger connection, with Vestwell for 401(k), ERGO NEXT for workers' compensation and a handful of small partners around it. No Xero, no Sage Intacct, no open API ecosystem.

Against OnPay the trade is stark: Patriot is roughly a quarter cheaper on a five-employee single-state client and roughly the same or worse once states multiply, and OnPay pays revenue share where Patriot pays none. Against Gusto, Patriot gives up almost all of the employee experience, benefits marketplace and HR tooling in exchange for a price a laundromat or a two-truck landscaping company will accept without argument. That is the real use case.

Strong option is the correct tier and it stays there. Patriot publishes prices, a SOC 2 report and MFA, is profitable, debt-free and privately held by its founder, and has been shipping since long before most of its competitors existed. It does not reach top pick because the integration surface is thin, the per-state fee punishes exactly the clients that are growing, and there is no mechanism for processing many payrolls in one pass. A firm whose payroll book is mostly small, local and single-state will do well with it; a firm with 60 clients and remote workforces will outgrow it.