Before You Run Your First Payroll in Patriot Software

Here are the steps to complete before you can process your first payroll in Patriot Software.  You only have to do these steps once!

Company Settings

Step 1: Payroll Settings – Set up your work locations and types of hours and money used.

Step 2: Tax Settings – Choose your payroll frequency and enter your state unemployment tax rate.  If you are a Full Service Payroll customer, provide your employer tax identification numbers and tax deposit frequency for each type of federal, state, and local (if applicable) taxes for your company.

Step 3 (optional):  Deductions & Contributions – Add employee-paid deductions and employer contributions your company will use.  You can later assign these to individual employees.

Step 4 (optional): Direct Deposits – If you choose to use direct deposit, you will need to set up your banking information.  For further info, see Setting Up Direct Deposit in Patriot Software.

For more information, see these Payroll Settings help articles.

Employees

Step 6:  Add employees, including Personal Info, Pay Info, Direct Deposit Accounts, Taxes, and Deductions & Contributions. See How To Add A New Employee for more details.

Step 7:  Enter Prior Payroll History. If you’re starting Patriot Software anytime after the first pay date of a calendar year, you must enter prior paycheck history for the year. See Entering Prior Payroll History for more details.

Contractors

If you want to pay 1099 contractors in payroll with your employees, you will need to add your contractors and their bank account info, if you want to pay them with direct deposit.  See How to Pay 1099 Contractors in Payroll.

Full-Service Payroll Customers

If you are a Full-Service Payroll customer, you have additional steps:

1. Complete federal and possibly state or local tax authorization forms, which allow Patriot Software to deposit and file your taxes on your behalf.
2. Verify your bank account information to pay your payroll taxes.
3. Authorize Patriot to debit your bank account for any taxes resulting from payrolls you have already run in Patriot Software.

Missing Information

If any info is missing, you will see messages at the top of the page to show what needs to be entered.  When you click each link, you will go directly to the page with the missing data. The link disappears after you add the info. When you complete all missing information throughout Patriot Software, the links will disappear.

That’s it!  You’re now ready to run a payroll. See Payroll Process Step 1… for help.