7 BEST Accounts Payable Software Solutions (2023)
Matthew Martin
Choosing the wrong account payable software can create many issues, including slow processing, poor data management, and delayed payments. Some account payable solutions might lack appropriate data interpretation tools forcing you to do manual entries. Most poorly built services often have unreliable data capturing, resulting in unnecessary delays and issues with working capital.
We have researched 47+ tools and the following is a curated list of 7 Best Accounts Payable Software.
Best Accounts Payable (AP) Automation Software
| Provider | Free Trial | No of users | Multicompany Consolidation Support | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ramp | Free Product | Unlimited | Yes | Learn More |
| Bill | 30 Days | Unlimited | Yes | Learn More |
| Sage Intact | 30 Days | Unlimited | Yes | Learn More |
| QuickBooks | 30 Days | Unlimited | No | Learn More |
| Melio | No | Unlimited | No | Learn More |
What is account payable software?
Account payable software is used to streamline business transactions, manage finance, and ensure timely payments for your partners. These tools can reduce the burden on you, minimize human efforts, and ensure the timely processing of payments to vendors and affiliates. AP automation tools also manage all your taxes as well as legal compliance and help in bookkeeping.
The best tools can help you handle all incoming invoices and debt repayments and perform timely financial transactions mitigating all errors. Some account payable solutions also provide reports and analytics to help you better understand your business finance.
Benefits of Accounts Payable Automation Software
The key benefits of account payable software include significant time saving by mitigating manual entries, optimized data processing, improved data accuracy due to reduced human input, and streamlined payment processing. You can use these tools to accurately forecast future expenses and minimize cost overruns. Besides, it improves vendor satisfaction and ensures better teamwork with their automation solution. That’s why choosing the best AP automation software for your needs is ideal.
You should choose a robust tool that can easily integrate with your workflow and ensure on-time payments. Always prefer a service that works well with your currency and regions of service.
1) Ramp
Best for automation of workflows
Ramp is an ideal accounts payable solution that provides robust tools to strengthen relations with your vendors through easy onboarding, tax management, invoicing, and payment processing. It automatically captures, imports, and processes invoices received through various channels.
You can use it for international transactions in more than 200 countries, making it ideal for global businesses. It ensures clear, unambiguous communication and compliance with all land laws. The robust reports provide you insights about your banking activity and ease out month-end bank reconciliation. Its AI-driven OCR technology ensures error-free bill creation.
Features:
- Guided Procurement: Its automated intake process helps you track finance and ensure complete compliance, visibility, and control with no-code routing.
- Automated compliance: This helpsyou maintain compliance, accuracy, and transaction efficiency. Its advanced systems automatically categorize expense tags and record transactions into your GL.
- Purchase Orders: You can handle the complete lifecycle of POs from the initial request to the final payment with the intelligent feature of purchasing orders.
- Workflows: You can eliminate the confusion and friction for employees whenever they need to purchase with workflows.
- Sync: It Automatically syncs employee details into Airbase from your HRIS, keeping the database updated.
- SSO: All activities are secure and integrated easily with an SSO like Okta.
- Application: Ramp’s mobile app lets you access all tools and take actions directly from your phone. You can approve, execute, and track spending on your mobile device.
- Visibility: It gives stakeholders visibility into all the steps of the spending process and helps manage budgets for building a healthy spending culture.
- Compliance Standards: Maintain compliance standards using the latest technology standards like SOC 2 Type II, SOC 1 Type II, PCI-DSS Level 1, AES-256 HTTPS, and MFA.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
No Fees for using their Corporate cards, expense management, bill payments, real-time reporting, and accounting automation. Though they have a minimum usage criteria.
2) Bill
Best for specific solutions based on requirements
Bill is an ideal account payable system that provides robust tools to import bills easily without requiring manual entry. It processes, updates, and manages all data from vendors, invoices, and accounts. You can use it to sync your accounting system and Bill correctly.
Bill gives you a bird’s eye view of your cash outflow and inflow, helping you perform audits and planning for the future. Its automation solutions help you streamline the approval process by building robust workflows. You can quickly approve bills from your phone with a swipe or button.
Features:
- Invoice Tracker: You can easily track the status of your invoices using the robust Invoice Tracker. It sends email notifications whenever there is any progress in invoices.
- Pay Smarter: It provides access to a wide variety of vendors to give you more fantastic choices in payment providers. You get greater flexibility over processing your finances according to your needs.
- Mass Payment: Allows you to process bulk payments simultaneously. The robust API integrates with your tech stacks and automatically imports, manages, and processes payments.
- Security/Compliance: All data in transit is encrypted using Transport Layer Security (TLS), ensuring maximum protection. It complies with the latest standards like AICPA SOC 2, HIPPA, TLS and 2FA.
- Integrations and Syncs: Automate your receivables and payables from end to end throughout your tech stack using programming interface and native integrations with various software.
- Automation: Reduces manual input and mitigates human error by automating data entry workflows for your firm.
- Data Backup and Recovery: It takes geographically redundant backups and stores everything on the cloud to mitigate any possibilities of data loss.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Free Trial: Yes, 30 Days
- Price: Plans start at $79 per user per month
- Hidden fees: ePayment/ACH processing fee $0.49/send & receive | $1.69 per check payment | International Wire Transfer $14.99 | ACH Fasy Payment $9.99 per transaction
3) Sage Intact
Best for overall finance management
Sage Intact is an ideal AP automation solution to capture and store invoices and receipts without manual entry. The real-time reports for all your AP data help improve your business’s agility. It ensures you remain compliant with all vendor agreements with on-time payments to all parties.
You can easily integrate your AP software with banks, accounting software, and other 3rd party tools. This allows you to automate business payment processes and save time. It provides you with real-time fund visibility and reporting. You also receive intelligent insights about your business performance. It eliminates hours of manual data entry, helping you focus on more strategic and cost-saving initiatives.
Features:
- Invoice Capture: Automated invoice feature captures receipts, invoices, and expenses with new intuitive technology.
- Reporting: Get easy access to real-time reporting with AP data and improve the efficiency and agility of your work.
- Integrations: Seamlessly connect to your bank, tools, and other systems to save time with 100+ third-party services and integrations.
- Customer Support: You can contact Sage’s dedicated support team via email, extensive FAQs on the product website and a community of industry peers and partners.
- Automated Bank Reconciliations: Connect to financial institutions worldwide to spot exceptions, manage financial errors, and monitor for fraud.
- Automate multi-entity processes: This Software helps you automate multi-entity processes and create entities and hierarchies without a new implementation.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Free Trial: Yes, 30 Days
- Price: Contact Customer Support For Pricing
- Hidden fees: Annual Check Delivery Charges $150 for 100 checks | ACH Payment Service costing $100 | Vendor Payment Services for $1,020
4) Quickbooks
The best overall solution for accounting, invoicing, and managing accounts payable
Quickbooks provides you with robust tools to create professional-looking invoices, helps in bookkeeping, and eases out accounts payable management. It organizes all your bills in a single location, allowing you to manage and pay them quickly. You can use it to pay your bills through the best possible methods.
Quickbooks is among the best accounts payable software platforms that all your data is stored in the cloud, ensuring complete data safety and redundancy. Bank-level security protocols ensure your data remains private. It provides data-driven insights and gives you future spending forecasts for your needs. You can use it in multiple currencies, making it ideal account payable software for international transactions.
Features:
- Integration: It provides native integrations with 45+ apps relating to eCommerce, time tracking, inventory management, and payment processing.
- Real-Time Inventory Management: You can use it to organize your products, auto-calculate the costs, apply the FIFO principle and run reports of bestselling items to analyze your inventory.
- Capture and Organise Receipts: Match all your receipts and bills to stay organized and be up to date for tax filing with everything in one place.
- Custom Invoices: Send custom invoices and payment reminders from anywhere, anytime and guarantee accuracy with automated invoicing.
- Insights and reports: With widespread reports and the cash flow planner, get more insight into your business expenses and optimize spending efficiency.
- Data Security: It maintains bank-level security to ensure all your data is safe and cannot be accessed/misused by anyone.
- Scalability: The scalable processes set you up for growth, translate to time-saving, and manage the needs of your growing business.
- Cash Flow: This software organizes your financial data in one place, and you can enter and pay bills, manage due bill dates and schedule payments to keep money in your business as long as possible.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Free Trial: Yes, 30 days
- Price: Plans start at $1 per month.
- Hidden fees: ACH Bank Transfers at 1% of transaction cost (up to $10) | Credit Card Swipes at 2.4% + 25¢ | Credit Card online invoices at 2.9% + 25¢ | Credit Card keyed at 3.4% + 25¢
5) Melio
Best for maximizing cash flow and minimizing delays
Melio is among the best account payable software solutions that work in more than 80 countries globally. It helps streamline your business processes and efficiently manage all account payable processes. You can use it for 2-way syncing of all transactions between Melio and your accounting software. The Seamless Sync eliminates dual data entry while syncing all bills and bill payments.
Melio allows you to schedule transactions in future, closest to the due dates, while avoiding late fees and maximizing your working capital. You can connect Melio with any cloud service to take offsite backups and recover your data in case of system crashes or cyber-attacks.
Features:
- Smart Billing: Helps you maintain your budgets with check with low-cost, per-second billing and pay only for the compute time you use.
- Melio Dashboard: Control everything with just one login, pay your clients and business bills, and manage your team and approval workflows.
- Keep control: The robust approval workflows allow you to provide access to your team members, ensuring complete awareness among the workforce.
- Invite: Invite other people from your company, your accountant or bookkeeper, to your account and quickly set up their roles and grant specific rights/permissions.
- Fast Network: Accelerate your payment processing through a robust network of verified 7,000+ local and nationwide billers.
- Application: Provides native apps for users and admins with its on Android and Apple app stores.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Lifetime Free Subscription Plan
- Hidden fees: Mailed Checks at $1.50 each (2 free checks per month) | Card payments at 2.9% | Fast ACH Transfer 1% (up to $30) | Fast Check for $20 each | International Transactions charged at $20 flat
6) Tipalti
Best for Finance Automation
Tipalti is a robust account payable software with an advanced machine learning-driven optical character reader to automatically capture, match, and process invoices. Its built-in approval workflow and payment scheduling tools make the process effortless. You can use it to perform payouts in 190+ countries in 120+ currencies, supporting six different payment methods.
Tipalti provides native tools to centralize and manage finance across multiple instances easily. You can give limited access to users with granular control over the permissions of each user. Its AI-driven systems proactively streamline processes and reduce unwanted risks.
Features:
- Admin Control: It provides robust administrative control over work applications and data, including policies for network access, peripheral use, and copy–paste.
- Streamline Supplier Management: Reduces workload by automating data entry and eliminating inaccuracies with a multi-language supplier portal.
- Touchless Invoice Processing: You can scan, capture, match, and process invoice data at header and line levels using their machine learning algorithms combined with built-in approvals and payment scheduling automation.
- Payment Reconciliation: It accelerates transactions with instant payment reconciliation, real-time reports and in-depth transaction-level details.
- Multi-Entity Feature: Easily manage and scale different AP Workflows like multiple subsidiaries, divisions, and global business units.
- Data Recovery: All data is automatically backed up every four hours, and a secondary environment is offsite in another location to restore with minimal disruption in case of disaster.
- Easy and Convenient App: Mobile iOS and Android apps make it easy for employees and companies to file their expenses on the go quickly and seamlessly for approval.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Free Trial: No
- Price: The plan starts at $149 per month
- Hidden fees: ACH Transactional Fee $0.2-$1.5 | Transactional Percentage Fee 0.5% – 1.5% | ACH Batch Processing Fee $0.00 – $1.00 | ACH Return Fee 2.5%
Link: https://tipalti.com/ap-automation/
7) Stampli
Best for Integrated ERP and Finance solutions.
Stampli is an ideal account payable solution for centralized collaborations. All the interactions, documentation, and workflows are easily accessible, ensuring complete transparency. A robust AI bot understands and adapts to your requirements, helping automate various manual tasks.
Stampli provides access to a wide range of reports and insights about your expenditure and performs audits with just one click. Its tools allow you to perform effective vendor management with easy onboarding, taxing, and billing support. The multi-entity support ensures you can manage all your subsidiaries with ease.
Features:
- Automate: Allows you to automatically capture, store, and approve invoices, making processes more accurate & efficient.
- Payments: Direct Pay provides you with a single payment system that helps you remain in complete control of your finances.
- Advanced Vendor Management: It provides tools for vendor information, onboarding, and documentation. This helps maintain compliance and strengthen relationships with vendors.
- Daily Insights: Gain insights into your invoices, employee productivity, and AP processes with native analytics & reporting tools.
- Integration: Easily integrates with your accounting software and more than 100 third-party apps like Epicor, Infor, and Innovative ERP.
- Documentation Management: Store all invoice-related documents digitally within the cloud for up to 7 years, including contracts, W-9s, and historical invoice data.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Free Trial: No
- Price: Contact Customer Support for Pricing
Link: https://www.stampli.com/ap-automation/
FAQ
Best Accounts Payable (AP) Automation Software
| Provider | Free Trial | No of users | Multicompany Consolidation Support | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ramp | Free Product | Unlimited | Yes | Learn More |
| Bill | 30 Days | Unlimited | Yes | Learn More |
| Sage Intact | 30 Days | Unlimited | Yes | Learn More |
| QuickBooks | 30 Days | Unlimited | No | Learn More |
| Melio | No | Unlimited | No | Learn More |
The Verdict
Till now, we have discussed 7 of the best account payable software. All of these are capable of handling your needs. However, some tools are more inclined towards certain use cases than others. Our verdict will help you make the right call according to your needs.
- Sage Intact is an ideal solution for enjoying an unlimited number of free users.
- In case you want a tool for the best accounts payable automation software, Ramp is the best choice.
- If you want a robust solution for your overall finances, including bookkeeping, invoicing Quickbooks is the right choice for you.