5 Best Accounts Payable Software Programs for 2023
Tim is a Certified QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) Pro, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and CPA with 25 years of experience. He brings his expertise to Fit Small Business’s accounting content.
Eric is a staff writer at Fit Small Business and CPA focusing on accounting content. He spends most of his time researching and studying to give the best answer to everyone.
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
The best accounts payable (A/P) software must have strong general accounts payable features like vendor tracking, purchase order (PO) tracking, and vendor payments tracking. Good A/P automation should also reduce data entry and streamline the A/P process. Based on these requirements, here are five accounts payable systems that can help your business process and manage payables easily:
- Bill: Best overall accounts payable software because of its outstanding features at a low price
- Melio: Best free standalone accounts payable platform
- QuickBooks Online: Best accounts payable software integrated with a complete bookkeeping system
- Quadient Accounts Payable by Beanworks: Best accounts payable automation software for integration with Xero
- Lendio Accounting: Best free accounts payable system within a free bookkeeping software
Best Accounts Payable Systems Compared
| Software | Monthly Pricing | Record Purchase Orders | View Unpaid Bills per Vendor | Record Credit Memos From Vendors | Workflows | Batch Processing of Bills | Accounting Software Integration |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Starts at $45 |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
QuickBooks, Xero, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, Oracle Netsuite |
| Visit Bill | |||||||
 |
$0 |
✕ |
✓ |
✕ |
✓ |
✓ |
QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics, Xero |
| Visit Melio | |||||||
 |
$30–$200 |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
N/A; is an accounting software by default |
| Visit QuickBooks Online | |||||||
 |
Contact Sales |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
✓ |
QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, Oracle Netsuite |
| Visit Quadient AP | |||||||
 |
$0 or $19 |
✕ |
✓ |
✓ |
✕ |
✕ |
N/A; is an accounting software by default |
| Visit Sunrise | |||||||
Bill: Best Overall A/P Software
Bill
Overall Score:
4.40 / 5
What We Like
- Affordable plans
- Can expand to include accounts receivable and invoicing customers
- Auto-capture receipts from email or document uploads
- Can pay bills using automated clearing house (ACH), credit card, check, or international wire transfer
What's Missing
- Additional transaction fees for payment services like ACH processing, check mailing, credit or debit card processing, etc.
- Not a substitute for accounting software
- Not ideal for businesses with few clients
- Integration with QuickBooks or Xero requires the Team or Corporate plan
Features
- Integrates with popular accounting software like QuickBooks and Wave
- Automatically fetch bills from email
- A/P and A/R features in one platform
- Competitive transaction fees
- Automatic bill codification that autofills fields based on similar past transactions
Bill Overview
Accounts payable dashboard (Source: Bill)
Bill’s accounts payable solution gives you full control over the billing process. It can collect invoices sent by vendors to a dedicated Bill email automatically, or you can enter invoices manually. Once Bill receives invoices from vendors, it extracts useful information to ease up on data entry and keep the billing process flowing faster. Bill also has payment channels built into the app, so you can settle your obligations with vendors easily. It also has approval workflow schemes to ensure that all vendor billings are billed accurately and pertain to legitimate business expenses.
Melio: Best Free Standalone A/P Platform
Melio
Overall Score:
3.60 / 5
What We Like
- No subscription fee
- Unlimited number of users
- No sign-up or account needed to pay vendors
What's Missing
- Limited accounting software integration
- No mobile app
- Limited customer support channels
Features
- Pay locally and internationally
- Generate reports showing payments to 1099 contractors
- Bill capture from either PDF or JPG files
- Approval workflows for processing bills and payments
Melio Overview
Syncing QuickBooks and Melio.
Melio’s A/P features are not as robust as Bill, but we don’t find this as a downside as most small businesses will benefit from Melio’s simple A/P features—especially those who pay internationally. In Melio, you get workflow approvals to reduce manual review of all bills and easy bill capture to reduce data entry. These features are often present in premium plans, but you get them for free on Melio.
QuickBooks Online: Best A/P Software Integrated With a Complete Accounting System
QuickBooks Online
Overall Score:
4.70 / 5
What We Like
- Schedule and make payments right in QuickBooks
- Ability to pay bills with a credit card, even if the vendor doesn’t accept credit cards
- Bills paid by check or direct deposit are recorded automatically in QuickBooks
- Thorough data records for vendors and customers
- More than 650 integrations
- Make partial bill payment
What's Missing
- Limited account users with each plan
- Not ideal for companies with existing accounting software
- Costly transaction fees when using Bill Pay
- Lacks A/P automation features like vendor invoice auto-capture
Features
- Powerful Bill Pay features within a full bookkeeping system
- Access to vast network of QuickBooks ProAdvisors who can assist in bookkeeping and tax accounting
- Track invoices and bills by location and class
- Option to choose between bank feed or CSV imports for bank transactions
- Reconcile bank accounts even without bank feeds
- Add an accountant without losing a seat in the number of users
- Create, manage, and track bills and A/P balances through reports and dashboards
QuickBooks Online Overview
QuickBooks Online bill tracking
As our best small business accounting software, the A/P feature within QuickBooks Online simplifies the bill-paying process. After you have entered your bills, you can navigate to the Pay Bills screen, which will show you a list of all bills that are still outstanding, along with their due dates. Click the checkbox to the left of the vendor name and enter a full or partial payment for each.
You can pay bills by printing checks or you can use the free QuickBooks Online Bill Pay option. The Bill Pay feature is included in your QuickBooks Online plan for free but transaction fees will apply. For more detailed information about how to pay bills in QuickBooks, check out our online tutorial.
Quadient Accounts Payable by Beanworks: Best A/P Automation Software Integration for Xero
Quadient Accounts Payable by Beanworks
Overall Score:
3.60 / 5
What We Like
- Vendor bill auto-capture from email
- Bill coding feature including multi-currency bills
- Integrates with QuickBooks, Sage, and Xero
- Bill approvals and routing
- Audit trail
- Set and manage spending limits
What's Missing
- Pricing is not transparent
- Exporting invoices from QuickBooks to Beanworks takes two hours before appearing
- Search functions are limited
- Not a substitute for accounting software
Features
- Purchase order management for merchandising and retail businesses
- Expense tracking and reporting
- Payment management and tracking
- Cloud storage to store receipts and other documents needed for processing invoices, bills, and payments
- 99% optical character recognition (OCR) accuracy for extracting information from PDF or captured receipts
- Excellent workflows in managing bills and expenses
Quadient Accounts Payable by Beanworks Overview
Beanworks accounts payable (Source: Quadient AP)
Quadient AP’s payment module can be used for paying vendor bills and reimbursing employee expenses. This allows you to select the invoices and expenses that you want to pay and submit the payments for approval. As shown above, each bill is color-coded to indicate what stage of the payment process it’s in. The Actions column at the far right lets you edit, view, or approve each bill.
Lendio Accounting: Best Free A/P System Within a Bookkeeping Software
Lendio Accounting
Overall Score:
3.40 / 5
What We Like
- Mobile app to manage transactions
- Easy-to-use interface and dashboard
- Paid plan supports unlimited users and companies
What's Missing
- Bank reconciliations are very limited
- Limited reports
- Cannot initiate online bill payments from within the program
- Limited A/P automation features
Features
- Essential A/P features in the free plan
- Unlimited users for only $19.99 per month for the Plus plan
- Bank feed connection
- A/R and A/P functions in one platform
- Create and add multiple sales tax items to invoices
- Track payments to 1099 contractors
Lendio Accounting Overview
Lendio Accounting Dashboard
In Lendio Accounting, bills are recorded as expenses. You can enter them by clicking on the Record Expenses tab on the left navigation bar. This will take you to a page that lists all bills that are due, with amounts and due dates. To add a new bill, click on the green Create Expense button at the upper right, and enter the necessary information. You can then enter the payment information and mark it as paid.
How We Evaluated Best Accounts Payable Software
We employed specific criteria to evaluate the best accounts payable software. We considered pricing, general features, specific features, and ease of use. We assigned an equal percentage for each criterion and different weights for subcriteria.
25%
Pricing
25%
General A/P Features
25%
Special A/P Features
25%
Ease of Use
25% of Overall Score
In assessing the pricing, we considered the transparency, affordability, and flexibility of pricing plans. We also gave more credit to the software providers that can accommodate more users.
25% of Overall Score
When considering basic accounts payable functionality, we looked at features, such as creating vendors, tracking vendor transactions, viewing outstanding bills, recording vendor credits, and other minor A/P features.
25% of Overall Score
In evaluating special accounts payable features, we focused more on A/P automation. We heavily considered the ability of the software to reduce data entry time, workflow approvals, and batch processing. We also included the following:
- Automatic payments: We looked at whether the software automates the payment process for recurring bills.
- Automated alerts: For every vendor that’s set up in the system, we considered whether you can create custom alerts to inform you when a bill has arrived or is due.
- E-bill aggregation: We evaluated whether electronic copies of all your bills can be sent directly to your accounting software.
- Audit trails: An audit trail helps approvers of bills see the history of the transaction being processed. Audit trails provide transparency and establish evidence that bills have been processed according to the company’s policies.
25% of Overall Score
When considering ease of use, we assessed the difficulty of using the software. Our main focus is integration with accounting software. As much as possible, we want accounts payable software to integrate with popular accounting applications and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. We also factored user reviews into the software’s Ease of Use score.
*Percentages of overall score
When To Use Accounts Payable Automation Software vs Accounts Payable Software
Most accounting solutions include accounts payable features but don’t necessarily provide the functionality to handle more complex processes, such as batch payments. Depending on the size and needs of your business, the accounts payable features that are included in good bookkeeping software may be enough to do the job. Otherwise, automation software is helpful for processing a large volume of bills and simplifying complex A/P activities.
When deciding, you have to consider qualitative and quantitative factors in A/P automation. It’s a decision of whether to insource, such as hire A/P professionals, or outsource, such as when getting an A/P automation service. As far as the quantitative aspect, consider the relevant costs of insourcing, such as salaries of A/P professionals, and relevant outsourcing expenses, like the monthly cost of the A/P automation software.
Best Accounts Payable Software Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How do you automate accounts payable?
Automating A/P starts with shifting from manual to automated A/P processing. You should get A/P software that’s either included in your bookkeeping system or a separate tool that integrates with your accounting platform. The A/P solution must include features that reduce data entry and speed up bill processing.
What does accounts payable software do?
A/P software manages, automates, and records A/P transactions in an efficient manner. A/P systems should reduce data entry time, streamline processing and review, and facilitate a channel to make payments to vendors.
What is an A/P automation tool?
An A/P automation tool often uses advanced technology like artificial intelligence (AI) to reduce manual work. A/P automation features include automatic classification of transactions, optical character recognition, and workflow rules.
Bottom Line
Accounts payable software help you track which bills are due and when they’re due, which is a key component of managing your business successfully. Some A/P solutions take it a step further by automating the process, allowing for more complex features like approval workflows and global payments. The right fit for your business is the software that suits both your current needs and is also scalable for the future.
