Comparing cloud-based accounts payable solutions is frustrating for the same reason comparing any mature software category is: the feature lists converge and the products do not. Every one captures invoices, routes approvals, matches to orders and posts to a ledger. The differences that will matter to you in a year are narrower and rarely on the comparison table: how exceptions are handled, how approvers experience it, how it integrates with the ledger you already run, and what leaving costs. This page is those four, with the specific question to ask about each, so a shortlist can be built on the things that differ.
Exceptions and the approver experience
Ask to see a price mismatch and an invoice whose approver has left. Then have a non-finance colleague approve something on their phone, timed. Those two exercises separate products more reliably than any feature matrix, because they test the parts that are hard to build.
Integration with the ledger you already run
Not whether it integrates, which everything claims, but how: automatic or file-based, one-way or two-way, and what happens when a write fails. A failed write that nobody is told about is the defect worth screening for.
What leaving costs
Export format, completeness, whether document images come too, and any fee. On the worked example on this site, 400 invoices at three touches of six minutes with a 12% exception rate is 134.4 hours a month: $4,300.80 at a $32 loaded rate, $10.75 an invoice and $51,609.60 a year. is the number the purchase is justified against; the exit cost is the number nobody calculates and everybody eventually needs.
Questions people ask about cloud-based accounts payable solutions
How many should we shortlist?
Three, tested against the four questions above with your own documents. A longer list produces more feature comparison and no more information.
Do we need one at all?
Answer the cost question first with the free worksheet on this site. A significant number of small businesses discover the route is cheaper than they assumed and the bottleneck is approvers.
Should we buy the one our accountant recommends?
It is a reasonable input and they may be optimising for their own workflow rather than yours. Ask what they actually like about it.