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Alternatives

BILL alternatives

BILL, formerly Bill.com, automates payables and receivables for small and mid-sized businesses. Invoices route for approval and are paid across its own supplier network, then sync to the major accounting ledgers.

Why people look

Why teams look for a BILL alternative

The reasons that come up in evaluations. Whether they apply to you depends mostly on where your receipts come from.

Invoices land in a shared mailbox, and somebody still has to open each one and work out what it was for.

Smartbills signs in to the vendor's portal, downloads the invoice and reads its lines, so a coded bill is waiting well before the due date.

Card spend and employee purchases live in another system. Nobody sees the real month until it closes.

Receipts, card transactions, expense claims and supplier bills post to the same ledger. You can see the month's spend while it is still happening.

The invoices that cost real money are the exceptions, and by the time one surfaces the cause is three weeks old.

Because each bill is captured, coded and approved in the same system, an exception can be traced to its source the week it shows up.

The shortlist

6 alternatives to BILL

The products teams shortlist against BILL, each with what it's for. The order isn't a ranking, and the criteria are explained below.

  1. Melio

    Melio pays suppliers cheaply. Smartbills covers the invoice work that comes first: capture, matching, coding and multi-step approvals.

    Best forSmall businesses whose one real need is paying a handful of suppliers as cheaply as possible.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  2. QuickBooks

    Keeps QuickBooks as your ledger and replaces only its receipt capture, sending in itemized, policy-checked entries.

    Best forBusinesses whose receipt volume is small enough that the capture already included with QuickBooks still copes.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  3. Coupa

    Supplier bill approvals, expense control and receipts for finance teams that do not need an enterprise procurement suite.

    Best forLarge enterprises that genuinely run strategic sourcing, category management and supplier risk at scale, and have the team to operate it.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  4. Xero

    Leaves Xero as your ledger and takes over expense claims and receipts, which reach Xero itemized and already coded.

    Best forBusinesses whose claim volume is small enough that the bundled expenses module still copes.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  5. Sage

    An alternative to Sage Expense Management (formerly Fyle) that delivers receipts as data, while your Sage ledger stays put.

    Best forOrganizations on Sage that place real value on buying the ledger and the expense product from one vendor.

    Compare it with Smartbills

  6. FreshBooks

    Covers the spending side (itemized receipts, card control and coding) while FreshBooks keeps invoicing your clients.

    Best forFreelancers and small agencies whose financial job is invoicing clients and tracking billable time.

    Compare it with Smartbills

Disclosure

And Smartbills, which is ours

Slipping our own product into a roundup without saying so is exactly what makes these pages worthless, so to be clear, this one is ours.

Smartbills

Best for: Businesses whose document problem starts before the invoice exists, across receipts, card spend and bills collected from vendor portals.

Smartbills vs BILL

How this list was put together

These are the products that come up in the same evaluations as BILL, drawn from what prospects actually shortlist against it and from the rest of its category. The order is editorial rather than a ranking, because we don't run benchmarks on products we don't operate, and a scored table written by a vendor about its competitors isn't evidence. Each entry links to a full comparison with claims specific enough to check.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What people ask us before they sign up.

Yes, by bank transfer and card. Our payee reach is smaller than the BILL network, and if most of your suppliers are already enrolled there, that is a real advantage for BILL.

It means Smartbills signs in to the vendor's portal on a schedule and downloads the invoice as soon as it is published, before the due date. It matters most for utilities, telecom and fuel accounts.

Yes, and it is a common way to start. Capture, code and approve in Smartbills, keep paying through BILL, then consolidate later if it makes sense.

Get started

Comparing BILL with something else?

Bring one month of your own receipts and card transactions. The number that settles it is the share of transactions that ended up with an itemized document attached, and you can measure that in one cycle.

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