Alternatives
Quadient AP alternatives
Quadient AP is the payables product Quadient acquired with Vancouver-based Beanworks in 2021. It layers capture, coding, approval routing and payment on your ledger, adds requisitions and a mobile expense module, and its Sage coverage from Intacct to Sage 300 CRE is unusually complete.
Why people look
Why teams look for a Quadient AP alternative
The reasons that come up in evaluations. Whether they apply to you depends mostly on where your receipts come from.
Capture begins with an image that an employee remembered to upload.
The merchant sends the receipt as data when the card is paid, without waiting on an employee.
Categories are mapped to ledger codes after a machine has read the picture.
A merchant-issued receipt arrives itemized. Coding works from data instead of a best guess.
A faded thermal slip stops being readable long before the retention period ends.
The document was never paper. It stays legible and auditable for the full retention period.
The shortlist
6 alternatives to Quadient AP
The products teams shortlist against Quadient AP, each with what it's for. The order isn't a ranking, and the criteria are explained below.
- 01
BILL
Worth a look if your payables team loses more time finding and coding invoices than paying them, and card receipts sit in another tool.
Best forBusinesses paying supplier invoices at high volume, especially when most of their suppliers are already enrolled on the BILL network.
Compare it with Smartbills - 02
Stampli
Covers card purchases and employee expenses (the spend Stampli was not built for) alongside supplier invoices.
Best forAccounts payable teams whose real bottleneck is chasing approvals and questions across email.
Compare it with Smartbills - 03
Plooto
For Canadian businesses that need each invoice captured and its GST, HST and QST recorded line by line, as well as paid.
Best forCanadian businesses whose problem is paying and collecting cheaply on domestic rails.
Compare it with Smartbills - 04
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 - 05
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 - 06
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
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: Teams that want receipts to arrive as data rather than as images somebody had to be reminded to upload.
Smartbills vs Quadient APHow this list was put together
These are the products that come up in the same evaluations as Quadient AP, 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.
Get started
Comparing Quadient AP 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.