At a glance
Airbase built a mid-market spend platform that covered corporate cards, invoice processing, expense management, procurement intake and approvals in one product. Paylocity bought it for about $325 million and has been folding it into its HCM platform.
Best for
Finance teams that want receipts as structured data, and want their spend software on its own renewal cycle, separate from HR.
Where it's stronger
Best for
Choose Airbase if you're consolidating AP and expense in the mid-market, and especially if you already run Paylocity for payroll and HR.
Where it's stronger
Every comparison on this site names what the other product does better. If we couldn't think of anything, we didn't publish the page.
Side by side
These are structural differences, not plan checkboxes. Capabilities change, so check the vendor's own documentation before deciding on any single row.
Corporate cards
Supplier bills and AP automation
Purchase requests and procurement intake
Receipts issued by the merchant
Line items without reading an image
Getting paid: receivables and cash application
Payroll and HR adjacency
None of this needs a big-bang cutover. Most teams run both tools for one cycle and compare capture rates before switching anyone off.
Ask how Airbase is packaged inside Paylocity now. Don't assume today's shape and price will last past your next renewal.
Run Smartbills on your existing cards without touching payables. Very little can go wrong.
Run the same supplier invoices through both and compare how many exceptions each sends to a person.
Migrating payables is the bigger project. Do it second, and keep the two changes apart.
FAQ
What people ask us before they sign up.
Keep comparing
The products people evaluate alongside Airbase.
A corporate card program with spend management built around it. The comparison turns on what a card feed can and can't tell you.
Read the comparisonCards and business banking for US companies. This comparison is about the purchase document behind each card charge.
Read the comparisonWorth a look if your payables team loses more time finding and coding invoices than paying them, and card receipts sit in another tool.
Read the comparisonEach product works on its own, and when you run two, the same record carries from the receipt to the ledger entry.
Capture receipts, categorize expenses and check policy compliance as expenses are submitted.
Accounts payable automation that reads each supplier invoice, codes it and matches it to the purchase order before anyone is asked to approve payment.
Keep each supplier's terms, tax forms, insurance certificates, banking details and bills on a single record that AP and your approvers all work from.
Get started
Bring one month of your own receipts and card transactions, and we'll show you the capture rate on both sides instead of a slide deck.
