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Smartbills vs Precoro

A purchase order process controls what gets ordered. In most companies, most of the money was spent on something nobody ordered that way.

At a glance

Smartbills vs Precoro, in one screen

Precoro is procurement software for smaller organizations, covering purchase requests, approval routing, purchase orders, supplier records, budgets and receiving. Its price and implementation weight sit well below the enterprise suites.

Smartbills

Best for

Organizations where most spending happens as receipts, employee expenses and supplier bills rather than through purchase orders.

Where it's stronger

  • Covers the spending that never saw a requisition, which is usually most of your transactions.
  • Expenses, payables and receivables all post to the same accounting system.
  • Supplier bills are captured, coded and approved without anyone retyping them.
  • Line-level GST, QST and HST detail sits on both receipts and supplier bills.

Precoro

Best for

Teams that genuinely raise purchase orders and need approval routing and a budget check before a commitment is made.

Where it's stronger

  • Purchase request and approval routing is deeper and more configurable than anything in Smartbills.
  • Supplier catalogs and budget commitment tracking are built as the main job, not an extra.
  • Precoro is inexpensive and quick to implement next to the enterprise suites.
  • If your control problem sits at the requisition stage, Precoro is the product to buy.

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

Smartbills and Precoro, feature by feature

These are structural differences, not plan checkboxes. Capabilities change, so check the vendor's own documentation before deciding on any single row.

Purchase requests and approval routing

Smartbills—
PrecoroTheir core product

Checking the budget before a commitment

Smartbills—
Precoro

Supplier records and catalogs

SmartbillsVendor records, no catalogs
PrecoroMore developed

Itemized receipts issued by the merchant

Smartbills
Precoro—

Employee expenses and reimbursements

Smartbills
Precoro—

Applying customer payments to invoices

Smartbills
Precoro—

How long it takes to go live

SmartbillsLight
PrecoroLight

Moving from Precoro

None of this needs a big-bang cutover. Most teams run both tools for one cycle and compare capture rates before switching anyone off.

  1. Measure requisitioned spend

    Work out what share of your transactions ever saw a purchase order. The answer usually decides this.

  2. Start with expenses and receipts

    Bring the unordered majority of spending under capture and policy first, where the gap is widest.

  3. Keep purchase orders in Precoro

    Smartbills doesn't replace purchase orders and won't pretend to.

  4. Connect your accounting

    Sync bills, expenses and receipts to QuickBooks, Xero, Sage or NetSuite, with categories mapped once.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What people ask us before they sign up.

No. Smartbills does not create purchase requests or purchase orders. It captures, codes and approves bills, receipts and expenses, then syncs them to your accounting system.

Yes, and it is a common arrangement. Precoro handles purchase requests and orders; Smartbills handles the bills, receipts and expenses that follow, plus everything bought without a purchase order.

That spend is the real subject of this comparison, and in most companies it is larger than people expect. Smartbills captures it, applies your policy and codes it like everything else.

Get started

Ready to see it against Precoro?

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.