Why people look
Why teams look for a QuickBooks alternative
The reasons that come up in evaluations. Whether they apply to you depends mostly on where your receipts come from.
The receipt in QuickBooks is a merchant name, a date and a total, which is not enough to claim tax on the lines that qualify.
Receipts sent through Smartbills arrive with every line intact. The tax you can actually recover shows on the entry itself.
Nothing stops a purchase that was never allowed; you find out about it when the statement arrives.
Rules, thresholds and card limits apply at the moment of purchase, which stops out-of-policy spend before it happens.
Anyone who needs to submit an expense needs a seat in the accounting system.
Employees submit from a separate app and only approved, coded entries reach QuickBooks. Nobody needs a ledger login.
The shortlist
6 alternatives to QuickBooks
The products teams shortlist against QuickBooks, each with what it's for. The order isn't a ranking, and the criteria are explained below.
- 01
Hubdoc
Hubdoc moves documents into Xero and stops there. Smartbills adds digital receipts, expense policy, cards and payables around those documents.
Best forXero users whose only need is getting bills and receipts into Xero at no extra cost.
Compare it with Smartbills - 02
Dext
Dext collects the receipts and invoices your accounting practice is sent. Smartbills gets the receipt from the merchant at the moment you pay.
Best forAccounting practices collecting documents from many clients at once, who need client reminders and publishing built in.
Compare it with Smartbills - 03
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 - 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
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 - 06
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
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 that have outgrown built-in capture because several people spend, policy matters and tax detail has to hold up.
Smartbills vs QuickBooksHow this list was put together
These are the products that come up in the same evaluations as QuickBooks, 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 QuickBooks 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.