At a glance
Melio lets small businesses pay suppliers by bank transfer or card, including suppliers who still only accept cheques. Standard bank payments are free on its basic tier, and it syncs with QuickBooks and Xero.
Best for
Businesses that need capture, approvals and accounting coding around the payment, not only the payment itself.
Where it's stronger
Best for
Small businesses whose one real need is paying a handful of suppliers as cheaply as possible.
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.
What basic supplier payments cost
If you only need to pay suppliers, this is decisive.
Paying a supplier who only takes cheques
Reading an invoice and pulling out the detail
Approvals with more than one step
Employee expenses and receipts
How approval rules can be set
None of this needs a big-bang cutover. Most teams run both tools for one cycle and compare capture rates before switching anyone off.
Below a few invoices a week, Melio is the better fit and you should stay on it.
Map your categories and tax codes once against QuickBooks, Xero or Sage.
Get invoice capture and coding running before you change how suppliers are paid.
Payment runs move last, once matching has been clean for a cycle.
FAQ
What people ask us before they sign up.
Keep comparing
The products people evaluate alongside Melio.
Worth 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 comparisonKeeps QuickBooks as your ledger and replaces only its receipt capture, sending in itemized, policy-checked entries.
Read the comparisonFor teams whose spending shows up as receipts and supplier bills more often than as requisitions.
Read the comparisonEach product works on its own, and when you run two, the same record carries from the receipt to the ledger entry.
Accounts payable automation that reads each supplier invoice, codes it and matches it to the purchase order before anyone is asked to approve payment.
Coming soon: release approved supplier payments in scheduled runs from Smartbills, with the person who approves a bill kept apart from the one who pays it.
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.
