Learn about alternatives to Coupa software available from some Coupa competitors in our 2024 comprehensive guide. We also explain in depth how Tipalti stacks up against Coupa.
Table of Contents
Coupa Alternatives and Competitors
This section highlights several competitors of Coupa, with more emphasis on Tipalti vs. Coupa following this section. Some of these competitors are simply Coupa procurement alternatives, whereas Tipalti offers PO management, AP automation, and global payments software that helps your company achieve its spend control goals from procurement through to payment.
Varis (formerly BuyerQuest)
G2 rating:
Varis is an end-to-end P2P solution for organizations looking to digitize their procurement process. The next-generation system brings eCommerce shopping experiences to enterprises.
The Varis (formerly BuyerQuest) platform allows end-users to make better, more informed decisions while enabling tighter trading relationships with suppliers. You can reduce procurement process friction, drive contract compliance, and collaborate directly with suppliers.
Top Features
- Simplified purchasing experience with an intuitive interface.
- Increase supplier engagement with invoice creation and e-invoicing options.
- Actionable reporting with a 360° view of an organization’s spend.
Serviceable Market
The B2B procurement tool is made for franchises, co-ops, GPOs, and other organizations with decentralized spending, looking to simplify purchasing.
Strengths
- An intuitive dashboard that keeps all your actions visible with instant email alerts.
- Simple to search for buyers as everything is loaded within the same shopper experience.
- Excellent support staff that’s available when any issue arises.
Pricing
Pricing is custom. You can schedule a free demo.
Bottomline
G2 rating:
Bottomline is a market-leading digital banking and payments platform designed to engage intelligently with customers and deepen profitable relationships. The system provides invoice, payment, and document automation solutions in 92 countries.
The Bottomline platform is at the forefront of making complex business payments smart, simple, and secure. They offer plans designed to help your organization grow with added value for years and decades to come.
Top Features
- Automate the entire AP lifecycle and financial messaging flows.
- Streamline invoice receipt, accelerate approvals, and make electronic payments from a single dashboard.
- Consolidate payments and banking departmentally with a comprehensive and streamlined solution.
Serviceable Market
SMBs looking to engage intelligently with customers and grow profitable relationships.
Strengths
- Streamline payment processes for efficiency, security, and visibility.
- Gain insight into data, improve bill review process, increase efficiency, enable better decision making, enhance vendor relationships, and deliver improved program results.
- User monitoring and behavioral analysis combine to reduce risk and detect fraud.
Pricing
Call for a custom quote.
Tradeshift
G2 rating:
Tradeshift is a market leader in electronic invoicing and accounts payable automation. The company is an innovator in supplier financing and B2B marketplaces. The cloud-based platform helps companies go paperless and touchless for the entire order-to-pay cycle.
The Tradeshift platform specializes in supply chain payment and marketplaces, helping suppliers and buyers digitize all trade transactions. You can automate AP workflows and scale without limit.
Top Features
- The entire order-to-pay cycle is automated with digital invoice capture.
- Tradeshift Engage brings sellers free access to supplier collaboration and analytics.
- Tradeshift Cash means sellers get paid earlier and more predictably with access to “always-on” cash flow.
Serviceable Market
Best for global enterprise companies addressing multi-region compliance issues.
There’s a special emphasis on transportation, logistics, retail, manufacturing, tech, pharma, and CPG.
Strengths
- Authenticate and confirm invoices faster with concise data analysis.
- Incredible functionality with multiple customizations and choices.
- Easy to use tool with a collaborative interface that enables simple invoice submission.
Pricing
Quote-based pricing.
Corcentric
TrustRadius rating:
G2 rating:
Corcentric helps thousands of companies enhance cash flow with a spend and revenue management platform supporting P2P and order-to-cash cycles. They offer an unmatched combination of software, payments, and advisory services. Users have the advantage of one platform to manage both P2P and accounts payable systems.
The modular SaaS source-to-pay software includes supplier management, contract lifecycle management, analytics, procurement, sourcing, and more. They truly transform how companies purchase and get paid in the modern financial landscape.
Top Features
- Automate and accelerate AR and AP processes with astute contract management.
- Eliminate inefficiencies and gain better control and visibility into 100% of your spend.
- Eliminate credit risk with guaranteed payment and DSO reduction.
Serviceable Market
Best for mid-market and Fortune 1000 companies looking for business spend and revenue management software.
Strengths
- Manage 100% of invoices electronically, reducing processing costs by up to 80%.
- Improved quote-to-cash that liberates cash flow and working capital.
- Real-time and immediate AR and order-to-cash cycle efficiency.
Pricing
For custom quotes, contact the sales team and speak to an expert with deep experience in your industry.
Tipalti
TrustRadius rating:
G2 rating:
Tipalti is an AP automation platform, integrating with your ERP or accounting software, that eliminates 80% of the workload spent on managing global supplier payment operations. The holistic cloud system offers virtual payment services, supplier onboarding, tax compliance, invoice processing, and more.
The platform prioritizes efficiency and helps companies deliver a global white-label experience. Businesses looking to scale finance and operations trust Tipalti to provide a complete and global B2B payables automation solution.
Top Features
- Built-in OCR with automated invoice processing.
- Payment methods, entities, currencies, subsidiaries, and geographies are combined and reconciled in real-time.
- Eliminate financial and compliance risks with W-9/W-8 tax compliance, audit trails, approval workflows, and role-based views.
Serviceable Market
Companies with high volume and complex AP operations across various business verticals from software to eCommerce, manufacturing, online services, tech, gaming, gig economy, and marketplaces.
Strengths
- Global, performance-based platform for marketplaces, networks, and communities.
- Reduce your payment error rates against 26,000 rules.
- End-to-end, invoice-based supplier payments designed for growing companies.
Pricing
Pricing is custom and varies based on business needs, processing requirements, and the volume of users.
Tipalti Express and Tipalti Pro are the two plans offered.
- Tipalti Express has straightforward payment capabilities for small business owners.
- Tipalti Pro is for medium and enterprise companies with multi-entity payables and international tax IDs.
Coupa vs Tipalti
What does Tipalti do?
Tipalti is a PO management, AP automation, and global payments software provider. Tipalti supports all phases of the payables management workflow in one cloud platform. It’s a top Coupa alternative worth considering.
Tipalti Product Capabilities Overview
Tipalti addresses everything from PO management, supplier onboarding, and vetting to tax and regulatory compliance, invoice processing, 2&3-way PO matching, intelligent approval workflows, and payments to suppliers. Tipalti supports various payment methods in 196 countries and in 120 currencies, supplier payment status communications, real-time payment reconciliation, and reporting.
Tipalti also offers advanced global AP capabilities, such as early payments, multi-entity AP, Multi-FX, and FX-hedging. Tipalti integrates with all major ERPs and accounting systems, syncing with subsidiary GL, ensuring payables information is up to date, and accelerating financial close by more than 25%.
What does Coupa do?
TrustRadius ratings:
G2 rating:
Coupa is a business spend management and procurement software platform. Their solutions include suites of applications covering different areas of spend, procurement, expense management, sourcing, and inventory management. Coupa also has AP automation capabilities, including supplier payments and invoice management.
Recognized as
TrustRadius’s #1 Accounts Payables Solution:
1st Place – Best Feature Set
1st Place – Usability
1st Place – Customer Support
End-to-End AP Automation: Tipalti vs Coupa
Tipalti offers end-to-end accounts payable automation, beginning with self-service supplier onboarding and tax compliance through an online supplier portal that’s white labeled so your brand takes center stage with suppliers.
At the end of the AP automation cycle, Tipalti’s global payments capabilities kick in to pay approved invoices. You’ll have a choice of multiple payment methods to 196 countries, in 120 available currencies. Tipalti makes cross-border payments with advanced foreign exchange (FX) features like hedging. With Tipalti Detect, Tipalti also offers AI-based fraud detection to help prevent your company from paying bad actors. All payables data is synced in real-time with your ERP or accounting software, including automated payment reconciliation. This makes reporting easy with Tipalti.
Tipalti is an all-in-one provider and regulated holder of a Money Transmitter License. Therefore, Tipalti software users don’t need to obtain and implement other partnerships outside Tipalti to facilitate payments, as they would with Coupa. That’s a significant advantage of Tipalti.
Invoice Management: Tipalti vs Coupa
Tipalti enables a automated invoice processing workflow with machine learning (ML) powered OCR technology that captures the header and line-level details. 2-way and 3-way PO matching allows automated syncing of POs and GRNs from your ERP (or from Tipalti’s PO management solution) to Tipalti in order to complete the PO match flow, helping eliminate overspending and strengthen financial controls. Tipalti’s PO management functionality helps your company achieve greater spend under compliance at a much lower cost than Coupa.
Coupa’s software focuses on procurement and e-invoicing using XML, PO flip or manual entry by suppliers in its portal. Coupa also does 2-way or 3-way invoice matching. Coupa’s machine learning-based solution for emailed invoices isn’t a strong solution for the following reasons.
Coupa’s Invoice Smash OCR option for emailed invoices:
- Costs extra money
- Has limits to what it can read
- Takes a long time to learn & self-correct
Tipalti does not make suppliers change their behaviors by requiring them to submit their invoices via a portal. Invoice submission via the portal is one way to submit invoices with Tipalti but suppliers can continue to submit invoices via email. The success of Coupa relies on e-invoicing adoption rates, which are dependent on the bargaining power of the payer. For example, Walmart has the power to enforce manual invoice entry, whereas smaller companies can expect to receive more emailed PDF invoices.
Supplier Onboarding & Support: Tipalti vs Coupa
With Tipalti AP automation, your business gets all-in-one supplier onboarding and management. Tipalti’s payer-branded portal for self-service supplier onboarding includes guided digital tax forms for tax compliance and the collection of a supplier’s preferred payment method information. Tipalti validates supplier payment data automatically using 26 thousand global banking rules.
Coupa also provides a self-service supplier onboarding solution. But it doesn’t offer a payer-branded supplier portal. Unlike Tipalti, Coupa does not validate supplier data automatically either.
Coupa’s focus is on spend management functionality, including PO management and a supplier network providing supplier matches for purchasing. Coupa also offers AI-driven spend analytics via Coupa Community Insight.
Future Strategic Direction & Roadmap: Tipalti vs Coupa
Tipalti’s Finance Operations vision and its ability to execute on its roadmap means that customers will continue to enjoy new and enhanced product features that meet their current and future needs. Tipalti has over 300 product experts that work across different solution areas. Every year, Tipalti releases over 170 product features and improvements. Tipalti’s world-class global operations team (with over 200+ members) will get your business up and running on Tipalti quickly, train, advise, respond to and support your organization.
Tipalti has a tried and tested methodology to ensure fast speed to market with minimal disruption so your business can realize the value of our platform sooner. We’ve established that expertise from our experience serving thousands of highly-satisfied customers. Our customers are vital to our success, as evidenced by our industry-leading 98% Customer Satisfaction score and 99% retention ratings.
Private equity firm Thoma Bravo is buying Coupa in the first half of 2023, taking the company private. As described in this Forbes article, the question is whether the Coupa acquisition will be a precursor to cost-cutting. Cost-cutting might result in a diminished user experience and customer value. Will thought leaders & executives impacting the company’s future strategic direction depart the company post-acquisition?
Features of Tipalti vs. Coupa
Although Coupa and Tipalti both help companies automate their accounts payable processes, each platform incorporates different features and solutions for finance teams. Here’s a look at some of the differences between Tipalti and Coupa.
 |  | |
|---|---|---|
| *Limited functionality | ||
| Global Payments | Paying to 196 countries in 120 currencies with six different payment methods and 26k rules to reduce payment errors. Money Transmitter License | Coupa Pay with comparable payment capability but no MTL and no payment validation rules |
| PO Management | Integrated PO and payables solution, helping streamline company purchases, improve spend controls, and reduce AP processing time. Integrated with Slack to accelerate approvals | PO creation, no Slack integration to accelerate approvals |
| Automated Invoice Processing & PO-Matching | OCR (Header and line level scan and capture), Machine Learning, Managed services; 2&3-way PO-Matching
| Comparable capability |
| Supplier Onboarding and Vetting | Effortlessly onboard vendors with a client-branded portal, preferred payment method, currency, and payment thresholds. 26K+ rules validate payments, screen against OFAC/SDN lists
| Onboarding through Coupa network but no 26k payment validation rules
|
| Multi-Entity Payable Reconciliation | Manage multiple entities in a single instance with a consolidated view; instant reconciliation across entities and payables workflows
| Can have multiple entities but cannot configure entity-level branding and tax workflow.
|
| Tax Compliance | KPMG approved tax engine; collect W8 & W9 tax forms, collect and validate IRS and VAT tax ID, 1099 & 1042 prep reports and withholding. Validates against 3,000+ rules | Collect tax forms but no tax validation rules |
| FX Solutions | Currency conversions without the complications – save time and money on currency conversions. Also, advanced FX solutions – intercompany bank transfers, FX hedging, payee FX
| No FX solutions
|
| Early Payments/Rebates | Payees can get paid earlier than their due date without any change to the AP process or impacting your working capital
| Supply chain finance & Accelerate product
|
| ERP Integraptions | Native API integrations with major ERPs (NetSuite, Intacct, and QuickBooks Online & Xero). Integration with all other ERPs via pre-built connectors using no-code, drag-and-drop interface
| Comparable
|
Knowing Which Solution is Best for Your Business
Selecting an AP Automation solution that fits your business’ needs is an important choice, especially for growing teams needing a solution that can scale with their business. Your business may also need specific features such as international payment capabilities, Multi-FX, Multi-Entity, or tax and regulatory compliance. Evaluate these feature differences to help make your decision.
When to Choose Tipalti?
You are running a hyper-growth business, whether you are scaling domestically or expanding internationally
If you run a hyper-growth business, whether scaling rapidly domestically or expanding internationally, you need a payable solution with built-in scalability to help future-proof your payable operations. As your company grows, your AP workflow complexities increase, including paying global suppliers, handling multi-subsidiary business payables, and processing a growing amount of payments. You also need to offer a wide range of localized payment methods to pay your domestic and global suppliers in their preferred payment methods and local currencies.
Tipalti’s end-to-end accounts payable platform future-proofs your payables operations, so you don’t need to keep investing more resources as you grow. Tipalti’s Multi-Entity capability enables payers to manage a large number of entities within the same instance of Tipalti, enabling centralized controls and financial reporting.
Tipalti’s advanced capabilities include KPMG-approved tax capability for IRS compliance, collecting, validating, and maintaining IRS, W-9, and W-8 series forms, VAT details, generating 1099/1042-S preparation reports, and calculating any necessary withholdings.
While Coupa has limited international payout capability, Tipalti can execute fast global payments to 196 countries in 120 currencies, supporting multiple international payment methods—global ACH (eCheck), wire transfer, PayPal, and prepaid debit card. You can also streamline your FX conversion workflow with advanced FX capabilities such as Multi-FX, FX hedging, and Payee FX optimization.
You want to automate your entire workflow and accelerate financial close
Accounts payable processing comes with many potential inefficiencies that increase the workload of your AP team. As manual operations increase in complexity, they can slow down the financial close process.
Tipalti makes AP processes invisible. By cutting out 80% of manual payables workload, you can align your resources to focus on mission-critical activities instead of back-office financial operations. Tipalti enables a complete touchless invoice processing workflow with machine learning (ML) powered OCR technology that captures the header and line-level details. 2-way and 3-way PO matching allow automated syncing of POs and GDRs from your ERP to Tipalti in order to complete the PO match flow, helping eliminate overspending and strengthen financial controls.
Tipalti also helps streamline the supplier onboarding process with a self-service, white-labeled portal, enabling faster, more accurate payee data collection and verification. Provide visibility into payment status via a 24/7 multi-language partner portal and proactive automatic payment status emails. Tipalti automatically validates supplier payment data in real-time using 26,000 global banking rules to eliminate payment errors proactively.
You can accelerate financial close by more than 25% as payment methods, currencies, subsidiaries, and geographies are combined and reconciled in real-time for instant visibility. Detailed transaction and reconciliation reports are integrated with your ERP system, providing a consolidated view of all payable accounts.
You want to strengthen compliance and controls and reduce Tax fraud and audit risk
Since AP involves direct access to cash reserves, it’s critical to institute proper controls and governance. Tax compliance is another crucial aspect, as manually collecting and validating tax forms from suppliers is fraught with legal and financial risk.
Tipalti provides granular controls over payables and payment operations to increase the security of sensitive financial data, ensure ongoing OFAC compliance, and improve management oversight of key AP processes. Tipalti enables you to strengthen control with built-in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, constantly improving the performance of invoice approval routing with the ability to incorporate Fixed Approval Roles.
Tipalti solves the complex and manual process of collecting tax information via digital capture during the onboarding flow, ensuring information is validated before payment is even processed. Help ensure IRS tax compliance with KPMG-approved tax form data validation and withholding calculations. Collect W-9, and W-8 tax forms, validate IRS and VAT tax IDs, automatically calculate withholdings and generate 1099 / 1042-S tax prep reports with automated filing.
When to Choose Coupa?
You are a large enterprise with a sizable tech budget
Coupa is a solution primarily for large enterprises looking to solve a procurement problem and have sizable technology budgets. If you are a midmarket company, Coupa can be cost-prohibitive as the pricing model is designed for larger enterprises. Midmarket companies might find Coupa’s solution too complex as it is suited more for large enterprise companies with a dedicated procurement team. As primarily a procurement solution, Coupa is a fit for slower-growth large enterprises where growth is every bit as important as just cost controls.
In contrast, Tipalti’s pricing model is ideal for midmarket companies. Pricing starts at $149 per month for the platform fee. As your business gets more complex, you can upgrade to Tipalti’s more advanced capabilities, such as W-8 tax forms, international tax IDs, or multi-entity payables.
Tipalti’s solution is ideal for midmarket companies to pursue cost controls while growing and scaling efficiently. Eliminate the manual workload spent managing payables while avoiding AP hiring and focusing finance on high-value initiatives. As companies add more invoices, payments, global suppliers, subsidiaries, costs, and audit controls, Tipalti is built to easily and rapidly handle changing needs without requiring more resources.
Your organization has the bandwidth to support the time and resource-intensive implementation
It can take 8-12 months to implement and go live with Coupa. Many resources are required to be involved in the implementation process, including project managers, IT, procurement, and finance. Also, implementing Coupa requires significant change management initiatives and company-wide training because of the number of end-users needed for procurement, sourcing, and inventory solutions. If your priority is to automate AP instead of the overall procurement process, you still have to wait for the lengthy implementation effort to be completed.
In contrast, Tipalti has a proven track record of getting customers live in as little as two weeks. The “white glove” implementation service provides customers with dedicated implementation, customer success, and supplier enablement experts that ensure a successful and scalable payables setup and a stable and accurate ERP sync.
You are looking for a procurement solution, and you are ok with managing some AP workflows manually
Coupa is primarily a procurement solution designed for large enterprises. It is suitable for large businesses to manage their procurement process, but some AP automation capabilities are unavailable. So need to manage them manually or add several other solutions to round up the AP cycle.
For the supplier payment workflow, Coupa launched “Coupa Pay” in 2018, but it still has a relatively low adoption rate within its customer base. Also, Coupa doesn’t have its own payment rails, relying on integrations with PayPal, Transfermates, and banks for card payments, creating complexity and unpredictability.
Coupa Pay offers limited cross-border payments capabilities and has no advanced FX solutions such as Multi-FX and FX hedging.
Lastly, Coupa has limited tax compliance capabilities. They collect tax forms but do not offer tax rules validation to help ensure IRS compliance. You need to manage the vendor tax compliance process outside of Coupa.
Tipalti Customer Testimonials
“Tipalti streamlined international payments and compliance. As we continue to acquire companies, we can maximize these investments without compromising scalability or needing new approaches or technology.”
Phil Newell | Director of Finance IT, GoDaddy
“Vendors can easily set up their preferred payment method and have all their documents in one place. Tipalti documents the approvals through an easy workflow and completely consolidates reconciliations.”
Nancy Spencer | VP of Finance, Aceable
“Tipalti has allowed us to make quick and significant process improvements and has enabled us to improve our payment timing. Tipalti also elevated our financial reporting process, and we’ve shaved two days off of our month-end close process.”
Andrew Cole | Senior Accounting Manager, Uptake
