curve

Tipalti vs. Concur: Which Product Is the Best Fit for You?


In this guide, we’ll offer a comparison of Concur vs. Tipalti, with a focus on AP automation for invoice processing and approvals and global supplier and partner payments. We’ve also paired it with a comprehensive guide to accounts payable.

As your business expands, you need an automation system that will efficiently handle invoice processing and global supplier payments, reducing your business costs. And you need to steer through any economic headwinds to optimize your business results. 

You can do this by using AP automation software to streamline the payables workload, including supplier onboarding and tax compliance, purchase order and invoice management, approvals, and payments. This workflow automation lets your company reduce routine accounting time and shift to higher-value strategic finance work. 

Scalability for handling a larger volume of more complex supplier transactions and reducing future accounts payable hires are benefits of AP automation. You’ll also improve financial controls and reduce costly fraud and error risks. 

Alternatives, like Tipalti and Concur, use ERP system or accounting software integration to eliminate manual processes from your AP workflow.

Which solution best meets your business needs? In this guide to Tipalti vs. Concur, we compare product functionality for each platform. We also highlight  the differences to help you decide which software is a better fit for your company’s accounts payable automation and global payments needs.

What Does Tipalti Do? 

Tipalti is a provider of robust cloud-based AP automation software. Tipalti software is mostly used by midmarket companies and the software scales with you as your company grows.

Save your top talent for business growth.

Stop wasting skilled workers on monotonous, manual processes. Use them for innovation. Tipalti bridges the gap with end-to-end automation for various accounting tasks like invoice management, global payments, PO matching, reconciliation, and more. Sign up for a free demo now.

Tipalti Product Capabilities Overview

Tipalti’s AP automation, and global payments software provides purchase order management, self-service supplier onboarding, invoice management, and tax and regulatory compliance. Tipalti software improves business efficiency. Tipalti offers scalability to expand through internal growth and acquisitions while minimizing headcount additions. Tipalti software saves your company money and lets you avoid the need to implement another system when your company grows to perform the same functions. 

With multi-entity cloud architecture, Tipalti supports payables across your enterprise globally, including business units, subsidiaries, and divisions. Tipalti provides enterprise-grade financial controls to protect your company from fraud risk and strengthen internal controls. 

Tipalti supports multiple payment methods in 196 countries and 120, supplier payment status communications, payment reconciliation, and reporting. . And you can decide whether to split or shift payment processing fees to payees, reducing your costs. 

Tipalti integrates with all ERP and accounting systems, including:

  • Oracle NetSuite
  • QuickBooks
  • Sage Intacct and Sage ERPs
  • Xero
  • Microsoft Dynamic ERPs
  • SAP ERPs
  • Oracle ERP
  • Workday

Tipalti Pricing

Tipalti’s SaaS pricing model starts with the basic platform fee and lets you select or add advanced features as your business grows. Advanced functionality includes W-8 tax forms, international tax IDs, or multi-entity payables.

Tipalti pricing starts at $149 per month for the platform fee. As your business adds complexity, you can easily upgrade to Tipalti’s more advanced features.

What Does Concur Do?

Concur provides cloud-based software for expense management, travel, and invoice processing & payment. Concur has a strong travel and expense (T&E) offering and is primarily a spend management platform. Businesses use the company’s invoice products for AP automation. 

Concur Product Capabilities Overview

Concur helps businesses manage their spend with expense management, travel and invoice software. Its invoice product provides functionality from purchase requisition through to invoice payment. 

Invoice Capture uses OCR technology and SAP Leonardo Machine Learning to auto-populate data, followed by human validation to ensure the information from the header and line item level of the invoice is accurate before it gets processed.

Once captured, the invoice gets routed for review and approval with the option to use a mobile app for approvals. Once an invoice is fully approved, it can be paid via ACH, check, or credit card voucher. The payer chooses how they would like to pay the vendor. 

The Concur platform needs integration with third-party apps to provide cross-border payments functionality and access to a broader range of payment methods beyond ACH, check, and credit card vouchers. Concur payment partners include NvoicePay, Paymerang, WayPay, TransferMate, AMEX, and others.

Concur integrates with ERP systems including:

  • SAP ERPs
  • Oracle NetSuite
  • QuickBooks
  • Sage ERPS
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Business Central (NAV)

Concur Pricing

Concur offers three SMB packages of its invoice product

  1. Automate: ~$2 per invoice average price (includes OCR, approvals routing, 2- & 3-way matching, check / ACH / credit card voucher payments)
  2. Insights: variable pricing (adds on personal data views, spend management alerts, line-level data capture to the Automate package)
  3. Optimize: variable pricing (adds on budget management + monitoring features & consulting services to the Insights package)

Features of Tipalti vs. Concur

Both Tipalti and Concur offer software platforms for accounts payable process automation. Each software vendor offers features and solutions to streamline the payables process. Let’s identify and compare some of the differences between Tipalti vs. Concur:

FunctionalityTipaltiConcur
*Limited functionality 
Payment Methods
ACH, Global ACH (eCheck), Wire Transfer, PayPal, Check, and Prepaid debit card
Limited payment methods and currencies – no global ACH (retired in 2022), no wire, no PayPal, no prepaid debit card
Global Payment Coverage
Payments to 196 countries in 120 currencies.
Limited global payment methods. Requires use of payment partners for country & currency reach
Automated invoice processing
Invoice capture by OCR at header and line level, machine learning, managed services. 2- & 3-way PO matching, custom fields support
Comparable capability
PO Management
Integrated PO management solution, helping streamline company purchases, improve spend controls, and reduce AP processing time
PO creation, no Slack integration to accelerate approvals
Supplier Onboarding and Vetting
Self-service supplier onboarding with a client-branded portal. Supplier choice of preferred payment method, currency; 26,000+ rules validate payments, screen against OFAC/SDN lists
Vendor data is uploaded manually or via API; no self-serve onboarding capability; the supplier portal was retired in Oct 2020. Payer chooses payment method for each supplier
Tax Compliance
KPMG-approved tax engine, captures W8 & W9 tax forms, collects and validates IRS and VAT tax ID, 1099 & 1042 prep reports and calculates tax withholding. Automatically validates using more than 3,000 rules
No tax compliance
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 and payers can take advantage of early payment discounts to save money while encouraging payee adoption of safer payment methods
Only rebates via card
ERP Integrations
Native API integrations with major ERPs (NetSuite, Intacct, and QuickBooks Online). Integration with all other ERPs via pre-built connectors using no-code, drag-and-drop interface
Comparable ERP integration options, but no longer have native integration capabilities and require 3rd party connectors

Which Solution Works Best for Your Business (and Why)

Selecting and implementing an AP automation solution that best fits your business will streamline your financial workflows and save time and money by making the payables processes more efficient. The following scenarios will help you select the right partner:

When to Choose Tipalti

You run a hyper-growth business that is rapidly scaling

You want to automate the entire accounts payable process, end-to-end

You want to strengthen compliance and controls while reducing risk

When to Choose Concur

You do not conduct any business outside of the US

You do not have a high volume of vendors

Your need if for a travel and expense management solution

Signs It’s Time to Switch to Tipalti

Concur software is not as efficient as Tipalti because it lacks some critical AP automation features. Below are a few reasons why you should consider switching to Tipalti from manual processes or a less robust AP automation system. 

1. You Want the Benefits of a Self-Service Supplier Portal

2. You need multiple supplier payment options and broader global payment coverage

3. You Need Help Streamlining Your Tax Compliance

4. You Have an Increasing Number of Reconciliation Challenges

What Our Customers Say

As we were growing, we did not want to keep adding more people to support outbound payments. The big focus was to streamline everything, and remove manual processes as much as we could.

Phil Newell | Director, Finance & Accounting IT, GoDaddy

Our AP operation was all manual processing. It was brutal—emails back and forth and trying to record routine documentation. We were scrambling to find information for 1099s. We needed a more customized solution.

Nancy Spencer | VP of Finance, Aceable

Our finance professionals were spending 70 hours per month processing payments—we needed a system that would add automation and efficiency to our operations.

Andrew Cole | Senior Accounting Manager, Uptake

Save Time and Money with Accounts Payable Automation

In our survey of global accounts payable teams conducted with IFOL, we found that nearly half of all respondents process invoices manually over five days each month. Payables automation technology lets your company reduce data entry time and shift more resources and team knowledge to strategic finance for achieving business revenue growth and cost reductions. 

When comparing the benefits of Tipalti vs. Concur, consider each system’s fit for your needs today and over the long-term into the future. Tipalti’s AP Automation solution helps you to streamline your day-to-day operations, rapidly scale and adapt to changing business needs, accelerate business visibility, and strengthen fraud, financial, cost, and cash controls.

Get started with a free demo of Tipalti today.

About the Author

  • Linkedin

RELATED ARTICLES