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Over the past few years, Canadian organizations that have embraced AP automation, have reported significant gains, including reduced processing times, improved accuracy, and substantial cost savings.
However, there are still barriers to widespread adoption. One reason is the sheer amount of platforms to choose from. How do you know which one is right for your business? What if you choose the wrong one? These are valid concerns.
Plooto is a reliable AP automation solution that works for many people. It has emerged as a popular choice for small and medium businesses (SMBs), offering robust features like automated payments, enhanced security, and a myriad of integrations.
Yet, as companies grow and their needs become more complex, they may find limitations with Plooto. Exploring alternatives to Plooto and other accounts payable software can be crucial for optimizing financial workflows, ensuring continued functionality, and promoting healthy scalability.
In this article, we’ll examine the top Plooto alternatives, including key features, serviceable market, and pricing, to help you make the most informed decision about managing business payments.
What is Plooto?
Founded in 2015, Plooto provides smart, end-to-end accounts payable and accounts receivable software. The cloud-based payment solution is designed to streamline and automate the AP and AR processes for SMBs, enabling businesses to send and receive electronic payments efficiently. This eliminates the need for traditional, time-consuming methods like paper cheques or manual bank transfers.
Plooto is particularly beneficial for companies that require seamless integrations with their existing tech stack. It supports popular accounting software brands like QuickBooks (QuickBooks Online) and Xero. The company is scaling fast and grew revenue by over 400% between 2019 and 2022.​
Other Alternatives and Competitors to Plooto
Tipalti
Tipalti is a global payment platform that streamlines the various complexities of your accounting lifecycle. The AP management platform covers everything from procurement and expenses to invoice management, a self-service supplier portal, automated approval workflows, built-in compliance, instant reconciliation, and more.
Founded in 2010, the cloud platform serves thousands of global customers, helping Canadian business owners automate financial processes, reduce manual workload, ensure compliance, and strengthen business relationships.
Key Features
- Reporting in real-time, global tax compliance, and automated reconciliation
- Invoice management with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and custom approval workflows
- Integrated procurement and expenses with PO management and budget visibility
- Robust security with adherence to regulatory standards like GDPR, OFAC, and AML
- International payments with multi-currency support and various payment methods
Serviceable Market
Tipalti caters to a wide range of businesses looking for smart AP automation. Whether you’re a tech startup that needs to scale or an e-commerce retailer looking for more efficient payment processing, the AP management software is versatile.
Pricing
Tipalti offers a subscription-based, SaaS pricing model, that’s customized to the specific needs and scale of your business. The pricing structure includes:
- A monthly subscription
- Charges per transaction (varies on the payment method and currency)
- A one-time fee for onboarding and integration
Custom pricing plans can also be arranged for larger enterprises or businesses with specific needs or ERP integrations.
REPAY
REPAY (Repay Holdings Corp) is a Canadian payment processing and automation software platform that offers a myriad of features tailored to meet the needs of businesses across several sectors.
Founded in 2006, REPAY streamlines the payment process by offering a comprehensive suite of services, including credit and debit card processing, ACH payments, and electronic bill payment and presentment (EBPP).
The highly flexible platform is designed to help businesses seamlessly integrate payment solutions into their existing systems. Using REPAY’s multiple payment channels (online, mobile, and in-person), companies can manage payments more efficiently, improving cash flow, and enhancing the overall customer experience
Key Features
- Integrated payment solutions (ACH, credit card/debit card, EBPP) consolidated into a single platform
- Automated accounts receivable (AR) workflows to manage payments and invoices
- Robust security measures to protect sensitive payment data and ensure regulatory compliance
- Variety of customer payment channels, from online portals to phone, text-to-pay, and more
- Customizable reporting and dashboards to gain insights into payment trends and other metrics
Serviceable Market
REPAY is well-suited for business sectors that require efficient processing of recurring payments and high transaction volumes. The brand serves a wide range of industries, including healthcare, automotive, consumer finance, education, and utilities.
Pricing
REPAY does not list specific pricing information on its site. The company offers a free version and a free trial, allowing potential clients to explore features before making a final commitment. For detailed pricing, contact REPAY directly.
Quadient AP / Beanworks
Quadient (formerly Beanworks) is a global payments automation platform designed to help a business streamline AP processes. The system specializes in customer communications management (CCM), mailing solutions, customer relationship management (CRM), and parcel locker systems.
Quadient offers a wide range of features that enable businesses to manage invoices, payments, and purchase orders more efficiently, thereby reducing manual work and improving financial operations. The customer-facing brand provides software solutions that help organizations manage and optimize customer data and communications across a variety of channels.
Key Features
- Streamline invoice approval management and process invoices up to nine times faster
- Real-time expense management with mobile expense reporting and approvals
- Custom integrations with top ERP systems like Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, and QuickBooks
- Robust approval channels to ensure compliance with expense policies and rules
- 3-way PO-matching to streamline budgetary controls and speed up reconciliation
Serviceable Market
Quadient serves a diverse range of markets. It offers solutions designed to optimize customer communications, mail-related operations, and accounts payable processes. The system is tailored for mid-sized companies looking to automate their accounts payable processes.
Pricing
Quadient’s pricing varies significantly based on company size, the complexity of needs, and the specific features required.
For the CCM tools, basic packages start at a few hundred dollars a month for small businesses and can scale to several thousand dollars depending on the volume and complexity of communications. The parcel locker systems can start at $10,000 for a basic setup and rise significantly for medium-sized businesses.
How can finance teams drive business growth?
The first step is automating key manual tasks, so teams can focus on strategic expansion. Ready to learn how?
Plooto vs Tipalti
Plooto and Tipalti are two AP automation platforms that cater to different business needs. Plooto works best for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking for a cost-effective system to automate accounts receivable and accounts payable processes. While it integrates with top brands like QuickBooks and Xero, it may lack the more advanced features needed for large businesses.
In comparison, Tipalti offers global payment features and advanced tools for handling high transaction volumes and multi-currency transactions. The end-to-end payment system also offers robust tax compliance and risk management features, expense management, intelligent procurement, reconciliation, and more, making it an ideal choice for multinational or multi-entity businesses.
While Tipalti enhances financial workflows, Plooto simplifies basic accounting, making each a leader in its respective domain.
What Does Tipalti Do?
Tipalti is an end-to-end AP automation solution that offers tools to streamline everything from procurement and PO management to supplier onboarding, invoice processing, global payments, employee expenses, compliance, and reconciliation.
Experience the true benefits of accounts payable automation with a system that offers functions for tax and regulatory compliance, self-billing, supplier payment status communications, fraud detection, and reporting capabilities.
The brand’s advanced global capabilities include multi-entity AP, multi-FX (intercompany bank transfers), and FX-hedging. Tipalti seamlessly integrates with popular ERP and accounting systems (including Xero, NetSuite, and Quickbooks). It also syncs with subsidiary GLs, ensuring accurate payables data and accelerating financial close by more than 25%.
Tipalti Product Capabilities Overview
Tipalti is considered an end-to-end solution because it automates everything, including expenses, PO and supplier management, invoice processing, international payments, reconciliation, and more.
By leveraging advanced technology, the platform helps companies improve efficiency, reduce manual workload, ensure compliance, and effectively scale their financial workflows. Key capabilities include:
Automated Expense Management
Automated expense policies minimize fraud, ensure compliance, and enhance the customer experience. Tipalti provides a convenient mobile app for simplified expense filing by employees and quick approvals by managers.
Integrated Procurement
Streamline procurement, reduce AP processing times, and curb spending. User-friendly, guided requisition templates improve team adoption and accuracy with fast implementation and time-to-value.
Tipalti integrates with Jira and Slack to speed up the approval process. The system also provides a contract interface to quickly search contracts and terms.
Smart Invoice Processing
Extract data from invoices using optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning (ML), minimizing human intervention and manual data entry. Customizable approvals allow you to configure workflows that match specific needs, ensuring timely and accurate approvals. Two-way and three-way PO matching automatically matches invoices with POs and delivery receipts to prevent fraud and discrepancies.
Simplified Global Payments
Tipalti supports 120+ currencies across 190 countries, enabling seamless global transactions and online payments. The system extends a variety of payment methods, including ACH, wire transfers, PayPal, prepaid debit cards, cheques, and more.
Tipalti also enables payment scheduling to optimize cash flow and ensure timely disbursements.
Intuitive Supplier Portal
Tipalti offers a self-service supplier portal where vendors can submit bank account and contact information, manage their profiles, track payment status, and communicate with AP teams. The supplier portal serves as a primary contact center, providing real-time visibility into payment status, cash flow, and detailed reporting.
International Tax Compliance
Tipalti offers automated tax filing for 1099 and 1042-S forms, ensuring compliance with IRS rules and requirements. The platform supports VAT compliance in multiple jurisdictions, helping businesses effectively manage international tax obligations.
Tipalti also ensures adherence to global regulatory standards such as GDPR, OFAC, and AML, safeguarding against legal and financial risks.
Additional Features
- Data encryption to protect sensitive financial data and ensure secure transmissions
- Automated reconciliation with bank statements and accounting records
- API access for custom integrations and enhanced connectivity with other systems
- Compliance monitoring with regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of penalties
- ERP integrations and other accounting tools like QuickBooks, Xero, and MS Dynamics
Tipalti Price Range
Tipalti offers custom pricing based on business size, the number of processed transactions, and the specific features and modules required. The pricing includes a combination of monthly subscription fees and transaction fees.
What Does Plooto Do?
Plooto is a powerful accounts payable and receivable platform that helps a company gain total visibility and control over AR and AP processes. Like top competitors Square and Stampli, the payment and bookkeeping platform was built for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and accounting firms. Plooto streamlines electronic payments to domestic and international vendors, while integrating with popular accounting software like QuickBooks and Xero.
The Plooto solution allows a business to get smart about its money. Time payments to better manage cash and ensure you are taking advantage of all early-payment discounts.
The system supports 120,000+ vendors and suppliers, and 6000+ businesses, with enhanced financial controls that keep operating costs low. Plooto facilitates faster AR and AP cycles, reduces errors, and lowers costs per transaction.
Plooto Product Capabilities Overview
Plooto is a cloud-based platform that offers comprehensive accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) automation solutions. Here are some of the top features you can expect from the solution:
Custom Payment Approvals
Handle workflows the way you want. Custom rules will automate, route, and tailor payment approvals to the right team member, at the right time. This allows teams to focus on the bigger picture and enables higher-value work.
Smart Integrations
Ploot offers a two-way sync with top accounting software, such as QuickBooks, Xero, and Netsuite, to eliminate data entry errors and produce more accurate books.
CRA Remittance
Canadian customers can pay government remittances in one spot, from payroll deductions to tax payments.
International Payments
Make global payments worldwide. Using Plooto, a business can enjoy competitive exchange rates without transfer fees. The system facilitates payments in various currencies, making it easier for organizations to handle international transactions.
Modern Invoice Management
Import business invoices via email or upload them directly to the Plooto platform. Once importing is complete, theinvoices will be automatically processed and published into your accounting software. Then the system creates payments from your invoices and syncs them back into your accounting software as they are paid.
Additional Features
- Custom approval tiers to review payments before any funds are transferred
- Batch processing multiple payments or invoices simultaneously
- Supports EFT and ACH payments, for a reliable way to transfer funds
- Advanced security measures to ensure the safety of financial data and transactions
- Real-time updates on the status of payments, helping businesses monitor cash flow
Plooto Price Range
Plooto offers several pricing plans customized for individual businesses, as well as accountants and bookkeepers.
- Individual Businesses: $32/month-$59/month and includes features such as advanced payment automation workflows, unlimited approvers, and a sophisticated approval process.
- Accountants and Bookkeepers: $9/month-$59/month and includes payment automation, offering one approver and accountant or bookkeeper, a basic approval workflow, and charges $1 per domestic transaction, limited to 5 transactions monthly​.
Features of Tipalti vs. Plooto
| Tipalti | Plooto | |
| Procurement | Integrated procurement, user-friendly requisitions, PO creation, budget visibility, integration with Slack and Jira, contract interface, and automated notifications. | Does not offer comprehensive procurement solutions. |
| Supplier Management | Supplier portal and preferred payment method/currency, 26K+ rules validate payments,proactive, white-labeled payment status email updates, 24/7 portal access, fee splitting. | Payers can import suppliers from ERP, mass import suppliers, or addManually. No supplier portal or self-service onboarding. |
| Expenses | Instant expense policy management, mobile app for reporting and approvals, automated expense reconciliation. | No expense management features. |
| Invoice Management | OCR with header and line level data capture, change logic applied using ML; optional MS to correct exceptions. 2/3-way PO matching with tolerance thresholds, pre-defined approval rules, built-in messaging (Bill Talk), smart/predictive routing, in-mail bill approvals/updates, and unlimited approvers. | Email or upload invoices. Header-level OCR, no machine learning or managed services. Supplier rules can be set for GL coding. Nosmart GL coding, 2- & 3-way PO matching, bill docs/talk. Payment approval workflows only. |
| Tax Compliance | KPMG-approved, digitally guided W-9 and W-8 collection and validation against 1k rules. 1099and 1042-S prep reports, auto-calculated withholdings, and eFiling integrations. Validate VAT and local tax IDs in 50+ countries against +3,000 rules. DAC7 datacollection and tax prep reporting. | None. Ability to send/receive Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) tax payments directly from Plooto for $3 per payment. |
| Global Payments | Pay to 196 countries in 120 currencies, 6 payment methods. Regulated MSB with MTLs across the US. E-Money license in the UK with FCA. Blue-chip bank partners Citi, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. Detailed payee monitoring and proactive screening, including OFAC/SDN lists. | Pays to 40 countries in 23 currencies. Check, ACH / EFT are primary payment methods. No PayPal, prepaid debit, global ACH (local bank transfer). Payments are made via connected customer bank accounts. |
| FX Solutions | Currency conversions, advanced FX solutions, intercompany bank transfers, FX hedging, and payee FX. | Basic currency conversion for international transactions. FX conversions on pre-funds and withdrawals if currency is different than connected bankaccount. No advanced FX solutions like intercompany bank transfers, or hedging. |
| Multi-Entity | Manage multiple entities with different AP processes and workflows, gain consolidatedView. Instant reconciliation across methods, entities, geos, currencies, and payable workflows. | Designed to supportmulti-entity and multi-subsidiary setups. No branding, onboarding, tax, etc. workflows per entity. |
| Top Integrations | NetSuite, Sage Intacct, QBO, Xero, and MicrosoftDynamics BC. Seamless integration with all other ERPs via pre-built connectors using no-code, drag-and-drop interface | QuickBooks and Xero. |
Knowing Which Solution is Best for Your Business
The first step is to identify your core business needs, whether streamlining AP and global payments (Tipalti) or enhancing accounts receivable with a lower price point (Plooto). Assess each platform’s features, scalability, and integration capabilities to ensure they align with key operational goals.
To make the most informed decision, consider factors like ease of use, customer support, and total cost of ownership.
When to Choose Tipalti?
You have evolving business needs that are growing in scale and complexity
While Plooto solutions are cheap, they are relatively immature and limited. Compared to Tipalti, Plooto may be quickly outgrown as your needs evolve in scale in complexity.
Tipalti will automate, de-risk, and simplify your finance operations on a global basis. This includes procurement, AP automation, expenses, and payments, to bring scale, efficiency, controls, and visibility to your business spend.
Tipalti is designed to grow with your company, whereas, with Plooto, you may need to pursue additional tools outside the brand. Tipalti delivers end-to-end payables tools that are purpose-built to handle the evolving needs of your business.
Plooto is more appropriate for small businesses but can be quickly outgrown as your needs evolve in scale and complexity. Payments are also typically faster with Tipalti.
You need an integrated suite of tools that provides end-to-end solutions.
While Tipalti offers features for procurement, expense management, and reconciliation, Plooto only focuses on payment processing. Tipalti provides a white-label, self-service supplier portal with 26,000+ validation rules to reduce payment errors by up to 66%.
Plooto only provides vendor management through third-party ERPs or other payment partners. Tipalti also offers advanced tools for machine learning, managed services, and fraud management, while Plooto only offers basic fraud features, no ML, and no managed services.
You are looking for a solution that offers global tax services.
Tipalti offers comprehensive, KPMG-approved tax services and global compliance. This includes features like digital form capture, tax prep reports, and withholdings calculations.
A Canadian business can collect and validate VAT and local tax IDs in 50+ countries against more than 3,000 rules. Plooto does not provide tax features.
When to Choose Plooto?
You don’t require advanced tools for managing financial operations
Small businesses may find that Plooto is the best solution for their needs when they first start out. The system is known for its user-friendly interface, making it easy for companies with limited accounting resources to manage payments and receivables efficiently.
You need an Accounts Receivable solution (in addition to Accounts Payable).
Plooto offers accounts receivable and accounts payable tools. With a solution customized for B2B finance teams, a business can automate its accounts receivable and start collecting cash faster.
You are looking for a cost-effective solution with basic tools
Plooto offers a flat-rate pricing model. This can be more predictable and affordable for smaller businesses compared to transaction-based pricing. Plooto’s pricing can be cost-effective for organizations with smaller transaction volumes.
What Customers Are Saying
Our vendors like Tipalti because they get paid on time, and they can track when their payments are coming in.
– Shawna Stewart, Staff Accountant Brooklinen
Tipalti facilitated vendor onboarding. The solution steps right in to collect forms and make payments.
– Sean Doheny, Treasury Manager Sezzle
With Tipalti, we’re able to scale with automation. It’s nice to have everything in one place. I can simply send vendors Tipalti invites, and they onboard themselves.
– Myles Dolatre, Accounting Manager, Influential
Summing It Up
Choosing the best accounts payable automation solution is critical for optimizing workflows and supporting business growth. Canadian companies have seen significant improvements in processing times, accuracy, and cost savings through AP automation, yet the wide variety of tools available can make the decision challenging.
Plooto stands out as a great choice for small to medium-sized businesses seeking a cost-effective solution with basic AP and AR tools. Integrations with popular accounting software and a user-friendly interface make it ideal for businesses with straightforward needs. However, as companies grow and their finances become more complex, they may find that Plooto’s capabilities are lacking.
Tipalti offers a comprehensive suite of tools for companies with complex, global operations. With advanced features like global tax compliance, automated reconciliation, and multi-currency support, Tipalti provides a scalable solution for businesses looking to streamline their AP processes internationally.
Ultimately, the best choice depends on your specific requirements, including transaction volume, geographic reach, and the complexity of the financial operations. By carefully evaluating each platform’s features, pricing, and scalability, you can find a solution that best aligns with your long-term goals and drives continuous growth for years to come.
Ready to start your automation journey? Book a demo to learn how Tipalti can meet your specific business goals.
