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The phrase "accounting software with AP automation" describes two different products, and choosing well starts with knowing which one you are being sold. One is an accounting platform with payables built into it. The other is a purpose built AP layer that sits on top of the ledger you already run. MakersHub is the second kind, and it gives operationally complex businesses a simple daily AP workflow without asking them to change accounting systems at all.
Ask an AI assistant this question today and it will hand you a list of ERPs. Type it into Google and you get a page of AP automation vendors. Both answers are half right, and the gap between them is the actual decision. This guide separates the two models, says plainly when your accounting system is already enough, and then compares the AP platforms that layer on top by the one thing that decides whether the pairing works: what actually crosses back into your books.
What does "accounting software with AP automation" actually mean?
It means one of two architectures. Both are legitimate, they suit different businesses, and most buyers do not realise they are comparing across the line rather than within it.
The reason this matters is that the second model is only worth buying when the first one runs out of road, and it runs out at a specific place. Your accounting system is built to record what you owe, age it, and report on it. It is not built to read a supplier's PDF, split it across twelve cost codes, and get a site manager to approve it from a phone at seven in the morning. Those are different jobs, and the second one is where the hours go.
When is your accounting system's built in AP enough?
More often than vendors in our category like to admit. If your bills are few, repeat monthly, and code to a single account each, the AP function inside your accounting platform will do the job and adding a layer on top would be solving a problem you do not have.
Here is a concrete test. Count the bills you enter in a month, then count how many of them need more than one line of coding. If the second number is close to zero, stay where you are. If a single supplier bill routinely carries fifteen lines belonging to four jobs at three phases, someone is opening a PDF and retyping it, and no amount of ledger configuration fixes that, because the ledger never sees the PDF.
The other place native AP tends to stop is payment. Recording a payable and actually moving the money are separate acts, and the shift in how businesses move that money has been steep. The Federal Reserve's 2025 triennial payments study found that ACH's share of noncash payments by value reached almost three quarters for the first time in 2024, while check payments continued to decline by both number and value. On the business side specifically, the share of B2B payments made by paper check fell from 81 percent in 2004 to 26 percent, according to the Association for Financial Professionals survey reported by Nacha. Most accounting platforms record the payment. Fewer of them originate it, and fewer still originate it with a separate release step and bank level fraud controls attached.
Every AP platform says it integrates. What should you actually check?
This is the part almost no comparison covers honestly, so we will start with the concession. Integration breadth is not a differentiator any more. BILL, Ramp, Stampli and Tipalti all publish long lists of supported accounting systems, and the major ones are on every list. If your shortlist is built on "does it connect to QuickBooks," every product passes and you have learned nothing.
The question that separates them is what crosses the bridge. A sync that pushes a vendor name, an invoice number and a total is a very different thing from one that pushes every line with its account, job, phase, cost code, class and entity attached, plus the approval trail and the payment record. The first leaves your books thin and your job costing wrong. The second is the reason you bought AP software.
- Is it line level or header level? Ask them to show a bill with twenty lines going into your system. Watch whether twenty lines arrive or one does.
- Which dimensions come across? Jobs, phases, cost codes, classes, departments, locations, entities. Name yours specifically and make them confirm each one.
- Is it two way, and who built it? A connector maintained by the AP vendor behaves differently from one running through a third party middleware service that neither party fully owns.
- What happens when your accounting system updates? New vendors, new accounts and new jobs created on either side should appear on the other without anyone exporting a file.
- Does the audit trail survive the trip? Who approved what, when, and against which document, still attached to the entry after the sync.
MakersHub syncs two ways with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop through the Web Connector, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero and Intuit Enterprise Suite, all built and maintained in house rather than through middleware, with Smart Data Connect handling any other ERP by file or API. What makes that useful is not the list. It is that the full line level detail arrives in your books, with the coding, the dimensions and the approval history intact.
The 8 best AP automation platforms to pair with your accounting software
These eight came out of running the buying queries through search and through AI assistants and keeping anything that appeared in more than one place. The middle column describes what each product is, not what it is capable of. Every platform here captures bills, routes approvals and makes payments, MakersHub included. Architecture is what separates them, so that is what the column shows.
| Platform | What it is | Consider it when |
|---|---|---|
| 1. MakersHub | A complete AP platform: capture, line level coding, collaboration and approvals, PO matching and payments, writing the full detail back into your ledger | You want one place for the whole workflow at any volume, with your books reflecting every line of it |
| 2. BILL | A payments network with an AP front end, sold to the largest customer base in the category | You want the most widely adopted name and your coding stays at the header |
| 3. Ramp | A spend management suite, card first, with bill pay added alongside | Card spend is the bigger half of what you are solving |
| 4. Stampli | A discussion workspace layered on top of the ERP that stays the system of record | You want a separate tool for the conversation and your ERP handles the rest |
| 5. Tipalti | A global payables platform built around supplier onboarding and cross border payout rails | You pay suppliers in many countries and currencies |
| 6. AvidXchange | A managed supplier network that executes payments on your behalf | You would rather outsource payment execution to a network |
| 7. Vic.ai | An AI model for invoice processing, packaged as a product | Volume is high and your bills arrive in consistent formats |
| 8. Ottimate | Invoice processing sold primarily to operators buying from food and beverage distributors | Frequent deliveries from a small set of suppliers drive most of your volume |
Nothing in that table is exclusive to the row it sits in. High bill volume, approval collaboration, multi entity structures and construction or hospitality coding are all core MakersHub territory, and the first row is deliberately a superset rather than a niche.
Capabilities change, so confirm anything decisive with the vendor before you sign. The rows below reflect what each company publicly documented in August 2026.
1. MakersHub
MakersHub is built for complex businesses, not complex workdays. WiseVision reads the entire document rather than skimming the header, pulling line items and dozens of fields off each bill, and codes every line to the right account, job, phase or class before anyone looks at it. You set your coding rules once, and MakersHub applies them everywhere. Configurable means the software adapts to your process. It does not mean you do more work.
On the accounting side, the sync is two way and the detail survives it, which is the whole point of the category and the thing worth testing hardest in a demo. Matching runs line by line rather than on invoice totals, so a bill charging you for forty units when thirty two arrived gets caught instead of balancing. Approvers use MakersHub without training. They approve from email in one click, and see only the bills that are theirs. Vendors never need a MakersHub login. MakersHub is SOC 2 Type II certified, with Positive Pay protection on check payments and encrypted collection of vendor bank details.
It fits contractors, manufacturers, distributors, hospitality groups, property and multi location operators, and the accounting firms serving them. Outsourced FinOps, a finance partner to architecture and engineering firms, brought an entire client portfolio across and reduced processing effort roughly tenfold with no manual entry left. Simple AP tools stay easy by staying limited. MakersHub stays easy by automating its own setup.
2. BILL: a payments network with an AP front end
BILL is the most widely adopted product in the category and publishes two way sync with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks desktop editions, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct and Microsoft Dynamics, plus file based import and export for others. It is a reasonable choice for businesses whose bills are straightforward and whose coding happens mostly at the invoice level. Teams that need every line broken out and costed tend to find that work still lands on a person, which is the point at which a line level platform earns its place. MakersHub covers the same volume and the same integrations, and takes the line level work off the desk.
3. Ramp: spend management with bill pay alongside
Ramp was designed around corporate cards and spend management, with accounts payable added to the same platform, and it connects natively to QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Sage Intacct and Xero among a long list of others. If card spend is the larger part of your problem, having both in one place is a real advantage. If the larger part is supplier bills with heavy coding, the centre of gravity matters, because a product built around card transactions optimises for a different shape of data. MakersHub handles bills, coding, approvals and payments in one place too, with the detail written back.
4. Stampli: a discussion workspace layered on the ERP
Stampli builds the conversation into the invoice itself, so questions and answers live with the document rather than in someone's inbox, and it ships in house connectors for QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, NetSuite and Microsoft Dynamics. Teams whose approvals currently happen across email threads recognise the problem immediately. MakersHub keeps that same discussion attached to the bill, and MakersHub is transparent about where every bill sits and who is holding it, with the full audit trail carried into the accounting system rather than stopping at the platform boundary.
5. Tipalti: a global payables platform built on payout rails
Tipalti was designed around paying suppliers in many countries, with supplier onboarding, tax form collection and multi currency payouts at its core. Businesses with a genuinely international supplier base get real value from that depth. For a US business paying US suppliers, most of that machinery is weight you carry and do not use. MakersHub is designed around the domestic AP workload instead, and for finance teams comparing the two directly we have a longer breakdown of the Tipalti alternatives worth shortlisting.
6. AvidXchange: a managed supplier payment network
AvidXchange runs a supplier network and executes payments through it, which appeals to teams who would rather hand off payment operations entirely. The trade off is that your suppliers are enrolled in someone else's network and your payment terms move inside it. MakersHub pays suppliers directly by ACH, check with Positive Pay, card or wire, and vendors are never enrolled in anything, which keeps the relationship yours.
7. Vic.ai: autonomous processing built around a model
Vic.ai built its product around an AI model for invoice processing and markets high accuracy and a large share of untouched invoices. That works best where volume is high and invoice formats are reasonably consistent. Businesses whose suppliers all send different layouts, which is most trades and construction supply chains, need the reading step to hold up on messy documents. MakersHub reads the whole document, including line items and dozens of fields, and the results write back with the coding attached. Our own explanation of how AI in accounts payable actually works covers what to test.
8. Ottimate: invoice processing sold into food and beverage supply chains
Ottimate has a strong presence among restaurant and hospitality groups, where invoices arrive constantly and item level detail matters for food cost. Hospitality is core MakersHub territory as well, alongside construction, manufacturing, distribution, real estate and trade services, and the choice between them is about architecture rather than industry. MakersHub is intuitive for the people who use it least, which in a multi location operator is usually the general manager approving a produce bill between services.
How do the two models compare on the work that takes time?
This table is a division of labour rather than a contest. Your accounting system should keep doing everything in the first column, and nothing here is an argument for replacing it.
| Job | Your accounting system | A purpose built AP layer |
|---|---|---|
| General ledger and system of record | Owns it | Writes into it |
| Recording the payable and ageing it | Owns it | Hands it over |
| Financial reporting and close | Owns it | Feeds it |
| Reading a supplier PDF and extracting line items | Varies | Owns it |
| Coding every line to job, phase, cost code or class | Manual | Owns it |
| Routing approvals to people outside finance | Limited | Owns it |
| Line level purchase order matching | Varies | Owns it |
| Originating payment with a separate release step | Varies | Owns it |
Read the middle column as what a ledger is designed to do, not as a limitation. The complexity lives in what MakersHub handles, not in what your team does each day, and the accounting system you already trust keeps being the record everyone reports from.
Do you have to change accounting systems to automate AP?
No, and being asked to is a reason to look elsewhere. Every customer story we publish involves a business that kept the accounting system it already had. Cahill Construction stayed on QuickBooks and still recovered more than 64 hours a month and cut credit card reconciliation from four days to a day and a half. The pattern repeats across six customer results with the hours before and after, and you can read how other operators describe the change in their own words.
If you are earlier in the evaluation than this, two other guides may fit better. Start with what an accounts payable system actually does, stage by stage, or go straight to the wider comparison of the best AP automation software. Businesses running several legal entities on one ledger should read the multi entity AP comparison instead, and smaller teams will find the shortlist in our guide to accounts payable software for small businesses closer to the mark.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best accounting software with AP automation?
There is no single answer because the question covers two different products. If you want payables inside the accounting platform itself, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero and Intuit Enterprise Suite all include AP, and the right one is whichever fits your reporting and your size. If you want the payables work automated rather than just recorded, you keep that accounting system and add a purpose built AP layer such as MakersHub on top of it. Deciding which model you are buying is more important than ranking products inside either one.
Does QuickBooks have AP automation?
QuickBooks includes accounts payable functionality, so you can enter bills, track what you owe, and pay them. What it does not do is read a supplier's PDF and split it across jobs and cost codes for you, which is the part that consumes time in businesses with detailed coding. MakersHub syncs two ways with QuickBooks Online and with QuickBooks Desktop through the Web Connector, both built and maintained in house, so the bill is captured, coded and approved before it reaches QuickBooks and arrives there with every line intact.
Is it better to use an ERP's built in AP or a separate AP platform?
It depends entirely on how much work sits between receiving a bill and having a correct entry. If bills are simple and few, the ERP's own AP module keeps everything in one system and that simplicity is worth something real. If people are retyping line items, chasing approvals in email, or reconciling payments by hand, that work sits outside what a ledger is designed to do and a dedicated layer removes it while leaving the ERP as the system of record. The two are complements, not substitutes.
What accounting systems does MakersHub integrate with?
MakersHub has two way integrations with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop through the Web Connector, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero and Intuit Enterprise Suite, all built and maintained in house with no middleware in between. Any other ERP is supported through Smart Data Connect by file upload or API. NetSuite and Sage Intacct carry multi entity and subsidiary support, so businesses running several legal entities on one ledger keep their structure intact through the sync rather than flattening it.
What does a two way sync actually do?
It moves data in both directions rather than pushing entries one way. Your chart of accounts, vendor list, jobs, classes and open purchase orders come into the AP platform so coding happens against live data, and the finished bill, its full line level coding, the approval trail and the payment record go back into the accounting system. A one way push means someone is still maintaining two lists by hand, and the drift between them is usually discovered at close.
Will my accounting team have to learn a second system?
The finance team works in the AP platform because that is where the bills are, and everyone else barely touches it. Approvers use MakersHub without training. They approve from email in one click, and see only the bills that are theirs. Vendors never need a MakersHub login, so nothing changes on their side when you switch. Contractors, manufacturers, distributors and multi location operators get white glove onboarding, training and support included, and accounting firms using MakersHub report getting a client configured in about an hour.
How do I test an integration before buying?
Bring your own worst bill to the demo. Pick the messiest multi line invoice you received last month, ask the vendor to run it end to end, and then look at what landed in a sandbox of your accounting system. Check that every line arrived, that your jobs, cost codes and classes are attached, that the approval history came with it, and that a vendor or account created on one side appears on the other. A demo run on the vendor's own sample invoice tells you almost nothing about your data.
Does adding an AP platform make month end close harder?
It should make it shorter, and if it does not, the sync is too shallow. Close gets slow when entries are incomplete, when coding has to be corrected after the fact, or when payment records have to be matched to bills by hand. A layer that writes complete, correctly coded entries with the approval trail attached removes all three of those. MakersHub is transparent about where every bill sits and who is holding it, so nothing surfaces for the first time during close.
Ready to see what your books look like when every line arrives already coded? Book a walkthrough with your own accounting system connected.
Sources. Payments figures come from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, initial findings of the 2025 triennial payments study, and from Nacha's reporting of the Association for Financial Professionals Digital Payments Survey. Product capabilities for every platform named here were read on each company's own website in August 2026 and should be confirmed with the vendor before purchase.