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Every accounts payable platform you are looking at is cloud-based. All of them. So the word tells you nothing about which one to buy, and a shortlist built on it has not been narrowed at all. MakersHub is cloud-based too, and this page is about the questions that took its place.
That was not always true. Ten years ago "cloud-based" meant something specific and useful, because the alternative was software installed on a server in your building. Today the comparison being sold to you is still cloud versus paper, and almost nobody is buying paper. Below is what the word actually covers, why it stopped being a filter, and the five questions that separate one cloud platform from another.
What does "cloud-based" actually mean?
It has a real definition, and it is not a marketing one. The National Institute of Standards and Technology sets out five essential characteristics that make something cloud computing. Every one of them is now standard in this category.
Read that list and try to name an AP platform that fails any of the five. There is not one worth shortlisting. That is the whole problem with the term. A filter that everything passes is not a filter.
So why is the word still everywhere in AP marketing?
Because it used to do real work, and the copy has not caught up. Most articles you will find on this topic compare cloud AP against paper, filing cabinets and software installed on a server down the hall. That comparison is honest, it is just finished. If you are still on paper, those articles are genuinely useful and worth reading.
The reader nobody is writing for is the one comparing two cloud products. That person already knows both run in a browser. They want to know what happens to their data, their vendors and their month-end when they hand all three to someone else's servers. Those questions have answers, and the answers differ a lot between platforms that look identical from the outside.
The five questions that replaced it
- Where does our data live, and how do we get it back?
- Who can see our vendors' bank details?
- Who has to be sitting at a desk for this to work?
- What happens to close if the platform has a bad day?
- What actually crosses back into our accounting system?
Question one: where our data lives, and how we get it back
Your bills, your vendor records and your approval history sit on someone else's computers. That is fine, and it is what you are buying. What matters is whether you can take it all with you if you leave, including the audit trail rather than just a list of payments.
Ask two things in a demo. Can you export everything, and does the export include who approved what and when? A platform that exports your bills but not your approval history is handing back half your records, and the missing half is the one an auditor asks for.
Question two: who can see our vendors' bank details
This is the question with real money attached. Bank details usually reach a finance team by email, which is exactly where they get intercepted. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded more than three billion dollars in business email compromise losses in 2025, the second-largest category of reported losses in its annual report. Most of those are somebody being told a supplier changed banks.
So ask how a new vendor's banking information gets into the system in the first place. If the answer is that someone types it in from an email, the software has not solved anything. MakersHub collects those details through an encrypted, time-stamped link instead, so they never sit in an inbox. Vendors never need a MakersHub login. MakersHub is SOC 2 Type II certified, with Positive Pay protection on check payments, where the bank checks the check number, payee and amount before it clears.
Question three: who has to be sitting at a desk
Every platform will tell you it works on a phone. The real question is who actually has to log in. In most businesses the person who can confirm a bill is correct is not in the finance office. They are on a site, in a kitchen, at a customer's building.
If that person needs an account, a password and twenty minutes of training, your approvals will keep taking a week no matter where the software runs. Approvers use MakersHub without training. They approve from email in one click, and see only the bills that are theirs.
Question four: what happens to close on a bad day
Software goes down. Every vendor on your shortlist has had an outage and will have another one. What separates them is what you can see and do while it is happening.
Ask whether there is a public status page, whether you are told about problems or have to notice them, and what the support path looks like when close is in three days. MakersHub is transparent about where every bill sits and who is holding it, which matters most on the day something is wrong, because knowing what is stuck is the first step to working around it.
Question five: what actually crosses into our accounting system
This is the one that costs the most and gets asked the least. Every platform syncs with your accounting system. The question is what arrives when it does.
A sync that sends over a vendor, a bill number and a total is a very different product from one that sends every line with the job, cost code and class attached, plus who approved it. The first leaves your job costing wrong and you find out at month end. MakersHub reads the whole document rather than skimming the header, codes every line to the right account, job, phase or class, and writes all of it back two ways into QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage Intacct, Xero and Intuit Enterprise Suite. You set your coding rules once, and MakersHub applies them everywhere.
What the word covers, and what it leaves out
The left column is what you get from any cloud AP platform. The right column is what still varies, and it is where your shortlist actually gets shorter.
| Settled by "cloud-based" | Still an open question |
|---|---|
| You can use it in a browser from anywhere | Whether the people outside finance will actually use it |
| Updates arrive without your IT team | Whether your data comes back out with the audit trail attached |
| You do not buy or run a server | How vendor bank details get in, and who sees them |
| It handles your busiest week | What you can see and do during an outage |
| You are billed for what you use | Whether the sync carries every line or just the total |
Nothing in the left column is a reason to pick one platform over another, because every serious platform delivers all of it. Nothing in the right column appears on a feature comparison chart, which is why it usually gets discovered after the contract is signed.
What moving to the cloud does not fix
Three problems survive the move, and teams are often surprised by all three. None of them is a criticism of cloud software. They are simply things hosting was never going to solve, and knowing that in advance changes what you look for.
It does not fix coding. If a supplier bill carries twenty lines across four jobs, someone still has to decide where each line belongs. Hosting the software elsewhere does not make that decision for anyone. What removes the work is software that reads the whole document and applies your rules to every line, and that is a capability question rather than a hosting one.
It does not fix approvals that live in email. Plenty of teams move to a cloud platform and keep forwarding bills to a manager for a yes. The bill is now in a system and the decision still is not. Look for routing that sends each bill to the right person automatically, and an approval that gets recorded where the bill lives rather than in a reply.
It does not fix a vendor list nobody maintains. Duplicate suppliers, three spellings of the same company, missing tax forms and stale bank details all move across intact. If anything a faster system surfaces the mess sooner, which is uncomfortable and useful. Ask how a new vendor gets created, what is required before they can be paid, and how duplicates are caught.
Cahill Construction ran into the third one and came out the other side. They stayed on QuickBooks, moved AP to MakersHub, and recovered more than 64 hours a month, with credit card reconciliation dropping from four days to a day and a half.
Does any of this change if you are still on-premise?
Yes, and if that is you, the ordinary cloud-versus-installed articles are worth your time first. Moving off a server in your building is a genuine change and the benefits people write about are real: no hardware, no upgrade projects, access from anywhere, and someone else handling backups.
The advice still holds once you get past that decision, though. You will land in the same place everyone else is, choosing between cloud products that all look alike from the outside, and the five questions above are what tell them apart. MakersHub is built for complex businesses, not complex workdays, so the parts that stay hard after the move are the parts this page spends its time on.
If you are earlier in the process, our map of the AP automation companies and vendors sorts the market into five groups, and what an accounts payable system actually does, stage by stage covers the workflow itself. If your question is really about the ledger, read the guide to accounting software with AP automation. And you can see six customer results with the hours before and after, or read how other operators describe the change.
Frequently asked questions
What is cloud-based AP automation?
It is accounts payable software that runs on the vendor's computers and reaches you through a browser, rather than software installed on a server in your building. The National Institute of Standards and Technology defines cloud computing by five characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service. Every accounts payable platform worth shortlisting in 2026 has all five, which is why the term describes the category rather than distinguishing anything inside it.
Is cloud-based AP automation different from AP automation?
Not any more. The two phrases now describe the same thing, because on-premise accounts payable software has almost disappeared from the buying market. You will still see "cloud-based" in vendor marketing, and it is not misleading, it is just no longer doing any work. If you are comparing platforms, treat it as a given and spend your evaluation time on what differs: how vendor data gets in, what leaves in an export, who has to log in, and how much detail reaches your accounting system.
Is cloud-based AP software secure?
The hosting is rarely the weak point. The weak point is how information gets into the system, especially vendor banking details, which usually arrive by email. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported more than three billion dollars in business email compromise losses in 2025, its second-largest category by dollars. Ask any vendor how a supplier's bank account reaches their platform, what certifications they hold, and what protection sits on outgoing payments. MakersHub is SOC 2 Type II certified, with Positive Pay protection on check payments and encrypted collection of vendor bank details.
What should I ask a cloud AP vendor in a demo?
Five things, in this order. Where our data lives and whether we can export all of it including the approval history. How vendor bank details get into the system. Who has to log in for an approval to happen. What we can see during an outage. And what actually arrives in our accounting system after a sync, meaning every line with its coding or just a vendor and a total. Bring your own messiest bill and make them run it, because a demo on the vendor's clean sample invoice tells you almost nothing.
Do we need IT to set up cloud-based AP software?
No. There is nothing to install and no server to provision, which is one of the genuine advantages of the model. What still takes effort is configuration, meaning teaching the software your accounts, jobs, cost codes and approval rules. That work is where platforms differ most. MakersHub is designed so the AI derives your coding rules from your actual bills rather than asking you to specify every case up front, and onboarding, training and support are white glove and included.
Can cloud AP software work with our accounting system?
Almost all of them connect to the major accounting systems, so connection is not the useful question. Depth is. Ask whether the sync runs both ways, whether it carries every line of a bill or only the header total, and whether your jobs, cost codes, classes and entities come across attached to those lines. 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, plus any other system through Smart Data Connect.
What happens to our data if we leave the vendor?
That depends entirely on the vendor, and it is worth settling before you sign rather than after you decide to go. Ask whether you can export everything yourself, what formats are available, whether the export includes the approval trail and the payment records rather than only the bills, and how long they keep your data after the account closes. A platform that returns your bills without the history of who approved them has given you back the least useful half.
Is on-premise AP software still worth considering?
For most businesses, no. You take on hardware, upgrades, backups and security work that a hosted platform absorbs, and you give up access from anywhere, which matters as soon as an approver is not in the office. A small number of organizations still have regulatory or contractual reasons to keep systems in their own buildings, and those reasons are real. Outside those cases, the practical choice today is between cloud platforms rather than between cloud and on-premise.
Want to see how MakersHub answers all five? Book a walkthrough and bring your worst bill.
Sources. The definition of cloud computing comes from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publication 800-145. Fraud loss figures come from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Annual Report. Product capabilities described here are MakersHub's own, current as of September 2026.