What is the best BILL alternative for construction and multi-entity businesses?

MakersHub is a BILL alternative for construction and multi-entity books: it reads every bill line by line and codes each to its job, cost code, class, entity or location. It matches lines to purchase orders, routes approval by project or entity and pays each vendor with one bank debit and an itemized remittance. It integrates natively, two-way, with QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage Intacct, NetSuite and Intuit Enterprise Suite.

A horizontal bill-pay tool is one designed for any business that pays bills: it captures a header, suggests an account and moves money. BILL, Ramp and Melio are horizontal tools. The gap they leave is not payment; it is everything a job-costed or multi-entity bill needs before it is safe to pay.

When this applies

You run jobs, projects, locations or several entities, and you are on BILL or a similar tool. Coding guesses the last account used, so a subcontractor's bill lands on last month's job. Multi-page bills come through as a total. Your bank statement shows one withdrawal for 40 vendors, and the accountant reconciles a clearing account, a holding account between the bank and the bills, to find out who was paid. Vendors receive a check for 20 purchase orders with no remittance detail. The owner approves bills in one tool and releases payments from another login.

The AP lead at a construction and real estate development company on BILL, about 500 to 600 bills a month: "Bill was really struggling with the automatic coding with our projects. It just uses the last project or the last information. We have to go in and correct it, or there will be errors that we may not catch."

How BILL handles AP, and where it was built for a different business

BILL moves money satisfactorily for the business it was designed for. According to BILL's own reconciliation guidance, scheduled payments post to an "Accounts Payable: Bill.com Money Out Clearing" account rather than the bank register, BILL makes two daily pickups, each a single withdrawal, and "you will see the batch withdrawal(s), not separate withdrawals for each bill payment." A funds-transfer entry then moves the day's total from clearing to checking, and the user reconciles the clearing account to zero.

BILL's QuickBooks Desktop sync guide recommends creating all bills, vendor credits, approvals and payments in BILL, and notes that edits made in QuickBooks to those records will not sync back. Each QuickBooks Customer:Job becomes its own customer record in BILL. For a company that reconciles one bank line per vendor, codes 40-line bills to Items and jobs, and fixes coding in the ledger, those designs add work. MakersHub starts from the line, the job and the entity, and treats the payment as the last step. A broader comparison of BILL alternatives covers other options.

How MakersHub replaces BILL for job-costed and multi-entity AP

1. Every line is read, not just the header. WiseVision, MakersHub's AI, returns SKU, description, quantity, unit price and extended price for every line, splits a multi-invoice scan into separate bills, and tags packing slips and PO copies as supporting documents. The difference between this and header capture is covered in how AI extracts invoice line items compared with OCR.

2. Coding is a rule you can read, not a guess from last time. When you confirm how a vendor's lines code, Integration Mapping saves the logic as a deterministic rule, meaning a fixed rule that gives the same result every time: this vendor to this Item; any line containing "freight" to Freight-In; this ship-to address to this Location or entity. You confirm each rule once, and it runs identically on every future bill. The QuickBooks field mechanics are covered in how construction companies automate job costing in QuickBooks Desktop.

3. Lines match to purchase order lines. Open POs sync in from QuickBooks, NetSuite or BuildOps, or arrive by flat file (a spreadsheet-style export) or API from other systems. Bill lines match to PO lines, many to many and partially, with quantity and price variances flagged before approval. On approval the PO is received. The full mechanics are covered in how contractors match subcontractor and supplier invoices to purchase orders.

4. Approval routes by job, entity or amount, and payment is authorized separately. A bill for one project reaches that project's manager; a bill for one entity reaches that entity's controller; bills over a threshold add the owner. Approvers act from email in one click, with no accounting-system login and no training, and see only their own bills. Payment authorization is its own workflow with its own rules, so the person who confirms a bill is valid is not necessarily the person who releases funds.

5. One ACH debit per vendor payment, no clearing account. On the payment date MakersHub debits your account once per vendor payment, with a descriptor naming the vendor and invoices, pays the vendor by ACH (Automated Clearing House, the U.S. bank-to-bank transfer network), printed check or e-check, and emails a remittance listing each invoice and credit. The payment record posts against the bills in your accounting system, so the bank feed matches line for line. Vendors pay nothing to receive payment. Payment mechanics are covered in how to pay vendors by ACH and check from an AP automation platform.

6. Edits flow both ways. A bill approved in MakersHub posts to the accounting system with every line, the PDF linked and an audit memo; a payment entered in the accounting system marks the bill paid in MakersHub; a bill paid in MakersHub closes in the ledger. Two-way sync is native for QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, Sage Intacct, NetSuite and Intuit Enterprise Suite.

7. Switching takes one payment cycle. Open bills are imported so invoice numbers are recognized and duplicates are caught. Vendor payment details are collected fresh: one click sends each vendor a single-use link to enter bank details or a mailing address (vendors never need a MakersHub login), because bank details locked in another platform rarely export, and because fresh, verified details are what prevent a changed account number from slipping through. Most companies run one cycle in parallel, then cut over. MakersHub's team configures the setup with you, around how your books already work.

What to verify before you replace BILL

Multi-entity. A multi-entity business should also confirm how entities are modeled: one login across entities, bills routed to the right entity from the bill-to or ship-to address, one bill split across entities or company files, and rules, approval groups and templates copyable from one entity to the next. How MakersHub does this for firms and groups is covered in how accounting firms run AP for many clients from one platform.

Proof

A countertop fabricator writing about 300 checks a month had adopted BILL expecting an integration with its shop system and found a rigid file import that dropped remittance detail. Its owner: "We'll pay a check to a vendor, and that could be for 20 POs."

On MakersHub's flexible import mapped to the shop system's export, the CPA advising the company: 

"That's one of the main reasons why we're going this way."

A construction and real estate development company on BILL described payments delayed when several jobs were funded on the same day, extra fees to track checks, and large checks split because of an amount limit. Its accounting manager, after a MakersHub demo covering one-to-one debits and line-level coding to Sage Intacct:

"It seems like a very powerful tool."

An accounting firm with six clients on BILL bill pay could not export their vendors' bank details. It is moving them to MakersHub for individual debits that auto-match the bank feed, re-collecting vendor details through MakersHub's vendor link. A company with 18 entities moving from QuickBooks to NetSuite is leaving BILL over multi-entity setup, approval flow and a tax field that did not sync.

A smart-home design and installation company on NetSuite, about 2,000 bills a month and 80 percent PO-backed, on its card-first spend platform:

"It doesn't understand the inventory details. That I would say is 80 percent of our AP." 

Seeing a six-page invoice matched line by line to its POs in MakersHub: 

"We don't have that functionality. It doesn't exist." 

On the remittance: 

"That's one of the much more improved ones that I've seen."

What it doesn't do

MakersHub is accounts payable. It does not issue corporate cards or run accounts receivable, which BILL and Ramp do; a card program is on the roadmap, and card-paid bills are recorded today with Approve and Mark as Paid so line-level coding survives. Payments fund from a U.S. bank account, so a Canadian or U.K. entity codes and approves in MakersHub and releases payment from its accounting system today.

Vendor bank details are collected through MakersHub's vendor link rather than imported from BILL, which adds a step on day one and is the reason a changed account number cannot be carried in. And MakersHub does not learn coding from whatever was used last; it asks you to confirm once and then runs the rule, which is slower on the first bill from a vendor and identical on every bill after.

Frequently asked questions