BILL vs. Tipalti vs. Xero

It depends, Bill.com certainly has a strong reputation and I agree it can be a great solution in the right scenario but I think the implementation and initial setup are critical and need to be well thought out based on the setup of the organization you are a part of.

Incentivized

I would tell them that it manually syncs to ERPS. Additionally I would include the fact that you can pay multiple entities in one pay run allowing to be very efficient. I would also include that they can add rules to bill approvals or set up auto payments for certain vendors. Lastly, there are many reports you can run providing you will very informational data in seconds.

Incentivized

I am a massage and physical therapist. We are not a fancy business but business admin can take a lot of time and effort. Xero came recommended to me by colleagues in the sector. You raise invoices, you get paid. and you pay your bills. These are all daily scenarios for most businesses and Xero does this particularly well. Since my accountant can query my records directly, this greatly saves on bookkeeping time when it is time to do the company returns.

Incentivized

• The fact that bill.com automatically processes most information on the invoice is really helpful - leads to quicker processing
• The "to do list" feature ensures you see the tasks that need to be completed ASAP
• The reports section is very helpful in year end prepping for audits

Incentivized

• Tipalti has a very user friendly interface, clearly laid out and easy to navigate
• The audit trail feature is hugely helpful to track an invoice's progress through the system
• Being able to schedule invoices to be paid exactly on their due date ensures we pay on time but not earlier than necessary
• We were able to put in strong controls around changes to vendor data

• Repeating invoices (most of my business is monthly recurring invoices) - it does these very well.
• Reporting - particularly being able to dig into the different lines of the P&L statement.
• Tracking categories - I assign a category to every line of every invoice so it's easy to see how much has been sold of each type of service every month and year, and compare them to previous periods.

Incentivized

• Currently, our company uses a different platform to submit expenses, we only use bill.com to receive them. So perhaps this isn't actually a place where bill.com could improve, but the expense submission process may not have been robust enough for our company.
• The bill.com platform wasn't the most beautiful or pleasing to use, but this is a minor fault.
• I'd love a way to set up recurring payments (e.g., my phone bill is reimbursed each month).

Incentivized

• The report that provides the "Not payable" vendors does not work well for us, particularly because the sync to our ERP goes both ways, which means all of the employees also sync over to Tipalti and remain as Not Payable. So the list is very long, and I don't find a good use for it.

• Having different email addresses for different parts of a customer's business (eg invoices and statements to different places)
• Easily seeing the text of emails that have been sent through Xero
• More easily archiving old pay items. Our HR software updates rates when awards are updated which means a lot of old pay rates are in the system and they have multiple clicks to archive each one. Clicking the ones to archive in bulk and then just click archive for all would be much more efficient.

Incentivized

While our firm does not use Bill.com internally, we know many customers that use Bill.com and are very happy with it. Based on the feedback from current users, I would say that the product should have a strong renewal forecast. Once customers move their AP to the cloud, they would be unlikely to move it back given a choice.

Solid system performance. Suits our needs and solution provider very inclined to accept feedback and involve users in developing the solution to serve both the provider and the ultimate user. Tipalti has streamlined our process that was previously very manual and prone to error. Now there is transparency of information and role.

Incentivized

In addition to the matters covered in this review, my reason for renewing this product is that Xero's functionality and the constant updates that the company provides, makes the software even more business friendly. The software therefore builds a brand loyalty among customers.

Bill.com continues to raise the bar with new features and improved interface. The Fast Pay option is another innovation that reduces administrative time when you have to get an overnight check out. The new Chat Support interface, powered by Zopim, which is world-class, adds to the responsiveness of Bill.com's support team and makes getting real-time answers that much easier.

Incentivized

Two-time Tipalti selector, implementor, and user. The payment features in the app saves many steps in the payment process. No longer do you have to set-up or upload payment information to your bank and then go back to your accounting system and mark items as paid. Tipalti does all of this with a click of a mouse. The payment feature is the stand out feature. Many vendors can process your invoices. Look at how at the payment process of others.....you will see.

Incentivized

As a standalone software, it allows users to fulfill most of the basic functions (e.g. transaction input and report generation) simply and conveniently. It also allows for multiple APIs to help augment various tasks that accounting-adjacent (e.g. claims processing). The cloud based model and portability to mobile devices allows tasks to be carried out in a more convenient way.

The only time Bill.com was ever "unavailable" was then the Sync to Quickbooks function failed. That happened a time or two but was usually quickly remedied. I'm not sure if that's an issue with newer online versions of Quickbooks Enterprise -- at the time we were using a remotely hosted Quickbooks instance accessed via terminal server (vs a cloud offering like Bill.com is)

Tipalti has always been responsive to our questions and concerns.

We have been actively using and 100% Xero based for our ecommerce accounting practice for over 4 years. There has on been one real outage for more than 5 minutes. Xero was open and transparent about the outage, what they were doing to resolve the issue, and provided 15 minute updates. Showing how they care about their customers and partners. Plus, showing that their customers care too, were understanding, and went surfing or in our case took a nap. Couldn't run our business without Xero as a partner.

Load times can be slow after long use.

Incentivized

No issues here. Generally has been pretty fast.

On a good day, things worked but after upgrades, things began to slow and or not work at all at times. I coined the moving circle while I waited as the "Xero Wheel of Death". Sometimes it never stopped and force quitting was necessary.

Incentivized

I could not explain to them how I was trying to remove an old email account from my company page while granting the new email account access to the bank account that the first email account had added. The "set a bank account as inactive" button is labeled delete, but they don't seem to recognize that. I requested my Bill.com account be deleted on Wednesday so I could start all over with a fresh account; this seemed to be completed Wednesday night, but when I tried to create a new Bill.com account from the same email, it took me to my old bill.com account.

Incentivized

Since I also work in customer support, I often have to contact Tipalti's team with questions from our users. Tipalti's support team has always been exceptionally helpful and it was a pleasure to communicate with them. I have always received prompt responses to any inquiries and they are excellent at solving our customers' issues within a short time

Incentivized

Always respond and keep issues open until you are satisfied with the result. Generally good responses, in the past, I had some support responses that were really basic and really annoying. They type where "have your tried restarting your computer" style of answers. Well, of course, I went through all the basics before contacting them. Duh, but I suppose not everyone does. Otherwise, it would be a 10. The last year has shown a marked improvement in the support responses however.

The format was great; someone was there to ask questions or help if you were stuck.

Incentivized

The online training provided by Bill.com is concise and since the firm consistently improves the platform functionality, users are able to select the training for the modules they specifically need.

Incentivized

Tipalti provides great How to online guide

All of Xero's training is online and available for anyone (business owner or accountants) to learn and become experts in their system. There is a range of content from product training to real world webinars from their partners. Xero is beautiful accounting software and their training is the same.

I heard from my leadership that it went very well.

Incentivized

The salesperson involved was involved in implementation which I found very helpful.

Incentivized

If it can be done, time the implementation near a new fiscal year so you can start clean. Otherwise, you have to go back and do historical data from the beginning of the fiscal year, which can be brain draining.

Incentivized

1. Automation & Workflow Efficiency.2. Integration Capabilities with other softwaresWe needed a centralized, automated, and scalable solution for managing both payables and receivables. The strong integration with our existing accounting software was a key factor.The platform gave us better visibility and control over cash flow and approval processes.

From initial implementation through to user experience, Tipalti has been able to exceed our expectations in terms of its functionality and useability. We have found with other systems implemented in the past they did not match our expectations which resulted in us terminating these services.

Incentivized

Each of the products I listed had their own list of drawbacks, but the one thing they all had in common, which was right on top of that list of drawbacks, was ease of use. I struggled to get myself accustomed to each system and struggled, but when it came to getting a client to even try and use it was when the true struggle started. Just found it easier to make use of Xero from the very beginning.

None, all good.

Incentivized

I did not make the decision to purchase this product.

We have multiple locations, and everything works fine.

Incentivized

We were given the option of only one integration.

I have yet to fully stress test the product given the size of the company where I am using it. I am sure as we scale to more customers, more vendors and more reporting requirements, I will have a better understanding of what it is capable of in terms of bandwidth and processing

Incentivized

• After receiving an offer to 'finance' outstanding invoices, I was enticed by the promise of a 3% total cost for a 60-day period, with the possibility of extending the financing for an additional 10 months (for an additional fee). Eager to access funds, I decided to finance an invoice worth $17,160.00. Within 24 hours, BILL deposited $16,645.20 (97% of the invoice amount) into my account.
• However, when the customer paid their $17,160 invoice four days later, instead of the funds being deposited into my checking account as I expected, BILL chose to retire the loan and retain my $514.80 fee for the 4 day advance period. This unexpected turn of events resulted in an effective interest rate of a staggering 273.75%. It was clear that this arrangement was far from what I had initially understood, and the financial impact was outrageously high.
• Frustratingly, my attempts to resolve this issue through customer service were in vain, as I spoke with three agents who provided no satisfactory solutions. To anyone contemplating using BILL's services, I strongly urge you to carefully scrutinize the fine print and consider opting for a more reputable finance company."

• Vendor onboarding has taken the responsibility from one person to the Vendor directly. This provides the vendor with the ability to enter their own banking information for payments and upload their Federal W9 form.
• Vendors can upload their own invoices to the system, taking the possibility that our AP team did not receive an emailed or mailed invoice to upload. This also increases payment efficiency as the vendor's invoice is processed in a more timely manner.
• AP can review invoices for accuracy and concentrate on how to code an invoice, rather than be a paper pusher or a data entry clerk. AP doesn't spend time searching for invoices that might be a duplicate, the system will communicate this on the software review process and if AP has uploaded by email the same invoice multiple times, an email will be sent to AP to indicate that the invoice was not uploaded due to duplication.

Incentivized

• Xero is a basic accounting system that performs basic accounting tasks easily and accurately. For that, it provides a positive impact on our day to day accounting operations.
• Because of Xero's basic structure, I feel it lacks some of the sophistication that some users want and need. The ability to create unique custom reports would enhance the impact Xero would have on meeting business objectives by providing current and useful accounting information.
• In my opinion, Xero's lack of focus on their customers - their users - is a real issue with me. In my opinion, those of us that are in the trenches that work with the system on a daily basis have to deal with the shortcomings of the system with the knowledge that Xero support refuses to address the operational issues that make their user's lives difficult. I feel if Xero would focus on truly making their software better from a users point of view, it has the potential to be a great system.