Coupa vs. Tipalti

I am new to customer-supplier portals in my career. I use several different ones in my current role, including Ariba and Tipalti. To be honest, I don't really enjoy the user experience of any of them. I can see how larger companies may benefit from their services but for my current role submitting invoices on them and filling out vendor information requests seems somewhat clunky to me. When I'm in Coupa, the easiest, most non-clunky process for me is when I'm successfully connected with a customer who has successfully created their purchase order and I can easily upload my invoice to said PO. To me, emailing customer invoices directly to the customer from our invoicing system seems like the easier route of delivering an invoice. I suppose it is helpful and reassuring to know that an invoice has been successfully uploaded into a company's system rather than waiting to find out if your emailed invoice made it to the correct department for payment processing.

The School of Life has many big corporates clients who uses other onboarding and payment platforms which are not very user friendly. But Tipalti is extremely user friendly so this stands out very well. Suppliers want to get on-board smoothly as possible and have no issues with payment. This is where Tipalti comes in and helps with this process

Incentivized

• Coupa is easy to use, however, we had to teach our end users about procurement. They are not used to conducting an RFP, onboarding a supplier, or preparing a PO. This is the change management that our employees had to be prepared to understand. The Shelby Group helped us with the implementation.
• The hardest part was the integration between NetSuite and Coupa. We wanted to have a dynamic tight integration between the two solutions. If we adjusted the chart of accounts or added a new supplier we wanted it to be able to done in both systems and be available immediately in both systems. We used a partner called SuiteSkies to accomplish this dynamic integration.
• We’ve been able to manage the implementation and maintenance with a very lean IT group.

Incentivized

• When an invoice is uploaded to Tipalti, it can autofill the info into the software, making my life a lot easier and saving me time!
• I can track the status of whether an invoice is paid, avoiding having to send out lots of slacks and emails to find out the status.
• It allows me to work over multiple time zones, so I don't need to communicate all the information directly to the finance team, it cuts out the middle man!
• I get an email to approve the invoice so I don't even need to log in!

• Support Team - A little slow in responding. I think the tool is so configurable that they struggle with figuring out what is causing certain issues that are being submitted on the portal.
• I'd love for the Sourcing Module to be able to support larger events. There seems to be a limit on the number of lines each event can support and as a growing retailer, our store count dictates we have room to grow and that each store is represented in the bid process.
• Would like to see the ability to issue multiple POs for a single item to multiple locations. The tool may do this but I know I can't and it may be due to how we interface with our ERP.

Incentivized

• They have shut down payments on key vendors who had attempted to update their address. I would rather they notify us so we can resolve with the vendor without delaying payments.
• Many of the notifications we get do not include the vendor number. This leads us to have to get in touch with the vendor just to obtain a vendor ID before taking the notice any further.
• There can be delays up to half hour from the time we wire funds to our Tipalti account and when they become available to use. They have an early deadline, 11 PST that requires some accommodation to get payments out on time.

Tipalti developed a workflow us that has improved our efficiency in onboarding vendors and processing payments. They also ensure that we have all the required tax forms from the vendor before a payment goes out.

It was very quick and easy to create multiple department approvals. It is a first time user it flowed seamlessly. I’m able to find exactly the data I need and make the work flow faster. The multiple submission detector is fantastic as some invoices are sent to multiple departments and knowing it was previously submitted, versus having to hand sort and verify duplicates of invoices, saves a lot of time

Tipalti has always been responsive to our questions and concerns.

No issues here. Generally has been pretty fast.

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

Tipalti provides great How to online guide

Implementation went smooth as we used and tested everything in the sandbox first

Concur was a lot easier and more user friendly for employees doing expense reports on their phone. That is not the case with Coupa. You must use your laptop to do expenses and our managers don't always have enough time to do that while out in the field working. This has caused some issues.

Incentivized

1. Tipalti have a very good duplicate detect system which help us identified duplicate invoice. 2. Tipalti can memorized expense account, Currency type which save more time for us, and it also reduce the chance for us to make mistakes.

I did not make the decision to purchase this product.

We were given the option of only one integration.

• It has allowed for proper processing of expenses tied directly to the proper LOB and GL Codes
• Has taken the guesswork away and allowed for the proper budgets to be hit and reconciled
• Ease of use has led to mass adoption and more prompt processing of expenses

Incentivized

• We have taken away the manual process of sending out payments via various methods (PayPal, wires, checks, ACH, etc.) ourselves and now just send the bill directly to Tipalti which handles all the payments. This saves employees' time.
• The onboarding process is much more streamlined since Tipalti collects all of the tax form information.
• Our clients appreciate the transparency of the processing fee costs and getting emails when payments are sent.
• Better security for our clients as they get an email alert when there are changes to the account and sensitive information is kept secure.

Incentivized