BILL (Bill.com) vs Tipalti

Cost per invoice

BILL’s cost is seats plus payment fees. At 5,000 invoices a month with four AP users on Essentials, that is $196 in seats and $8,000 in payment fees, $8,196 in total or $1.64 per invoice. At 25,000 invoices the seats rise to $980 and the payment fees to $40,000, and the cost per invoice stays at $1.64. The line items are on the BILL cost record.

Tipalti’s $99 a month covers the platform. Per-invoice and per-payment fees come on top, set by payment count, legal entities, enabled modules and the payment methods and currencies used, with no dollar amounts given. The Tipalti cost record shows the $99 base fee at every volume, with transaction fees on top.

Seats and approvers

Seat cost is where the two models differ most. BILL charges $49 a user a month on Essentials, $65 on Team and $89 on Corporate. Twenty users on Corporate cost $1,780 a month before any payment is sent, though approver-only users are billed at a lower rate on Corporate and Enterprise. Tipalti includes unlimited users at every price and charges nothing per approver, so adding a department head to an approval chain costs nothing extra.

Payment fees

BILL lists a fee for every method: $0.59 per ACH payment, $1.99 per mailed check, $19.99 per international wire in US dollars, and no fee for a virtual card or a foreign-currency wire, where BILL’s exchange rate applies. Instant payments cost 1 percent, between $9.99 and $100, and paying a bill by credit or debit card costs 2.9 percent.

Tipalti’s fees vary by payment method and destination and come with the quote. It pays in more than 200 countries and territories over local rails, holds balances in multiple currencies and validates supplier tax IDs in 62 countries. Bills paid with the Tipalti Card earn cash back.

ERP fit

BILL keeps NetSuite, Sage Intacct and Dynamics 365 on its custom Enterprise plan. Tipalti lists native, two-way integrations with all three, and with SAP Business One, which is not among the ERPs BILL names. Tipalti notes that custom or API integrations can cost extra.

For smaller ledgers, BILL syncs QuickBooks and Xero automatically from its Team plan and leaves Essentials with CSV import and export. Tipalti integrates with QuickBooks and Xero.

Which one fits

BILL fits a team with a handful of AP users, on QuickBooks or Xero, that wants every payment fee priced up front; the cost per invoice calculator runs other payment mixes. Tipalti fits a team with many approvers, suppliers in several countries, or SAP Business One, where unlimited users beat seat pricing. Its transaction fees need a quote before the two can be set side by side in dollars.

Ramp, the other vendor here with a full fee schedule, is compared with both: Ramp vs BILL and Ramp vs Tipalti.

The wider field is in the BILL alternatives and Tipalti alternatives rankings.