Invoice approval software: invoice approval workflow software and accounts payable approval software for QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuite

We priced the same team on every tool that publishes a price: two people in accounts payable and six managers who approve invoices, eight people in all, on QuickBooks Online. BILL bills every user, so eight people on Essentials, the first plan with approval workflows, come to $4,704 a year, $6,240 on Team if you want automatic two-way sync with QuickBooks, and $8,544 on Corporate, where custom approval policies live (Corporate also offers cheaper approver-only users, at a price BILL does not publish). Melio puts custom approvals by vendor and amount on Core and includes unlimited users on Unlimited at $64 a month billed yearly, which makes eight people $768 a year. QuickBooks Bill Pay only automates bill approval on Elite, at $45 a month or $540 a year, and Elite is included with QuickBooks Online Advanced. Ramp lists approval rules and routing on its free plan and moves routing by vendor, department and accounting field to Plus at $15 per user a month plus a platform fee.

Expenditure costs $35 per seat a month billed yearly on Growth, so the same eight people come to $3,360 a year, and $5,280 on Scale if an invoice needs up to three approval steps. That is more than Melio, Ramp Free or QuickBooks Bill Pay Elite, and we say so in the table below. The reason teams still buy it is what happens before the approver opens the invoice.

Most approval queues fail in the same place. The approver gets a PDF, a vendor name and a total, and is asked to say yes. Nobody has checked whether the invoice was already paid last month under a slightly different number, whether the amounts on the lines add up, or which expense account each line belongs in. So the approver either rubber-stamps it or sends it back with a question, and the invoice sits for another week. Expenditure reads every invoice at line level the moment it is uploaded or forwarded to your company inbox, codes each line to the right QuickBooks Online, Xero or NetSuite account, flags a likely duplicate before it reaches anyone, and checks the amount against your rules. The approver sees a coded, checked invoice and decides on facts rather than a total.

Approval rules are simple on purpose. You set a rule for all spend, for one vendor, or for one GL account, and say what amount needs approval: every invoice from a new software vendor, anything over $500 in legal fees, any single bill over $10,000. On Growth a matching invoice gets one approval step. On Scale the same rule can ask for up to three steps in order, so a large bill can go to the department head, then the controller, then the CFO, and one rejection stops it. Every decision is written to an audit log with the person and the time, and the approval state travels with the invoice into the CSV you import into QuickBooks Online, Xero or NetSuite.

Here is the honest line on what we are not. Expenditure does not pay bills and never moves or holds your money. Once an invoice is approved, you pay it the way you already do: QuickBooks Bill Pay, Melio, your bank's ACH, or a check. If you want approval and payment inside one product and you pay a lot of bills, Melio Unlimited or Ramp are cheaper than we are. If you are on QuickBooks Online Advanced, Bill Pay Elite is already included and you should try its bill approval before paying anyone. We fit a finance team whose real problem is invoices that arrive uncoded and wait for sign off, especially when the same people also approve employee receipts and card spend, because all three land in one queue with one set of rules.

For the full cost picture including payment fees on 60 and 250 bills a month, see our AP automation cost comparison. The prices on this page are list prices read on each vendor's own pricing page, before promotions or negotiated terms.