Melio vs. Bill.com: Payment Solutions for Small Business

Accounts receivable and accounts payable are two of the most labor-intensive processes for businesses, including small businesses. Representing 43.5% of the American GDP, small businesses need an effective way to streamline the inflow and outflow of cash on a daily basis.

As cloud-based software, Melio and Bill.com offer small businesses powerful payment solutions for local and international payments and vendor management. The accounts payable functionality of both these options allows small businesses to issue invoices and receive payment easily online (accounts receivable), pay vendors and set up approval workflows (accounts payable).

Both these platforms are long standing favorites when it comes to ease of use and ease of integration with popular accounting software such as QuickBooks Online, Xero and Sage. In this article, we dissect the key features and make recommendations based on your business needs.

Let’s begin.

Melio vs. Bill.com: A Quick Overview

Melio

The Melio vision is to democratize business payments. They believe that by enabling more payment choices and by simplifying the way businesses interact with one another, we can level the B2B commerce playing field and keep small businesses in business.

To meet this objective, Melio has created a digital B2B payment platform that not only saves time but also improves cash flow. With Melio, you can choose exactly how you pay and get paid. Melio has a growing community of small businesses that spend more time on their financial operations and less time processing payments.

Bill.com

BILL is a leading provider of cloud-based software that simplifies, digitizes, and automates back-office financial processes for small and mid-sized businesses. Their mission is to make it simple to connect and do business. A total of 5.8 million network members pay or get paid on the Bill.com network, with 460,000 businesses trusting BILL to automate their payment process, recurring invoices, expense tracking and credit card payments.

With leading smart technology like AI and machine learning, BILL reduces manual data entry tasks while increasing accuracy and efficiency. According to their website, +85% of the top 100 accounting firms in the U.S. trust BILL. Clearly, they’ve worked hard to establish this platform amongst the leading cloud-based payment solutions worldwide.

Automate your pre-accounting manual tasks

If you seriously want to supercharge your payments process, integrate popular accounting software such as QuickBooks, Sage, Xero, MS Dynamics 365, ERPLY Books or Briox with a pre-accounting automation platform such as Envoice.

Use our smart data extraction technology to digitize your bills and receipts, manage the entire expense management process, customize approval workflows and give employees a mobile app to create expense reports. With our superior automation technology, you can eliminate human error and say a final farewell to paper.

We suggest you use Melio or Bill.com as your payment platform and Envoice to automate all your time-consuming pre-accounting tasks. At $7 a month for unlimited users, it’s a win-win.

Trial Envoice on a FREE TRIAL

Detailed Comparison of Key Features

Accounts Payable

Melio
Melio offers a simpler way to pay vendors and contractors using different payment methods. You can pay business bills with ACH bank transfer for free or by card (even where cards are not accepted). Your vendors do not need to sign up Melio to get paid. In three easy steps, you can process most of your business payments (add the bill, choose who to pay and select when to pay). Melio offers advanced payment methods at different delivery speeds (in minutes, same day, in 3 business days).

Melio syncs seamlessly with QuickBooks and Xero, but if you really want to automate your payment processes, then integrate your accounting software with Envoice and say goodbye to manual data entry for accounts payable. Envoice’s superior data extraction technology will help you go paperless and bring down human data entry errors to zero. You also get unlimited document storage, solving that problem forever!

Get Envoice for pre-accounting automation.

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Bill.com

With BILL, you can make business payments in four easy steps (capture, approve, pay, sync). With the automation capabilities, you can quickly import your invoices with no manual input required, and BILL will track all your outstanding bills due.

You can also tailor your approval workflow to your business rules and BILL will handle the routing for you. With full access to millions of vendors over the BILL network and more payment options – from ACH transfers, credit card, check or international wire transfer – you can process payments faster and eliminate error and process backlog.

Accounts Receivable

Melio
Melio offers a faster way to get paid. You receive payments directly into your bank accounts and business customers can pay you how you want. You can create an invoice with built-in payment buttons that allow customers to pay directly into your bank account. If you sync Melio with your accounting software, it will automatically match incoming payments with invoices. You’ll spend 50% less time on admin because you can manage your payments from any device and get full payment protection.

Bill.com
With BILL, you can automate invoicing and get paid 2x faster. Create your invoices from templates and customize invoice fields. With automated unique numbering, you can easily keep track of all your invoices. Send your invoices by email, track invoices and send reminders. You can also put accounts receivable on autopilot with autopay and auto-charge.

Melio – Additional Features

Pay-over-time
Tackle cashflow problems quickly by repaying over time with no hidden fees. Apply to pay over time; once approved, select the bill or vendor you want to pay and then choose the repayment period.

Mobile App
The Melio app allows small businesses to easily make and track payments from anywhere. Pay vendors in seconds and approve or check the status of any payment—all from your phone. There is no monthly fee to use the app, but some payment methods will attract fees.

Payment Link
Share your link with business customers so they can pay you anytime in a few clicks. No need to attach an invoice. They pay, and you get the money directly in your bank account.

Bill.com – Additional Features

The BILL spend and expense mobile app
BILL provides your team with the tools they need to Spend Smarter™ on the go. Manage budgets, expenses, and more from the palm of your hand—all for free. The system automatically verifies uploaded receipts to accurately correspond to their transactions.

Payments services
With Payments Services, you can boost your bottom line and streamline your payables processing. BILL handles the manual work of processing payments and remittances for your large invoices while offering rewards that you won’t get with ACH or checks.

API
Integrate BILL with your own AP, AR, organization, or network processes for the automation and custom branding you need. You can create seamless branding for your payment portal and customize invoices.

Who is it For?

Melio
Definitely for small businesses! According to G2, reviewers who were asked to compare Melio and Bill.com found Melio to be more user friendly and accommodating of their needs. One aspect of Meliio that you cannot get past is that its key features are free. So, as far as value for money is concerned, Melio is a winner for SMEs.

Bill.com
Small and medium enterprises can use Bill.com. A comparison of Bill vs. Melio shows that you should use Bill if you have a more complex operation with many moving parts. The functionality of BILL is more geared towards because you can process AR and AP in one platform. This integrated functionality provides better and more accurate reports across your entire business.

Claim to Fame

Melio
Melio makes payments super efficient. Unlimited users have access to their powerful platform features for free. Melio is the SME’s best friend.

Bill.com
Built to accommodate more complex processes for SMEs, BILL has increased the power of their platform with AI and machine learning. Pull all your business processes together with this top accounting software.

Melio vs. Bill.com: Features Snapshot

Conclusion

If you’re a small business owner or accounting firm, then Melio is your best option. You need to manage your cash flow carefully and Melio allows you to pay vendors on a schedule and receive customer payments faster than ever before.

Reviewers loved that Melio is free while charging nominal fees for certain payments. The platform is great but it seems that Melio’s customer service is the one thing that reviewers had to complain about. Pity.

For SMEs needing wider options, payment methods and integrations, choose Bill.com. BILL’s huge network of vendors (4m+) and the capacity to handle international wire transfers make it ideal for bigger businesses.

Reviewers love that BILL makes the whole AR and AP process so much simpler and faster with automation. However, the negative reviews are concerning, with reviewers listing frustrations with a lack of support and a slow turnaround on vendor payments. Having said that, it’s a very small percentage giving this feedback.

That concludes our comparison of Melio vs. Bill.com. Both of these options have been around for a long time, and you’ll make a good choice by considering either one.

While considering your options, don’t forget the role pre-accounting automation can play in your AP and AR processes. If you’re looking for a complete time, money and resource-saving tool, consider the pre-accounting automation benefits that Envoice can offer you.

For $7 a month, you won’t find a more powerful tool. There is no limit to the number of users, and with their ExactExtract service, you’ll achieve a 99.9% data extraction accuracy—i.e., goodbye human error.

Integrate with Envoice for pre-accounting automation.