Many small and medium size businesses find legacy procure to pay (P2P) software like Ariba, Coupa and Ivalua too complicated and prohibitively expensive.
While these platforms come with a rich suite of features, they make more sense for large companies who can take full advantage of them.
But the alternative — using spreadsheets and manually tracking down important paperwork — is not ideal either. It is inefficient, slows down procurement, can lead to supplier relationship problems and make audits harder.
Similar to larger businesses, P2P software is still the best solution for streamlining procurement and supplier payments. But we recommend looking for P2P software designed specifically for smaller business operations.
What To Look For in P2P Software for Small Businesses
Affordability
Decide how much you are willing and able to spend yearly on P2P software. Pricing for P2P software ranges from thousands of dollars to less than a hundred dollars a month depending on the size of business they can accommodate and the number of features they offer.
Keep in mind that P2P software does pay for itself in terms of cost savings. It cuts out rogue spending, prevents departments from going over budget and reduces the number of manhours dedicated to tedious manual procurement and payment processes.
So don’t automatically choose the cheapest P2P software. You can get decent ROI on a higher priced and better quality software.
On the other hand, don’t choose a platform that’s too expensive for the size of your business.
End-to-End Functionality
Check that the P2P software you choose provides true end-to-end functionality.
Some software solutions disguise themselves as procure to pay. But in reality, they only handle certain aspects of the process such as requisition, purchases or invoicing.
A good P2P software offers tools for the entire process including requisition, RFPs, purchase orders, vendor management and invoice management.
Where they cannot accomplish a specific task, such as making payments, they offer easy integration with tools that can.
Level of Automation
P2P software that requires a lot of manual entries and checks can feel just as clunky as spreadsheets. The more automation a P2P software offers, the easier it is to use and the smoother the workflow.
Here are some automated features to look for.
Automatic generation of documents such as POs and RFPs.
Automatic vendor management including emailing RFPs, price comparisons, contract renewals etc.
Automated budget tracking - ensures teams never go over their budget.
Automated 3-way matching between purchase orders, receipts, and invoices - a normally tedious and time-consuming process when done manually.
Automated invoice processing including capturing invoices, checking for discrepancies (3-way matching) and automatically approving payments.
…and more.
Workflow Customization
Each business has its own procurement to payment workflow with a unique matrix that ensures proper reviews, approvals, tracking and compliance.
Ensure that the P2P software you pick allows you to establish a workflow that fits your business model.
How easy is it to establish hierarchy within the software for reviews, edits and approvals?
Can you set custom permissions and roles within various aspects of the P2P process? For instance: Who has the ability to set spending budgets? Who can view expenses? Who can generate purchase orders?
Integrations
A good P2P software should plug in flawlessly into the rest of your business operations. Most software will come with a number of integrations, allowing easy information exchange with other systems and departments.
The most common integrations include accounting software like QuickBooks, ERP software such as NetSuite and PunchOut systems to allow direct purchasing from suppliers.
Reports
By having the entire procure to pay process within a single platform, it’s easier to see the big picture when it comes to budgeting, expenses, vendor relationships and other areas.
Look for a P2P software that gives you a good bird’s eye view via automated reports. This includes real-time reports and analytics so that you know where your business stands, as well as historical reports for trend analysis and strategic planning.
Mobile App
Choose P2P software that lets you approve requisitions, set budgets, track orders and do other things on the go via a mobile app.
Three Best Procure to Pay Software for Small Businesses
1. Precoro — Best Overall
Precoro is the best overall P2P software for most small and medium-size businesses. It’s easy to use with a user-friendly UI, it is packed with plenty of features and it offers a level of automation incomparable to other options.
Precoro’s main focus is making your procurement to pay workflow easy, smooth and transparent.
It has a modern UI that is easy to navigate. Each entry includes all information about it including where it currently is in the P2P process, documents associated with it, budget, vendor information and more.
With plenty of automated tasks like generating RFPs and vendor communication, Precoro allows smooth and fast transition from one step to the next. This eliminates a lot of the bottlenecks and delays that plague manual P2P processes.
Here are our favorite Precoro features.
Customized workflows & routing — You can build your own approval process. Documents are automatically delivered to the right person.
Revise and reject — People within the approval chain can revise documents or reject them. Precoro keeps a history of all these changes for future auditing.
Automated processes — Including 3-way matching, document generation, recurring POs, order tracking and more. This ensures nothing falls through the gaps and makes the workflow less labor-intensive.
Mobile app — Allows on-the-go approvals, monitoring and team communication.
Integrations — QuickBooks, NetSuite, Grainger PunchOut, Xero, Sage and more. Precoro can also work with you to create an API integration to any other software you’d like.
Pricing
Precoro offers three pricing plans: Core starting at $499/month for small businesses, Automation starting at $999/month for scaling businesses and a custom priced enterprise plan for larger operations.
While not the cheapest P2P software in the market, Precoro is more affordable than many legacy software that typically start in the thousands of dollars.
2. Procurify — Best For Payment Processing
Precoro and many other P2P software only go as far as invoice processing. They don’t fully unify procurement with accounts payable (AP). Instead they rely on accounting integrations for that.
Procurify is different in that it offers payment processing without requiring integrations with additional payment software.
Not only does Procurify manage invoices (generating, 3-way match, approval etc.) you can also set it up to settle approved invoices — no additional integrations needed. You can even get reloadable physical or virtual spending cards, allowing teams to make purchases quicker.
This makes Procurify truly end to end — procurement to AP. Here are other notable features.
Real time status updates and order tracking.
Contract management
Vendor management
Budget & expenses monitoring
Real-time reports
Mobile app
PunchOut catalogs
Multiple integrations.
Pricing
Procurify doesn't share their pricing publicly. You’ll need to request a quote.
3. SpendWise — Most Affordable
For small businesses that need a simple P2P software that doesn’t cost much, we recommend SpendWise.
SpendWise focuses on the basics of P2P. Don’t expect the bells and whistles of Procurify and Precoro. But its functionality is good enough for small businesses looking to get away from paperwork and manual processes.
Main features include:
Creating and approving purchase orders.
Bills and expenses management.
Custom roles and permissions.
Create and track budgets.
25+ reports.
Mobile app.
Multiple integrations.
Pricing
SpendWise prices their software per user. The Basic plan costs $9/user per month. The Pro plan costs $19/user per month and the Enterprise month comes with custom pricing.
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