Best AP Software for Multi-Entity Firms: 6 Picks in 2027

Key Takeaways

• Decide the entity model before comparing features. BILL's accountant tiers suit a firm that works across many client organizations, while the other five tools are organized around one company group with several legal entities.

• Four of the six tools publish at least one price. Stampli and Medius publish none, so any budget for them needs a written quote.

• Multi-entity access depends on the tier you buy. Payhawk's Growth program is single-entity, and BILL's Essentials and Team plans do not include multi-entity accounting.

• Test entity controls in the demo: one vendor record shared across entities, approval rules that follow the entity, and intercompany entries drawn from one transaction.

• A custom workflow layer can add entity routing and exception queues on top of an AP tool, but it needs API or export access and named human reviewers.

Accounts payable (AP) automation is software that captures vendor invoices, routes them for approval, schedules payment, and posts the result to the general ledger. For a firm running several entities, the category question is simpler than the feature lists suggest: do you need one console that moves between client organizations, or one AP workspace where each legal entity keeps its own vendors, approvers, and bank accounts?

TL;DR: pick the tool whose entity model matches how your entities are organized, confirm multi-entity access on the exact tier you would buy, and get a written quote from any vendor that does not publish prices.

The category decision comes before the feature list

Controls matter because the risk is real. Payments fraud: 79% of organizations hit in 2024 according to AFP (2025). That survey covers 2024 activity, which means it describes the year before the one you are buying in, and the threat has not gone away.

A multi-client console and a multi-entity AP workspace solve different problems. A console is built for a firm that logs into each client's books, approves bills for several clients, and reports across them. A multi-entity workspace is built for one group that wants one vendor list, entity-specific approvals, and consolidated reporting. Both can be the right answer, and the wrong one costs time at every month-end close.

How we evaluated these tools

This is an informed buyer's guide built from public vendor pages, a trade report on Gartner's AP placements, the AFP payments fraud survey, and a payments vendor's published evaluation checklist. We did not run hands-on trials, and we did not assign vendor scores. The weights below reflect what matters most when one firm has to keep several entities clean.

The weights are our judgment for a multi-entity buyer, not vendor or analyst scores. The scale column is the range you can use for your own scoring after a demo.

Analyst placement is one input, not a verdict. Gartner AP Leaders: four of 14 vendors according to Shared Services Link (2025), which reports that Basware, Coupa, Esker, and Medius were placed in the Leaders quadrant of the first Gartner Magic Quadrant for Accounts Payable Applications. Coupa and Basware are not in this shortlist because we could not open their pricing pages in this session, and Medius is included because its enterprise page is public and it is named in that report.

Who this is for

Who this is for: an owner or operations lead at a small accounting business who pays bills for more than one legal entity, whether those entities are client companies run through one firm or subsidiaries in the firm's own group. You are close to choosing, so the question is which entity model you can live with, not which tool tops a generic list.

• Choose BILL if your firm works across many client organizations and needs one place to approve bills. Its accountant console is built around that model, with one-click access to each client account and per-client task lists.

• Choose Payhawk only for a group that needs its multi-entity features. Its Growth program is single-entity, so the entity features sit on a higher tier or an add-on.

• Choose Tipalti when cross-border supplier payouts and multiple currencies matter more than a simple bill approval queue. Its pricing page centers on global multi-entity and multi-currency infrastructure.

• Choose Ramp when you want bill pay bundled with corporate cards and can accept its tier rules for AP features.

• Choose Medius or Stampli only after a written quote, and only when you have an ERP team to run the rollout.

Red flags: you run one legal entity with no plan to add another, nobody can say who approves a change to a vendor's bank details, or your current ERP already routes approvals by entity and you want no second system to maintain.

Feature matrix: what each vendor says about entities

The matrix records what each vendor's own pages state, and it marks gaps where the page is silent. A blank does not mean the product lacks a feature. It means we did not find the claim on the page we opened.

Two rows contain claims that conflict with the rest of the vendor's own page. BILL's Corporate row and Payhawk's platform row both need a written answer from the vendor, not an assumption. Medius publishes no tier names at all, so ask for the entity limits in the quote.

Pricing and total cost

On BILL, the Essentials plan costs $49 per user per month, the Team plan $65, and the Corporate plan $89, according to BILL. BILL's Enterprise tier is custom-priced, and its Standard and Enterprise accountant tiers publish no prices, so those need a quote. Payments carry separate fees: ACH payment fee: $0.59 per payment according to BILL.

On Tipalti, plans for accounts payable start at $99 a month and mass payments start at $249 a month, according to Tipalti. The page says transaction fees and add-on modules are quote-based, and it ties cost to the number of legal entities and currencies.

On Payhawk, the Growth program costs £149 a month on a 24-month term, according to Payhawk. That price covers one entity, 10 cards, 10 seats, and up to 15 invoices and 15 reimbursements a month, and the page says Growth excludes multi-entity management.

On Ramp, the Plus plan costs $15 per user per month plus a team-size platform fee the company does not publish, and the Free plan costs $0 and includes bill pay, according to Ramp.

Stampli and Medius publish no prices. Stampli's pricing page says its pricing is as simple as its implementation and sends buyers to request a quote, and Medius's enterprise page offers only demo and contact calls to action.

The table below uses list prices only. It assumes four users where a per-user price applies and a 12-month year. It excludes transaction, FX, add-on, and implementation fees, so treat each total as a floor, not a budget.

Pricing checked October 26, 2026.

The table repeats the list prices cited above. Stampli and Medius show Quote-based because their pages publish no figure, and the Ramp Plus total excludes the team-size platform fee, which Ramp does not publish.

Vendor profiles

BILL

Best fit: firms that work across many client organizations and want one place to approve bills across them. BILL's developer documentation describes a console API token that signs in to client organizations, and it notes that creating organizations through the API needs a partner app key, according to the BILL console operations docs.

Limitations: BILL's pricing page lists multi-entity accounting as included on Enterprise, marks it included on Corporate in its feature table while the Corporate description leaves it out, and excludes it from Essentials and Team. Get the Corporate answer in writing. Payment fees apply per transaction on top of seat prices.

Implementation: confirm the entity-to-ledger mapping and the console role model for each client before the rollout. Ask whether a per-client approval rule can be set without a second login.

Evidence: BILL pricing and the BILL console operations docs.

Tipalti

Best fit: groups paying suppliers across borders in several currencies, where multi-entity and multi-currency infrastructure matter more than a simple bill queue. The pricing page lists "Multi-Entity Support Built-in" and "FX Management" as platform features, according to the Tipalti pricing page.

Limitations: the page does not say which tier includes domestic or global multi-entity infrastructure, transaction fees are unpublished, and add-ons are quote-based. A published starting price does not show the cost of your entity count.

Implementation: put the entity list and currency list into the quote request, since the vendor says cost depends on both.

Evidence: Tipalti pricing.

Stampli

Best fit: firms that want entity-level and location-level visibility in one AP product, which its pricing table presents as unlimited entities and locations for the AP product. The table is flattened in the page we read, so confirm the mapping before relying on it.

Limitations: no prices are published for the AP product or any module, and the page directs buyers to request a quote. A buyer cannot compare Stampli with published tiers until the quote arrives.

Implementation: plan the implementation scope as a quote item and ask for entity onboarding details in writing.

Evidence: Stampli pricing.

Medius

Best fit: large organizations with multi-ERP environments and cross-region controls. Medius's enterprise page says it standardizes invoice capture, coding, and matching across entities, regions, and volumes, and that it enforces approval policies and segregation of duties across all entities, according to its enterprise page.

Limitations: the page is written for enterprise buyers and publishes no prices. It also says "Medius complements your ERP, it does not replace it," so you still run the ERP and need an integration project alongside it.

Implementation: budget an ERP integration project rather than a short setup, and get the scope in writing.

Evidence: Shared Services Link on the Gartner placement and the Medius enterprise page.

Payhawk

Best fit: a multi-entity group that wants cards, bills, and reimbursements in one tool, with multi-entity management on the platform rather than on a single-entity plan. The page describes group master data and a group dashboard, according to the Payhawk pricing page.

Limitations: the Growth program explicitly excludes multi-entity management, additional entities are an add-on priced by quote, and contracts are typically annual or multi-year. The page also lists FX fees separately from plan prices, so the plan price is not your full cost.

Implementation: some implementation sessions are included in each contract, according to the same page. Ask how many sessions cover your entities.

Evidence: Payhawk pricing.

Ramp

Best fit: teams that want bill pay bundled with corporate cards and want approvals routed by department, amount, location, or vendor. Ramp's November 2025 guide for professional services describes client and matter coding for firms, according to Ramp's professional services guide.

Limitations: AP agents that auto-code and recommend approvals are available only on Plus. Some ERP integrations require a Plus account with a monthly fee, and same-day ACH and international payments may incur fees unless you use a Ramp business account.

Implementation: confirm which ERP integration your ledgers need and which tier includes it before signing.

Evidence: Ramp pricing and the Ramp professional services guide.

Controls to test before you sign

Corpay's AP automation evaluation guide, updated October 19, 2026, gives buyer tests for multi-entity AP, as shown in its multi-entity evaluation guide. Corpay sells payments products, so treat its checklist as a test script rather than an impartial rating. Run these four tests in every demo:

• Vendor master: a strong platform keeps one vendor record and attaches entity-specific details to it. Add a new entity to an existing vendor and change the terms for that entity only. A second vendor record is a red flag.

• Approvals: approval rules should follow the entity first, then the amount and department. Submit an invoice for Entity B and log in as Entity A's controller. The queue should be empty.

• Intercompany: both entries should come from the same transaction, without a manual journal.

• Duplicates: ask whether the platform catches the same invoice number submitted to two companies.

BEC: cited by 63% of respondents according to AFP (2025). Business email compromise remained the top avenue for attempted and actual payments fraud in 2024, which is why bank-detail changes and duplicate invoices belong in the human review queue.

A worked example makes the cost concrete. Suppose a firm with four users approves bills on BILL's Corporate tier and pays 150 vendor bills a month by ACH. At the Corporate seat price of $89 and the $0.59 ACH fee cited above, seats cost $356 a month (4 × $89) and payment fees cost $88.50 a month (150 × $0.59), for $444.50 a month or $5,334 over 12 months. That total excludes the multi-entity question, which the vendor's own page leaves unclear. On the integration side, BILL's payment webhook documentation describes payment.updated notifications that arrive when a payment's status changes, after you subscribe to a BILL event and point it at a notification URL. A proposed workflow would post each status change back to the matching entity's ledger, and a named reviewer would check any payment whose status changes out of sequence before the month-end close. The prerequisite is an endpoint your firm runs and an owner who maintains it.

Doing it yourself: Zapier, Make, n8n, or an internal build

The realistic alternative is often stitching this together in Zapier, Make, or n8n, or building a small internal tool. Those can support run histories, retries, error branches, and audit evidence when you configure them. What you design and own is everything else: idempotency so a retried run does not post the same bill twice, escalation when an approver is missing, access controls on bank data, and maintenance when a vendor's API changes.

A proposed US Tech Automations design would configure the same pieces as a managed layer on top of your existing AP tool, and it would be a configuration to review, not a finished deployment. The workflow would start with a trigger: a new invoice email or file for a named entity. It would extract the invoice header, match the vendor to that entity's record, route the bill to that entity's approver list, and write an approved record or export file for that entity's ledger. Exceptions would go to a queue for suspected duplicates, new bank details, and amounts above limits the firm sets. The prerequisites are API or export access to the AP system, a written entity-to-ledger map, named approvers per entity, and a retained audit log. The human review points are any vendor bank-detail change, any suspected duplicate, and any payment whose status changes outside the normal sequence.

When not to use US Tech Automations: if you run one entity with one approver, BILL's Essentials plan or Ramp's Free plan may cover you without a custom layer, and that is the simpler buy. If your ERP already routes approvals by entity and you have no shared inbox to automate, the native module is less to maintain. If you want the AP vendor to hold payment rails and money movement end to end, a managed AP product is a better fit than a custom layer on top of it.

Decision checklist

• Count the legal entities that will share one AP tool, and confirm which tier includes multi-entity access for each.

• Request written quotes from Stampli and Medius before comparing them with the published prices above.

• Confirm the ERP connector for each entity's ledger, not just the parent company's.

• Run the four control tests from the previous section in a live demo, using your own entity names.

• Name the person who approves vendor bank-detail changes for each entity before go-live.

Glossary

• Entity-scoped approval: a rule that routes a bill to approvers for the legal entity that owes it, rather than to approvers for the firm as a whole.

• Vendor master record: the single supplier profile that holds terms, remittance details, and bank accounts, with entity-specific details attached.

• Intercompany entry: a ledger entry recording that one entity owes another, posted on both sides of the same transaction.

• Idempotency: a property where repeating the same request does not create a second bill or payment.

• Touchless invoice: an invoice processed from capture to posting with no manual entry. Vendors define this differently, so ask for each definition in writing.

Frequently asked questions

Can one AP tool handle several legal entities?

Yes, but only on the tier or add-on that names it, and BILL, Payhawk, and Ramp each tie multi-entity features to specific plans or add-ons. Tipalti lists the feature without naming tiers, so ask for that in writing.

Is BILL's Corporate plan multi-entity?

BILL's feature table marks multi-entity accounting as included on Corporate, but the Corporate description does not mention it, so put that answer into your quote before you buy.

Why do Stampli and Medius not show prices?

Neither publishes a price, and both direct buyers to a quote or demo. The only way to compare them with published tiers is to request a written quote that lists your entities and expected invoice volume.

Should a small firm pick the enterprise option?

Not on public information alone. Medius positions itself for large organizations with multi-ERP environments, and it says it complements the ERP rather than replacing it, so a small firm would need an ERP team to run it.

Can Zapier, Make, or n8n replace an AP platform?

They can move invoices between tools and keep run histories, but they do not hold payment rails. You would still need a bank-connected AP product, and you would own the controls around it.

Do the published prices include payment fees?

No. BILL's ACH and check fees, Tipalti's transaction fees, and Payhawk's FX fees sit outside the plan prices, so the totals in the table are floors.

Next steps

Start with your entity list and one vendor that appears in every entity. Take that list into two or three demos, and ask each vendor to show the approval path and the ledger posting for one invoice from start to finish. If your entities already share one vendor list and you want a custom routing layer on top, see how US Tech Automations configures this for a proposed design, and bring your own API and export prerequisites to the conversation.