We compiled this detailed Melio review while searching for the best software to manage payments. Our mission was to find a solution that alleviated the burden and allowed individuals to focus on business and client relationships.
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Last Updated: May 29, 2023
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Melio is a web-based accounts payable software meticulously engineered for small businesses in the United States.
Melio allows you to pay your bills conveniently via bank transfer or debit card for free. This B2B payment experience strives to save time and significantly improve the cash flow for your business. So, we decided to put their software solution to the test.
Paying your bills on time is a huge responsibility, especially when discussing an organization. It’s a time-consuming task when you have hundreds of invoices to look at and manage the late fees from the vendor. It can leave a bad mark on the image of your small business.
In this Melio review, we’ll delve into their services. We’ll examine the advantages and disadvantages of this software and what makes Melio a popular choice amongst small business owners.
In this section of the Melio review, we’ll discuss why this ‘accounts payable’ software might be the perfect fit for the accounting team of your small business.
Melio, an ‘accounts payable’ software solution, makes the collaboration between departments seamless.
It helps businesses eliminate labour-intensive tasks, allowing your employees to be more efficient and provide more value to your company. Melio can upload multiple invoices in a short duration of time, making the processing speed faster.
This intelligent ‘accounts payable’ software allows you to defer payments using a credit card. This helps you earn reward points on your card and improves your credit score. It also gives you a 45-day float period until your next credit card billing cycle.
This free solution deposits or mails checks to your vendor on your behalf, without any extra delivery charges. It is the best option for busy professionals and entrepreneurs setting up their businesses.
They no longer need to worry about late fees or outstanding bill amounts. Melio offers them an easy solution to pay up and manage their cash flow.
When we talk about ‘accounts payable’ software, it is necessary to analyze its pros and cons. The perfect payment software can make your life easier by removing the hassle and worry of late payments.
However, if you choose the wrong software, your books and budget will be in a mess. And this could be a massive blow to your small business.
| Pros of Melio | Cons of Melio |
|---|---|
| + Free to use + Reliable cusomer support + Get paid instantly + Efficient accounting + Organize documents | – Service fee for card payments – Single accounting integration |
This section of the Melio review will discuss the benefits of this software and the areas where it can improve.
Melio is a free ‘accounts payable’ software that individuals and small business owners can access. You can quickly pay your bills using either the bank transfer option or your debit card. The platform will deposit or mail your checks to the vendor without extra delivery charges.
The customer support team is excellent at Melio. Their business model depends upon retaining their customers. And they work hard on providing top-notch services to their clients and value them.
Once registered, you will be assigned a customer relationship manager to assist you in solving your problem. This feature makes them stand out in our Melio review. You can contact them 24/7 via chat, email, or their toll-free customer care number.
Melio offers an exclusive service to freelancers or small business owners, where their clients can pay them instantly. The platform makes it easy to get paid by providing multiple options, including credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers.
Melio allows you to automate your manual tasks, making the accounting work much more efficient.
You can integrate the platform with QuickBooks. This makes it easier for your accountant to log in to the platform, check the invoices, and download the needed ones.
And you can easily automate your recurring payments to ensure that a vendor or bank does not charge you any late fee.
Keeping a paper trail of all your transactions and invoices can be a labour-intensive task. It is also an exercise prone to errors.
Melio allows you to organize all your transaction documents and payment invoices in a digital space. This makes it easier for you to track where you’re spending your money and how you can optimize those expenses. Having a digital record can also be helpful for tax and budgeting purposes.
In this part of our Melio review we’ll cover the parts of the Melio experience that user thought could be improved.
When writing this Melio review, the company supports clients and vendors based in the United States, UK, Canada, and Europe.
The platform will not process your payment if you have a client outside these regions. You can neither pay nor receive any international payments outside these three regions through Melio.
Melio is free to use for bank and debit card payments. However, the platform charges a 2.9% service fee on credit card payments.
The company explains that this service charge covers the card processing fees. It also allows them to sustain their future suite while adding new features for its clients every year.
As mentioned in our Melio review, one of the drawbacks of this ‘accounts payable’ software is integrating a single accounting application.
Melio allows you to add QuickBooks to automate your accounting features. If you are not familiar with this application, your learning curve will be relatively steep. The platform, unfortunately, does not offer Zapier integration or built-in expense reports.
Melio does not offer any vendor management options on its platform. It elevates the issue of managing contracts, documentation, and other vital information in your organization.
Without proper management of your clients or vendors, paying them on time might be an issue. This makes it challenging to manage multiple clients at the same time.
We’ve already provided a brief overview, benefits, and disadvantages of this ‘accounts payable’ software. In this section of the Melio review, we will now talk about the range of services offered by the company.
| Melio Service | Features |
|---|---|
| Pay Vendors | – Free bank transfers or debit transactions – Pay with credit card and earn rewards |
| Get Paid | – Instantly receive payment – Secure ways to receive payment |
| Accounting Solutions | – Match payments with invoices – Integrate with your Quickbooks acount |
Melio provides the simplest way to pay your vendors and contractors. You can pay any invoice by bank transfer or debit card transaction for free. Or you could pay through a credit card to earn exciting rewards.
Melio even allows you to pay for services that do not accept cards. This helps improve your cash flow to sustain your small business.
Create dynamic payment approval workflows for your team by inviting users or accountants to the platform and setting their access permissions.
In this way, you’ll still be in charge of approving each transaction and would be in control of your cash flow.
Melio allows you to save time by paying multiple bills at once. You can integrate the platform with QuickBooks to automate manual, repetitive tasks. It helps you manage your cash flow by splitting your bills into multiple payments and payment methods.
Along with paying your vendor bills, you can also automate your phone bills and other utilities through this platform. Melio has over 7,000 vendors, including Amex, AT&T and First Progress.
Streamline your accounting process on a single platform and empower your customers and clients with a simple and free digital experience.
Melio eliminates the time required or taken to receive and deposit your checks. Your clients can now pay you instantly through this platform.
Additionally, it has a simple and interactive interface that beginners can easily understand. The platform offers your clients multiple payment options, including SMBs.
All the incoming payments will be instantly associated with the relevant invoice through your accounting software.
Melio provides a centralized platform to track and manage your invoices and payment requests. The timeline option allows you to track the life cycle of your invoice – from the time it gets generated to the time it gets paid.
The platform is entirely free for both senders and receivers making payments through bank transfers or debit cards. Melio does not charge any transaction or subscription fee to their customers.
You can also customize your invoices and payment requests to fit your brand’s identity. You can do this by adding your company’s name and logo, giving it a more professional feel.
Melio eliminates any risk associated with money transfers and payments by offering a safe, secure, and compliant platform.
This section of the Melio review will discuss how the platform is perfect for B2B payments. And we’ll examine why that’s important for your business and your clients.
Melio allows you to manage your client’s business-to-business payments with an intuitive, all-in-one dashboard. You can seamlessly sync the platform with QuickBooks online and eliminate any dual entry for all your bills and bill payments.
With the help of FreshBooks, QuickBooks Desktop, and QuickBooks Online, you can improve your workflow efficiency by syncing all your receivable accounts.
You or your clients do not have to pay any sign-up or subscription fee and use the platform for free. However, if you want to defer your payments through a credit card, you will have to pay a 2.9% service charge.
With Melio, you get access to a dedicated dashboard for your team members. It provides your firm with more in-depth oversight and visibility. It allows you to add members to your team, assign them to clients, and set up automatic payment approval workflows.
Manage your client’s cash flow by scheduling payments in advance, ensuring that your payment never gets delayed. Melio would prompt your vendors to enter their payment details and let them choose how to get paid – either through check or bank deposit.
Melio allows you to access all your client’s accounts from a single dashboard, including their payment status and QuickBooks integration. The platform also offers a dedicated team of customer support personnel to solve your queries within minutes.
We have discussed the wide range of services the software offers. This section of the Melio review will give you a brief outline of the exciting features this platform offers.
Melio offers you multiple flexible payment options, making your accounting task easier. You can either pay the platform through a debit card, credit card, or direct bank transfer.
While paying through debit card and bank transfer is free of cost, the platform will charge you a service fee of 2.9% if you use credit cards.
Melio can be used as a payment method for vendors and stores that do not accept card payments.
Once you have made your payment, Melio would either make a bank transfer or mail a check to your vendor on your behalf. Interestingly, your vendors do not need a Melio account to receive payments.
Melio helps you avoid any late payments or their corresponding liabilities with its payment scheduling feature. It is especially beneficial to pay your bills, insurance, taxes, or lease.
It allows you to automate your payments, so you don’t have to manually check and make a monthly payment. All you have to do is to approve these payments.
Melio helps you manage your cash flow better, ensuring that you do not pay your bills too early or after the deadline. Automated payments ensure that all your vendors are happy by receiving their payments on time every month.
Melio is specially curated for freelancers, budding entrepreneurs, and small business owners. As discussed here in our Melio review, the platform does not have any premium plan and offers all its services for free.
You can send or receive payments from your vendors or clients without subscribing to a costly ‘accounts payable’ software. The platform even mails checks to vendors at no extra delivery cost.
You no longer have to wait for your check to get cleared to receive your amount. Through Melio, your clients can pay you directly through bank transfer or their card.
They can send you your payment through the direct payment link generated once you sign-up to the platform. This helps eliminate the hassle of sharing your bank account details.
Your clients do not need a Melio account to make their payments. They can click on the link and send you the money directly.
Your payment would be processed and credited to your bank account within 2 business days, without charging you a set-up or transaction fees.
As discussed above in our Melio review, you can easily invite multiple users to be a part of your team. The platform allows you to create dynamic payment approval workflows to ensure all your vendors get paid on time.
While adding users to your team, you can also assign them to multiple clients, allowing them to view and manage their business.
Melio enables you to set up custom permissions for your team members, controlling what they can access. It helps you stay in control of all the transactions and cash flow.
When dealing with an ‘accounts payable’ software that will handle all your payments, you need to check the company’s legitimacy. This section of the Melio review will discuss whether the company is safe for sending and receiving payments from multiple clients.
The platform offers industry-leading encryption, including HTTPS and AES. All of Melio’s servers are in certified data centers monitored 24/7.
They use state-of-the-art cryptographic algorithms while they are transferring data. And these algorithms keep your data safe in cloud databases.
Melio is also PCI compliant, so none of their customers’ sensitive data, like their credit card information, is stored on their servers. Instead, they use a third-party credit card processor, Tabapay.
Tabapay is a highly secure service provider that conducts annual security audits to ensure its databases are free of malware, thus protecting sensitive data. Melio also conducts daily automatic and manual system tests to help prevent any fraud.
Melio uses Evolve bank and Trust to safely hold your payment until it gets delivered to the vendor, so your funds are never at risk.
It also conducts extensive background checks for all its employees before hiring them and offers them security training.
This Melio review also contains a brief about the customer support team at this ‘accounts payable’ software. Melio offers you different options to reach out to their customer support executives. They have a dedicated email for support and queries.
When you sign-up on the platform and are inside the main dashboard, you will notice a support option at the left-hand side of the menu.
A live chat dialogue box will pop up on your screen by clicking on this option. Here you can connect with the support staff and clarify your queries or issues.
Melio also has a dedicated FAQ page that answers all the general questions you might have about the platform. You can also connect with them through email or social media handles, including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
Since your transactions get done through the website, it is essential to analyze the ease of their interface. In this section of the Melio review, we will discuss whether this website is user-friendly or not.
The platform has a modern design and is easy to navigate around the website and understand its functionality. Melio has a lot of information on their pages, helping you learn more about their website and how they work.
Signing up on their platform is pretty straightforward too. The registration page requires just your work email and password to move forward. They have action buttons on different website sections, allowing you to sign up quickly.
Melio’s homepage is pretty easy to navigate. You can click on different services offered by the platform through their header and jump to other pages.
All of them are complete with tons of information to help you explain what the platform is all about. The platform also offers resources like FAQs, blogs, and a help center in case you need to clarify your doubts before signing up on this ‘accounts payable’ software.
Starting up with this software is as simple as creating an account on google. This section of the Melio review will discuss how to get started with this ‘accounts payable’ platform.
Not sure if Melio is right for you? If you are looking for a different option, there are other ‘accounts payable’ platforms that you can try out.
They work in a very similar manner to Melio, and you can easily manage your payments using one of them. This section of the Melio review will discuss alternatives to this software.
Velo Payments is an efficient, secure, and automated payment software suitable for small and large enterprises.
They offer strategic payment solutions and design an infrastructure ideal for global commerce for your business. They partnered with Mastercard in 2020 to provide an industry-leading global payments system.
Velo payments offer a safe and secure platform for B2B companies, allowing them to pay via bank transfer or debit cards. Like Melio, this platform automates the accounting process to reduce time and workforce while checking for fraud.
The platform offers industry-leading security features, including two-factor authentication. It also provides a real-time payment tracking option and notifies you automatically via SMS once your payment is processed.
Even though Velo payments offer a free plan, it is limited. They do not provide any customer support on their basic plan. All their paid plans are pretty pricey for small business owners. Additionally, the platform has a cap on the payment amount.
Tipalti is a smart payable software designed for modern business. It transforms how finance teams work by scaling and fully automating the process. This end-to-end solution offers enterprise-grade financial controls and a customer-focused approach.
This automated ‘accounts payable’ software supports multiple currencies and payment options. You can automate an unlimited number of processing tasks to reduce manual labour.
Tipalti is perfect for small businesses as well as large enterprises. It gives you the freedom to scale your business without switching to new software.
As discussed in our Melio review, Tipalti offers a secure platform with fraud prevention tactics. It has an easy-to-use supplier onboarding terminal, which beginners can use. Unlike Melio, this platform is available in over 200 countries and supports 100 different currencies.
However, its multi-currency support is still in the beta-testing phase, and you might observe some glitches. Additionally, it does not have many accounting features and offers just the basic ones to its customers. You also cannot make changes to a paid bill.
Corpay One offers an all-in-one platform that helps clear bills to your vendors and simplifies your bookkeeping process. This powerful, simple-to-use solution allows small business owners to grow and scale their businesses.
It offers automated tools for invoice management, accounting, receipt collection, payment reconciliation, expense approval, exports, vendor communication, and reimbursements.
Corpay One allows you to manage your vendors and their payment and offers real-time ERP synchronization. It provides built-in tools for creating detailed expense reports and many automation features.
This platform also offers a chrome extension, making it easier to use. You can also integrate with Zapier, which allows you to integrate hundreds of applications to your platform seamlessly.
However, the most significant disadvantage of this platform is they do not show you the details for receivable accounts.
In other words, the platform doesn’t reflect your customer’s due balance but only the amount you owe to your vendors.
Paypool is an end-to-end ‘accounts payable’ automation software that streamlines your accounting process. It offers everything from invoices to approval to payment.
This fully transparent software reduces the time spent on manual, time-consuming tasks, thus adding more value to your organization.
The cloud-based automated software can secure your electric paper trail. Paypool can easily integrate with your current accounting software and access multiple devices, including your mobile phones.
Its robust reporting features and transaction-level data provide complete visibility to your team on-demand.
Similar to Melio, you can use Paypool to distribute payments to multiple vendors or individuals at once. You can also efficiently manage your vendor details, payment options, and invoices.
This secure software also offers a fraud detection feature, keeping your sensitive data safe.
However, Paypool is expensive for freelancers and small business owners and does not offer a free plan. They offer services on a per-client basis.
Additionally, the platform does not provide any phone or live chat support. You can only email them, which can be a little inconvenient for you.
MineralTree offers cloud-based payment automation and invoicing features. You can easily integrate it with popular accounting platforms like NetSuite, QuickBooks, Microsoft Dynamics GP and Intacct. It is most suitable for small and medium scale businesses.
MineralTree automates your ‘accounts payable’ process by invoice capturing, invoice approval, payment authorization, payment completion, and AP analysis.
It offers different user types and is optimized for approvers, accounting managers, and more, allowing you to create automated workflows, along with an agile customer support system.
However, the platform is not as seamless as it sounds. It does lag a bit and lacks a modern interface. It can also be quite expensive for freelancers and small business owners.
While we come to the end of this Melio review, here is what you should remember about this ‘accounts payable’ software.
Melio is free-to-use software that helps you manage your accounting process. It streamlines all your tasks and makes sure that there is no double data entry.
This secure platform is compliant with industry-level security features, keeping all your sensitive data like payment information safe.
You can use Melio to automate all your manual processes and improve the overall efficiency of your team. However, this is suitable only for small businesses. You might have to shift to new software as your organization grows.
Melio has a straightforward process of adding your bills and paying your vendors. You can also get paid via the platform by generating a customized invoice for your clients. The platform forwards your client payments on your behalf in the form of a check or a direct bank transfer.
This Melio review gave you a brief overview of the company, the pros and cons of the ‘accounts payable’ software, how to get started with Melio, and the alternatives to this application.
Melio is a legitimate website that allows you to send and receive payments free of cost.
They do not have a subscription model or any set-up fee as well. While paying your vendors, you should consider that direct bank transfer or debit card payments would be made free of cost.
However, it will imply a service charge if you use credit cards. You’ll still receive rewards by paying via your credit card.
Our comprehensive Melio review details the best & worst of this B2B ‘accounts payable’ software & whether it’s a good fit for your business.
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Melio is intended to help individuals and businesses collect payment for their products and services. If you are a person who invoices clients and charges payments, then Melio is for you!
If you choose to mail a check to your vendor, the payment will be delivered between 3 to 5 business days. If you choose bank transfer, it will take between 1 to 3 business days.
Melio payment is legit and has excellent ratings. They also have customer service to help in case you run into any challenges while using their service.
Melio is free, it doesn't cost anything to set up your account and start receiving payments. Melio is a cost-effective solution for small businesses.
Melio uses cryptographic algorithms for anything involving your data transmission so it is incredibly secure.
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