Still processing invoices by hand?
You’re likely drowning in paperwork, chasing approvals, and risking costly data entry errors. That whole manual process just doesn’t scale with your business.
The real issue is that manual invoice processing drains your budget and keeps your finance team stuck on low-value tasks instead of strategic work.
In fact, according to docuclipper.com, 68% of companies still manually key in invoices. That costly, inefficient process is a major bottleneck for any growing company.
But what if you could automate this entire process? The right software helps you cut manual tasks faster and finally regain control over your payables.
While we’re discussing software that enhances efficiency, you might also be interested in my guide on best endpoint management software.
That’s why I’ve created this detailed guide. I’ll show you the best aps software to help you streamline approvals and gain real-time visibility.
You’ll discover solutions that reduce costs, improve payment accuracy, and scale with your company, freeing up your team for more important work.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Plex → | Manufacturing enterprises | |
| 2 | PlanetTogether → | Growing manufacturers | |
| 3 | Infor → | Growing companies | |
| 4 | Siemens → | Manufacturing businesses | |
| 5 | Dassault Systèmes → | Product-focused firms |
1. Plex
Are invoice processing bottlenecks slowing your growth?
Plex’s Smart Manufacturing Platform directly addresses this by connecting your people, systems, and supply chains. This means you can centralize financial operations for better control.
The platform helps you remove error-prone manual processes, allowing you to automate business processes to drive efficiency. You can track data from the plant floor to the top floor, ensuring real-time visibility.
Here’s how Plex helps.
Plex automates key business processes, bringing all your operations onto one connected platform. This streamlines your workflows, allowing you to gain clear insights and make data-driven decisions.
You can also rely on Plex to connect, automate, track, and analyze your entire operations. This eliminates silos, improving collaboration and ensuring smooth integration with existing systems.
Additionally, with Plex’s Cloud Infrastructure & Security and Mobile Application, you gain flexibility and peace of mind. This unified approach boosts agility and maximizes sustainability for your business.
The result is increased efficiency and scalability.
While we’re discussing data-driven decisions, my article on best marketing analytics tools offers more insights.
Key features:
- Manufacturing Execution System (MES) helps you track and automate production, ensuring real-time data for better operational control and improved decision-making across your facility.
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) provides a centralized system to manage core business processes, from finance to supply chain, connecting all your departments for unified operations.
- Quality Management System (QMS) offers robust functionality to maintain high standards across all processes, ensuring compliance and continuous improvement for your products and services.
Learn more about Plex features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Plex streamlines your financial operations by connecting systems and automating processes, offering real-time visibility from plant to top floor. This integrated platform significantly reduces manual tasks, making it a strong contender for the best aps software to enhance efficiency and scalability as your company grows.
2. PlanetTogether
Are manual schedules holding your production back?
You might be grappling with missed deadlines and costly changeovers, but PlanetTogether offers an intelligent planning solution. This means you can gain real-time insights and flexible scheduling to conquer today’s complex manufacturing needs. You can make confident decisions and catch problems early.
This leads us to a smarter way to manage your operations.
PlanetTogether helps you achieve total production visibility, letting you see machines, workers, and raw materials from a single schedule. Here’s how you can quickly change your production plan when orders shift or resources change, keeping your operations flexible and responsive. This keeps you adaptable, even when the unexpected happens. Additionally, you can optimize resource utilization, ensuring the right machines, people, and materials work together efficiently. Plus, you can confidently meet deadlines and boost customer satisfaction by building accurate, achievable schedules that adapt as conditions change.
The result is consistent on-time delivery.
Key features:
- Total Production Visibility: Gain real-time insight into machines, workers, and raw materials from a single schedule, enabling confident decision-making and proactive problem-solving for smooth operations.
- Dynamic Replanning & Optimization: Quickly adapt your production plan to shifts in orders or resources, ensuring flexibility, responsiveness, and optimized schedules for efficient production sequences and reduced downtime.
- Integrated End-to-End Planning: Link sales, supply chain, and production for a unified planning environment, streamlining operations, preventing costly gaps, and ensuring everyone works from the same accurate plan.
Learn more about PlanetTogether features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: PlanetTogether’s ability to provide total production visibility and dynamic replanning helps growing companies achieve centralized financial operations and reduce manual work. It is an ideal best aps software solution, enabling real-time visibility, optimized resource utilization, and consistent on-time delivery for efficient, scalable growth.
3. Infor
Are you overwhelmed by invoice processing?
Infor provides cloud-based enterprise software, including core Financials and ERP solutions, to streamline your operations. This means your growing company can gain centralized financial control and real-time visibility.
Their solutions combine deep industry expertise with cutting-edge technology, helping your finance teams automate accounting, manage revenue, and handle expenses. This drastically cuts down manual tasks.
Imagine smooth, integrated financial operations.
Infor solves financial management challenges by offering AI-powered, cloud-based tools for core financials like accounting and reporting. This helps your procurement managers gain the real-time visibility they need into invoices and payments.
You can equip your finance teams with robust tools for project costing and billing, ensuring compliance with accounting standards. Additionally, Infor provides Enterprise AI capabilities and advanced analytics, like Birst Analytics, allowing you to monitor key financial data for smarter decision-making.
They also offer an Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS), simplifying connections with your existing ERP systems. This ensures a smooth implementation that delivers long-term efficiency gains and scalability as your business grows.
Achieve greater financial agility and efficiency.
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Key features:
- Centralized Financial Management: Provides AI-powered, cloud-based tools for accounting, revenue, expenses, and reporting, giving you real-time visibility into all financial operations.
- Industry-Specific Functionality: Delivers deep industry expertise within its ERP and Financials solutions, ensuring the software meets the unique compliance and operational needs of your business.
- Advanced Analytics and AI: Integrates capabilities like Enterprise AI, machine learning, and Birst Analytics to provide data-driven insights and automate tasks, reducing manual effort.
Learn more about Infor features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Infor is a strong contender for best aps software, particularly for growing companies needing to streamline financial operations. Their cloud ERP and Financials solutions, coupled with AI and analytics, help reduce manual tasks and gain real-time visibility, ensuring smooth integration and compliance for your business.
4. Siemens
Struggling with complex AP processes and digital transformation?
Siemens’ Digital Twin technology helps you overcome these hurdles for AP automation.
This means you can make your CNC machining safe, efficient, and cost-effective, addressing a significant pain point for many manufacturers.
It’s time to transform your operations.
Siemens offers a tangible solution through its Digital Twin capabilities, designed to streamline your workflows.
Here’s how it works: the Digital Twin addresses the challenges of achieving digital transformation in manufacturing, a common struggle highlighted by industry surveys, by helping you visualize and optimize your processes before implementation.
Additionally, this approach enables more efficient CNC machining, allowing your team to cut down on manual tasks and reduce costs, ultimately leading to significant efficiency gains and helping you scale your business operations effectively.
The result is smarter, faster operations.
Key features:
- Digital Twin technology: Provides a virtual representation of your processes, allowing you to test and optimize workflows for safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness before real-world implementation.
- CNC Machining optimization: Specifically addresses the complexities of manufacturing, helping you streamline production and reduce manual intervention in critical machining operations.
- Digital transformation support: Assists companies in achieving their digital goals by providing the tools and insights needed to transition from traditional to automated processes.
Learn more about Siemens features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Siemens’ Digital Twin technology is an excellent choice for businesses seeking the best APS software, especially those in manufacturing. It addresses core pain points like inefficiency and high costs, offering a path to digital transformation that helps streamline CNC machining for enhanced safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.
5. Dassault Systèmes
Is your invoice process a manual mess?
Dassault Systèmes offers a unified platform to centralize your financial operations, specifically for product and supply chain management. This means you can gain real-time visibility into your critical data.
Their 3DEXPERIENCE platform helps you bring together all aspects of your business in a single platform to increase collaboration and improve execution. This directly addresses the challenges of integrating disparate systems.
The result is streamlined operations.
Dassault Systèmes helps you tackle the complexities of managing invoices and payments by providing social, collaborative, and information intelligence applications. This allows you to adopt data-driven approaches to mitigating risks and embed agility amidst uncertainty.
You can also leverage their expertise in creating virtual twins of products and supply chains, revolutionizing your workflows. Additionally, their solutions are trusted by thousands of leading companies, including ASICS and Electrolux Group, proving their ability to boost efficiency and reduce costs.
This platform helps you invent, learn, produce, and trade in entirely new ways, breaking down traditional silos.
Before diving deeper, you might find my analysis of best data integration software helpful for streamlining your information flow.
Key features:
- Centralized Collaboration: The 3DEXPERIENCE platform unifies all business aspects, fostering collaboration and accelerating innovation by breaking down traditional silos within your organization.
- Data-Driven Risk Mitigation: Utilize artificial intelligence-powered Sourcing & Supply Chain Intelligence solutions to adopt proactive, data-driven approaches, enhancing agility amid market uncertainty.
- Virtual Twin Expertise: Benefit from their expertise in creating virtual twins of products and supply chains, which revolutionizes workflows through advanced social, collaborative, and information intelligence applications.
Learn more about Dassault Systèmes features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Dassault Systèmes stands out as an excellent option for best aps software, offering a robust platform that centralizes operations and enhances data visibility. Its focus on virtual twin experiences and AI-powered intelligence directly addresses integration complexity and decision paralysis, helping you achieve significant efficiency gains and cost reductions.
6. Acumatica
Are you tired of manual invoice processing?
Acumatica offers comprehensive Financial Management capabilities, which directly tackles your need for centralized financial operations. This means you can gain real-time visibility into invoices and payments.
You’ll find that their suite of accounting functions and reporting tools simplifies and synchronizes automation across multiple workflows. This allows you to reduce overhead and focus on growth.
Ready to streamline your financial tasks?
Acumatica’s true cloud ERP solution offers flexible licensing and maintains compliance, helping you balance ease of use with scalability. This approach helps reduce the fear of operational delays often associated with insufficient support.
You can expect to gain real-time business insights from a single source of truth, ensuring your financial operations are centralized and transparent. This flexibility also means you’re never punished for growing, aligning perfectly with your long-term efficiency goals.
Additionally, Acumatica aims for predictable, uncomplicated pricing and faster implementation, leading to a lower total cost of ownership by combining software, implementation, and support.
The result is significant efficiency gains.
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Key features:
- Financial Management: Provides a full suite of accounting functions and reporting tools to centralize financial operations and ensure real-time visibility into invoices.
- True Cloud ERP: Offers intelligent, industry-focused business functionality to simplify and synchronize automation across multiple workflows, accessing data from any device.
- Flexible Licensing: Ensures predictable pricing and can scale users and resources up or down as needed, supporting growth without hidden fees or penalties.
Learn more about Acumatica features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Acumatica’s focus on comprehensive financial management and scalable cloud ERP functionality makes it a strong contender as the best aps software. Its predictable pricing and high customer satisfaction ratings directly address concerns about hidden costs and support, ensuring a solution that grows with your business.
7. SAP
Are you ready to transform your invoice processing?
You’ll discover SAP’s comprehensive solutions empower businesses to tackle complex financial operations, streamlining everything from procurement to payments. This means you can gain unparalleled visibility into your financial processes, reducing manual tasks and freeing up your team.
Here’s how to achieve financial clarity and control.
SAP helps you gain a complete, real-time view of your spending, ensuring you’re making informed decisions. You can track invoices, analyze expenditures, and proactively manage cash flow, all from one centralized system. This comprehensive approach streamlines your procure-to-pay cycle. Additionally, SAP’s focus on integrating core business functions means your financial data flows effortlessly across departments. Plus, you get actionable insights into spending patterns, helping you identify areas for cost savings and operational improvements.
The result is increased efficiency and reduced errors.
Key features:
- Centralized Financial Operations: Gain real-time visibility into invoices and payments, ensuring seamless integration with your existing ERP systems for accurate financial reporting.
- Automated Workflow Management: Automate tedious manual tasks like invoice entry and approvals, significantly reducing processing times and minimizing human errors across your accounts payable.
- Enhanced Compliance & Security: Ensure adherence to accounting standards and bolster data security for sensitive financial information, giving you peace of mind and reducing audit risks.
Learn more about SAP features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: SAP offers robust capabilities for procurement managers aiming to centralize financial operations and reduce manual work. Its emphasis on real-time visibility and integration makes it a strong contender for the best aps software, helping you achieve long-term efficiency and scalability as your business expands.
8. SYSPRO
Struggling with fragmented financial data and manual invoice processes?
SYSPRO’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) offers a full view of all business activities, including financial and inventory management.
This means you can streamline your critical business areas and gain complete control over your operations, a significant relief for procurement managers.
Here’s your path to greater efficiency.
SYSPRO ERP solves these pain points by integrating financial management with broader business operations. You get real-time data and business intelligence through embedded analytics.
The software provides solutions and tools to help you manage data and gain insights, ensuring your business is equipped for market demands. Plus, its ability to innovate based on market needs and a focus on faster time-to-value delivers last-mile functionality.
This integrated approach means you can achieve optimal inventory levels and manage day-to-day business activities effectively. You’ll gain business efficiency, improve quality, and see an increase in profitability, vital for justifying costs to stakeholders.
Reduce manual tasks and boost profitability.
While discussing overall business efficiency, understanding workforce planning software is equally important for long-term growth and talent management.
Key features:
- Integrated Financial Management: Centralizes financial data, providing a complete view of all business activities, making it easier to track invoices and manage payments.
- Embedded Analytics and Business Intelligence: Delivers real-time data and actionable insights to help you make informed decisions and streamline procurement processes.
- Inventory Optimization and Supply Chain Management: Achieves optimal inventory levels and provides end-to-end visibility across your supply chain, reducing manual reconciliation efforts.
Learn more about SYSPRO features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: SYSPRO is recognized as an ERP leader, specializing in manufacturing and distribution. Its comprehensive financial management and inventory optimization capabilities make it one of the best aps software options for growing companies seeking centralized operations, real-time visibility, and reduced manual work.
9. Global Shop Solutions
Struggling with complex invoice and payment processes?
Global Shop Solutions offers integrated ERP software to streamline your entire financial operations, including AP, AR, and payroll. This means you can centralize your financial data, simplifying complex accounting tasks.
Their system provides specific modules for AP, AR, Payroll, Human Resources, and financial statements, directly addressing your need for centralized financial control. This ensures all financial activities are managed from a single platform.
Simplify your financial operations today.
Global Shop Solutions’ integrated software helps you manage everything from quote to cash, making it a valuable asset for your company. They offer modules for production, financials, and management, giving you comprehensive control.
For your financials, you get tools for Accounting, HR & Payroll, and Job Costing Accounting. Additionally, their system lets you monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and view dashboards from any device, providing real-time visibility into your financial health.
Furthermore, you can manage inventory, purchasing, shipping, and even customer service functions like CRM and order management. This integrated approach helps you deliver quality parts on time while maintaining accurate financial records and gaining insights into your true capacity.
Finally, gain total control over your financials.
Key features:
- Integrated Financials: Manage your Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll, and Human Resources with dedicated modules for comprehensive financial oversight.
- Real-time Visibility: Access dashboards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from any device, giving you instant insights into your financial data and operational status.
- Comprehensive Modules: Beyond finance, the system includes modules for production scheduling, inventory, purchasing, and CRM, providing a complete solution.
Learn more about Global Shop Solutions features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Global Shop Solutions delivers a powerful, integrated ERP solution ideal for growing companies seeking to centralize financial operations and reduce manual tasks. Its strong focus on core accounting functions like AP, combined with real-time analytics, positions it as a great choice for the best aps software, ensuring efficiency and scalability.
Conclusion
Still drowning in manual invoices?
Choosing the right tool is a huge challenge. Conflicting feature claims and unclear ROI metrics from different vendors often lead to decision paralysis.
A study by ardem.com found that businesses see up to 81% cost reduction with AP automation. That’s a massive impact on your bottom line and frees up critical resources.
So which tool should you choose?
From my research, Plex is the top choice. Its Smart Manufacturing Platform connects your systems, directly tackling those frustrating manual processing bottlenecks for good.
I was impressed by how it provides real-time visibility from the plant floor to the top floor. Implementing the best aps software like Plex gives you true end-to-end control.
For additional insights, my analysis of vendors management software provides valuable perspectives.
I recommend you book a free demo of Plex to see how its integrated platform can transform your financial workflows.
You will gain efficiency and scalability.
