ApprovalMax Review
ApprovalMax adds multi-step approval workflows, PO matching, budget checks and audit trails to Xero, QuickBooks Online and NetSuite for small and mid-sized businesses and accounting firms, with published per-organisation prices and in-app supplier payments for UK Xero users.
Independently scored, one dimension at a time. Every dimension is sourced, and we say whether a claim is published, reported, or estimated.
Xero and QuickBooks Online connect by OAuth from organisation settings, and the 14-day trial needs no card (help centre and pricing page, checked 27 September 2026). NetSuite needs an administrator to install the SuiteApp and generate tokens, and ApprovalMax says NetSuite teams connect, set up and onboard in a few days. The real work is designing approval matrices; the vendor sells a two-session Training Package rather than running a project.
Approval matrices that can route past the requester, a read-only Auditor role, an audit report per approved document, alerts for documents approved in the ledger and duplicate-bill warnings are on every plan (feature pages, checked 27 September 2026). Bill-to-PO matching, goods received notes and budget checks need Advanced, and NetSuite adds three-way matching. The help centre answers the SOC Type 2 question with ISO 27001:2022 only, and there is no 1099, W-9 or e-invoicing handling.
Per-organisation prices for three plans are published in seven currencies with volume steps, alongside Capture and Pay add-on price ladders, an overage table and payment fee tables (checked 27 September 2026). NetSuite is quote only. The score is held back because usage tiers are replacing this list at renewal, their per-document overage rates are unpublished, and the Pay pages disagree on whether Open Banking payments are included.
Every plan gets 24/5 support by chat and email; chat opens with an AI assistant, Max, that escalates to a person, and phone support is Premium-only (pricing page and help centre, checked 27 September 2026). The pricing page also says live chat is for trial customers only, which conflicts with the help centre. The US Xero App Store listing shows 4.8 of 5 from 656 reviews, and structured onboarding is a paid Training Package.
Two-way sync covers Xero (bills, POs, credit notes, manual journals, accrual reports, budgets, batch payments, contacts), QuickBooks Online (bills, POs, expenses, journal entries, vendors) and NetSuite (vendor bills, POs, expense reports, sales orders, journal entries, bill payments), per the pricing pages checked 27 September 2026. New Xero purchase orders and credit notes are pulled hourly, and approval decisions post back immediately. There is no connector for Sage Intacct, Business Central, MYOB or SAP.
Pricing is per organisation with unlimited users, and the pricing calculator stops at 50 organisations before sales takes over (pricing page, checked 27 September 2026). An Organisations Dashboard opened to all users in January 2026, but Search Agent works on one organisation and one document type at a time. Syncing depends on Xero's API limits, which the help centre says can pause syncing for up to 24 hours, and the largest ledger it connects to is NetSuite.
In-product AI covers Capture OCR in 40+ languages, a Search Agent that turns plain English into filters, and an Approval Agent beta that flags unusual amounts, timing and coding without approving anything (help centre, July 2026). The production Public API uses OAuth 2.0 with read and write scopes, but it is Premium-only, cannot approve or reject, and writes only Xero and stand-alone documents. No first-party MCP server is public, although the identity server lists MCP scopes (checked 27 September 2026).
ApprovalMax Pay lets UK businesses on Xero pay approved bills by Open Banking in GBP or from Currencycloud e-money Wallets in 30+ currencies, with Confirmation of Payee and batches of up to 200 bills (Pay page and fee article, checked 27 September 2026). A US QuickBooks Online version is in beta, with free ACH during the beta. Everyone else hands off: approved batches become Xero or NetSuite payment files, or Airwallex payments in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and there are no checks, cards or rebates.
Low-cost approval layer for Xero and QBO with real audit evidence; payments are UK-first, pricing in flux.
Written by the Audit Friendly research team. No vendor edits, no sponsored placement.
You are buying a control layer that sits between your team and Xero, QuickBooks Online or NetSuite. Bills, purchase orders, credit notes, journals, sales invoices and batch payments run through multi-step approval matrices in ApprovalMax, and only approved documents post back to the ledger. Approvers work in the web app, mobile app, email or Slack without an accounting licence. Every plan includes unlimited users, an audit report for each approved document, a read-only Auditor role and alerts for anything approved directly in the ledger. In the US, list prices run from $49.50 to $110.92 per organisation a month billed yearly (published, checked 27 September 2026).
The catch is that the price model is changing. New customers in the UK, then Australia and New Zealand, then the EU, Canada and other countries now start on usage tiers sized by approved documents a month. Existing customers move at renewal from 3 August 2026, and multi-organisation volume discounts go away. Payments are UK-first: ApprovalMax Pay is generally available only to UK businesses on Xero, and the US QuickBooks Online version is a beta. The public API needs Premium and cannot approve or reject, no MCP server is public, and ISO 27001:2022 is the only security attestation named.
Before signing, get in writing which pricing model and plan size apply at your next renewal, the per-document overage rate, and whether any multi-organisation discount survives. Ask for the FX margin on Wallet conversions, which the fee page does not state, and whether the Approval Agent beta will cost extra. If your auditors rely on a SOC 1 or SOC 2 report, ask whether one exists. Read the renewal terms too: plans auto-renew unless the account owner gives 14 days' written notice, fees are not refunded, and content is destroyed a year after termination.
- UK, Australian or New Zealand SMBs on Xero that need multi-step bill and PO approvals without buying Xero seats for every approver.
- Accounting firms and outsourced finance teams that run approval controls and audit evidence across many client organisations.
- UK Xero businesses that want approvals and supplier payment runs, including multi-currency payments, in one audit trail.
- Companies on Sage Intacct, Business Central, MYOB or SAP: only Xero, QuickBooks Online and NetSuite connect.
- US teams that want checks, virtual card payouts or 1099 filing handled by the AP tool.
- Buyers whose auditors or procurement require a SOC 1 or SOC 2 Type II report or SAML single sign-on.
The jobs a finance team actually hires ApprovalMax for
Jobs, mapped to how finance teams actually buy.
Route bills and POs to the right approver without ledger seats
Approval steps run in sequence or in parallel with rules by amount, vendor or department, and the requester can be a condition so nobody signs off their own request. Approvers act in the web app, mobile app, email or Slack and need no Xero, QuickBooks or NetSuite licence. Only approved documents post to the ledger.
Show auditors what bypassed the workflow
Each fully approved document gets an audit report with approvers and timestamps. Documents approved or changed directly in the ledger are labelled and admins are alerted, and a read-only Auditor role replaces handing over logins. Every new bill is checked for duplicates against what is already in ApprovalMax.
Match bills to POs and auto-approve clean matches
Bills can be matched to POs in one click, and NetSuite adds three-way matching against item receipts. Since April 2026, Capture reads the PO number on an uploaded bill and matches it automatically, and approval rules can auto-approve fully matched bills while partial matches go to a person. That matching condition reached Advanced and Premium QuickBooks Online organisations in April 2026 and every Advanced and Premium Xero organisation in the 22 September 2026 release.
Check the budget before approving spend
Budgets sync from Xero, QuickBooks Online or, since July 2026, NetSuite, and approvers see the remaining balance inside the request. Bills and POs still in approval count against the budget. The feature compares payables against budget with a traffic-light status before sign-off.
Pay approved UK supplier bills from the same audit trail
UK businesses on Xero can pay approved bills by Open Banking in GBP or from multi-currency Wallets held with Currencycloud, with Confirmation of Payee and role-based payer permissions. A local GBP, EUR or USD Wallet payment costs 0.50 pounds. Wallet balances are safeguarded e-money and are not covered by the FSCS.
Run approvals that never touch the ledger
Stand-alone workflows route contracts, CapEx, travel requests and reimbursements through the same approval matrices with custom fields. They carry no accounting document, so ledger filters do not apply in search. The Public API can create and submit stand-alone requests from other systems.
Watch the same task in each tool
Forget the 40-row feature grid. Pick a finance workflow and see how this tool and its closest peers actually do it, with our verdict on who wins for whom.
Compare on what matters
What it actually costs
Here's what it really costs: published rates where a vendor lists them, aggregated quote data where they don't, plus a path to your own number.
Bill, PO and credit note approvals, sales invoices, two-way sync, Slack and Dext, mobile app, audit reports and bypass alerts. No PO matching, budget checks or API.
Adds bill-to-PO matching, goods received notes, budget checks, journals, accrual reports, supplier onboarding, a review step, editing on approval and auto-approval.
Adds stand-alone workflows for contracts, CapEx and travel, Xero batch payment approval, Public API access and phone support.
One plan with API access, custom workflows, three-way matching, sales order approval and premium support.
Standard, Advanced or Premium in Small, Medium or Large sizes (up to 100, 300 or 500 approved documents a month); Capture and UK Pay included; 17 percent off yearly. Prices come from a table in approvalmax.com's pricing script that the page shown to a US visitor did not display on 27 September 2026, so confirm them with sales.
OCR for 25 to 10,000 documents a month, billed monthly per subscription; $0.33 per extra document. Included under usage-based plans.
Open Banking and Wallet payments for UK Xero users, 25 to 10,000 payments a month; 1 pound per extra payment. Included under usage-based plans.
Local GBP, EUR or USD payments 0.50 pounds; other local currencies 0.80 to 6 pounds; SWIFT SHA 10 pounds, OUR 20 pounds; FX rate applies.
USD ACH free during the beta; local EUR, GBP, AUD and similar $1; SWIFT SHA $10, OUR $25.
Two 60-minute expert sessions for administrators and users; 1,500 pounds in the UK.
What it actually takes to go live
CEO Konstantin Bredyuk's blog post of 3 June 2026 says all current customers move to Tiered Usage-Based Pricing at their renewal from 3 August 2026, with 30 days' notice of a recommended plan size. Multi-organisation volume discounts are removed, while partner, not-for-profit and annual discounts carry over. Per-document overage rates are not published in the help centre. Groups and firms that pay today's 15 or 20 percent volume rate should model the new tiers before renewal.
Pay Wallets reached general availability for UK Xero organisations in January 2026; a US QuickBooks Online version is in beta, named in the 28 July 2026 release notes, with a beta fee table last updated 6 August 2026. Elsewhere, Xero batch payments are approved in ApprovalMax and Xero produces the payment file, and Airwallex payments work only for UK, Australian and New Zealand organisations. The Pay pages also disagree: the feature page says Open Banking payments are included in the subscription as of March 2026, while the Xero pricing page marks Pay as an add-on on every plan and the fee article of 13 August 2026 says Open Banking needs the paid Pay add-on unless the organisation is on usage-based pricing.
The help centre answers the SOC Type 2 question with ISO 27001:2022 only (article dated 17 September 2025), and the trust centre lists ISO 27001, its Statement of Applicability, GDPR and a 2026 penetration test summary. Sign-in supports Google, Microsoft, Xero and Intuit accounts, 2FA and passkeys, but the help centre says enterprise-level SSO is not supported. US companies whose auditors rely on a SOC 1 report for AP controls should ask before buying.
The developer docs say API access requires an organisation on Premium, a trial or an All Features trial, and only an account owner, account manager or organisation administrator can consent. The API spec (58 paths, checked 27 September 2026) has no approve or reject endpoint, and QuickBooks Online and NetSuite data is read-only. Teams planning agent or ERP automation should price Premium for every organisation involved.
The terms (last updated 2 June 2026) renew each monthly or annual billing cycle unless the account owner gives written notice at least 14 days before it ends, and fees are not refunded for early termination or non-use. After termination, organisations become read-only and content stays available for one year; after that it is destroyed unless a subscription is reactivated. Export request reports, the audit-report archive and attachments before retiring an organisation, because the accrual report option disappears once it is retired.
Clause 7A of the terms (updated 2 June 2026) says AI features send relevant customer content to third-party AI providers under agreements that bar those providers from training on it. ApprovalMax may use anonymised data derived from customer content to train its own models, and the opt-out in account settings does not apply to that anonymised data. Teams with strict data-use policies should review clause 7A before rollout.
Scored on what an outside agent can actually reach: the documented API, how it authenticates, and whether the vendor ships an MCP server.
Inside the product, ApprovalMax Capture is OCR that reads bills in 40+ languages, applies per-supplier coding rules and, since April 2026, matches uploaded bills to approved POs by reference, vendor and currency. Search Agent turns a plain-English query into search filters for Xero and QuickBooks Online organisations and, per the help centre, cannot answer analytical questions. Approval Agent, a beta for selected organisations documented in July 2026, compares each bill with the supplier's approved history on amount, frequency and coding and flags concerns; it never approves or rejects. Any accuracy or time-saving figures are the vendor's.
Exists: no public first-party MCP server. ApprovalMax's identity server lists mcp/read, mcp/act, mcp/submit and mcp/write scopes, and the host mcp.approvalmax.com resolves to the production gateway but returned 403 to public requests on 27 September 2026, so one may be in development; nothing is announced or documented. The official MCP registry lists no ApprovalMax server, and a GitHub search turned up no working one. StackOne sells a third-party MCP with 70 read and write ApprovalMax actions and SyncHub a read-only MCP over replicated data; neither is first-party.
Scope: the Public API v1 at public-api.approvalmax.com has 58 paths. It reads Xero, QuickBooks Online and NetSuite requests, users and reference data; creates, updates and submits Xero bills, POs, sales invoices, quotes and stand-alone documents; uploads attachments; marks POs as billed; and sends webhooks on approval events. There is no endpoint to approve or reject, and QuickBooks Online and NetSuite are read-only.
Turnkey: no. The organisation must be on Premium, a trial or an All Features trial; a developer registers an app in the Developer Portal with 2FA switched on, and an account owner, account manager or organisation administrator consents per organisation through OAuth 2.0.
Process a vendor invoice
Who wins for whom: Accounting firms and Xero groups that want approval matrices, a read-only Auditor role and bypass alerts on every plan: ApprovalMax. Teams that want line-level 3-way matching and changed bank details flagged on the Standard plan: Lightyear. US teams whose auditors ask for SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II reports and 1099 e-filing: BILL.
ApprovalMax
Approval matrices, Auditor role, bypass alerts. Every plan gets approval matrices that can route past the requester, a read-only Auditor role, an audit report per approved document, bypass alerts and duplicate warnings, while bill-to-PO matching and budget checks need Advanced.
Where it loses: No SOC report is offered, since the help centre answers the SOC Type 2 question with ISO 27001:2022 only, and there is no 1099, W-9 or e-invoicing handling.
- Compliance depth: 77/100
- Time to live: A few days (vendor)
Source: AF score rationale: Compliance depth 77; ApprovalMax use cases and watch-outs.
Watch: How to 3- way match a Bill in ApprovalMax for NetSuite 2:29 · Official demo · ApprovalMax on YouTube (official)
Lightyear
Approval stages and bank checks. Lightyear routes bills by value to up to 8 approvers across single, double or executive stages, flags duplicates and changed bank details, and runs line-level 3-way matching on Standard ($319 a month in the US).
Where it loses: Its help centre says it provides no SOC reports, the only 1099 support passes Form 1099 fields to Sage Intacct on export, and no W-9 or e-invoicing support is named.
- Compliance depth: 68/100
- Time to live: 4 to 6 weeks (vendor)
Source: AF score rationale: Compliance depth 68; Lightyear pricing tiers and not-for list.
Watch: Lightyear - Product Demo 7:46 · Official demo · Gary Mallett on YouTube (Lightyear's Sydney team)
BILL
Approvals, W-9 Agent, 1099 e-file. Every BILL plan gets approval workflows and the W-9 Agent, the audit trail is time-stamped and cannot be altered, 1099s e-file to the IRS and 50 states, and SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II audits run annually.
Where it loses: Dual control is Enterprise only, ERP PO sync with 2 and 3-way matching sits on the quote-only Enterprise plan, and none of the pages reviewed mention e-invoicing mandates outside the US.
- Compliance depth: 80/100
- Time to live: Days to 3 months (reported)
Source: AF score rationale: Compliance depth 80; BILL pricing tiers.
Watch: Accounts Payable and Bill Pay using Bill - Is it better than QBO!? 22:55 · Independent walkthrough · Financial Tech Lab by Clara CFO Group on YouTube
Pay a vendor
Who wins for whom: UK Xero businesses that want approved bills paid by Open Banking or multi-currency Wallets inside the approval trail: ApprovalMax. Teams content to pay from the accounting system or bank once approved bills export, with changed bank details flagged first: Lightyear. Small US teams that want each domestic per-payment fee posted before signing: BILL.
ApprovalMax
Pays bills for UK Xero users. ApprovalMax Pay lets UK businesses on Xero pay approved bills by Open Banking in GBP or from Currencycloud Wallets in 30+ currencies, with Confirmation of Payee and batches of up to 200 bills.
Where it loses: Outside UK Xero it hands off: a US QuickBooks Online version is still in beta, approved batches elsewhere become Xero or NetSuite payment files, and there are no checks, cards or rebates.
- Payments & money movement: 46/100
- Time to live: A few days (vendor)
Source: AF score rationale: Payments & money movement 46; ApprovalMax watch-outs.
Watch: What is ApprovalMax Pay Wallets? 3:50 · Official demo · ApprovalMax on YouTube (official)
Lightyear
Exports approved bills for payment. Lightyear moves no money: approved bills and expense reimbursements export to the accounting system for payment with extracted bank details and due dates, and a Bank Details Checker flags a changed IBAN or sort code before approval.
Where it loses: There are no payment runs, rails, card program or FX, so segregation between bill approval and payment release depends on how the accounting system and bank are set up.
- Payments & money movement: 28/100
- Time to live: 4 to 6 weeks (vendor)
Source: AF score rationale: Payments & money movement 28; Lightyear watch-outs.
Watch: Lightyear Product Video 7 mins 7:46 · Official demo · Lightyear on YouTube (official)
BILL
Posted per-payment fee table. BILL publishes ACH at $0.59, check at $1.99, free virtual card, card-funded payments at 2.9 percent and instant payments at 1 percent, runs processing in-house with Positive Pay on checks, and pays vendors in 130+ countries.
Where it loses: The FX margin on free local-currency wires is not disclosed, no payer rebate on virtual card payments is published, and API payments need an SMS-verified session.
- Payments & money movement: 88/100
- Time to live: Days to 3 months (reported)
Source: AF score rationale: Payments & money movement 88; BILL watch-outs.
Watch: How to Automate Domestic AP Payments with BILL V3 API 14:24 · Official demo · BILL on YouTube (official)
ApprovalMax, kept current
The 28 July 2026 release notes add cancellation of scheduled Batch Payments paid from ApprovalMax Wallets for QuickBooks Online and label it a beta. Help articles on funding a USD Wallet by FedACH or Fedwire were last updated 3 July 2026, and the beta fee table (free USD ACH, $10 or $25 SWIFT) on 6 August 2026. No launch announcement was found.
A help centre user guide, last updated 17 July 2026, describes an AI assistant for approvers that compares each bill with the supplier's approved history on amount, frequency and coding and flags concerns; it never approves or rejects. Access is limited to selected organisations and is not included with any subscription.
The CEO announced that existing customers migrate at renewal from 3 August 2026, with Capture included and multi-organisation discounts removed.
Bills uploaded through Capture are matched to Purchase Orders automatically using the PO number read from the invoice, for all organisations with matching enabled. Match status became an approval rule condition for QuickBooks Online on 7 April 2026 and for Xero on 22 September 2026.
New UK customers moved to Tiered Usage-Based Pricing, with Standard, Advanced and Premium plans sized by approved documents. Australia and New Zealand followed on 5 May 2026.
Multi-currency Wallets and one-click batch payments became generally available for all UK-based Xero organisations, after a beta that began in July 2025.
ApprovalMax FAQ
On the US list checked 27 September 2026, Advanced, which adds PO matching and budget checks, is $950 per organisation a year billed yearly, so three organisations cost $2,850. Capture OCR for 200 documents a month adds $30.80 a month, billed monthly, for about $3,220 a year in total (Audit Friendly estimate from published prices). Standard would be $1,782 for three organisations plus Capture; Premium, which adds the API and phone support, $3,993 plus Capture.
Two caveats. Volume discounts start at 5 organisations, so three entities pay the full rate. And once usage-based pricing reaches US customers at renewal, each organisation is sized by approved documents with Capture included, so ask sales for the renewal price in writing. Vendr's buyer guide shows an average contract of $1,149 a year from 3 purchasers (reported).
There is no separate signed contract: signing up accepts the standard terms, which include the Data Processing Agreement and are governed by the law of England and Wales. Plans bill monthly or yearly, renew automatically unless the account owner gives written notice at least 14 days before the cycle ends, and fees are not refunded (terms updated 2 June 2026). Capture and Pay add-ons bill monthly only.
Before leaving, export request reports to CSV, a ZIP of audit reports for approved requests, a ZIP of attachments, workflows as PDF and budgets as CSV. After termination, organisations are read-only for one year, and content is then destroyed unless a subscription is reactivated.
Customers do it themselves. Xero and QuickBooks Online connect by OAuth from organisation settings and the 14-day trial needs no card, so most of the work is designing approval matrices and inviting approvers. For NetSuite, an administrator enables token-based authentication and SOAP web services, installs the ApprovalMax SuiteApp and generates tokens; ApprovalMax says NetSuite teams are running in a few days.
The vendor publishes no onboarding plan. It sells a Training Package of two 60-minute sessions for $2,100 in the US (1,500 pounds in the UK), and accounting firms in its partner programme can do the setup for clients. UK Pay users also complete KYB checks for Wallets, which have pulled company details from Companies House since September 2026.
Only through custom code today. The Public API (OAuth 2.0, Premium plan or trial) lets an agent read requests across Xero, QuickBooks Online and NetSuite, and create, edit and submit Xero bills, POs, sales invoices, quotes and stand-alone requests. It cannot approve, reject or pay, and QuickBooks Online and NetSuite are read-only.
There is no public first-party MCP server. ApprovalMax's identity server already lists MCP scopes for read, act, submit and write, and mcp.approvalmax.com exists but refused public requests on 27 September 2026, so ask sales about the roadmap. StackOne sells third-party MCP access with read and write actions, which needs a Premium subscription and your own Developer Portal app, and SyncHub sells a read-only MCP. Clause 7A of the terms also lets ApprovalMax train its own models on anonymised customer data.
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