AP automation for small business, without the enterprise implementation
The free plan processes 25 invoices a month with unlimited users, takes no credit card and does not expire. You get your own intake address at the end of setup.
Why small teams stay manual longer than they should
The obstacle is rarely the software's capability. It is the shape of the purchase around it.
Look at how the AP automation category sells. The enterprise platforms require a demo before they will quote, scope an implementation measured in weeks, and price against an annual commitment. That structure makes sense when the buyer is a procurement department with a budget cycle. It does not work when the buyer is a controller who also does payroll, or a principal who is the finance function.
So the small team does the arithmetic differently: the software might save a few hundred a month, but the evaluation alone costs more attention than that, and the downside of picking wrong is a year-long contract. Staying manual is the rational choice, right up until volume makes it obviously not — and by then the process has calcified around a shared mailbox and a spreadsheet.
The fix is not a cheaper enterprise product. It is a different shape of purchase: a free tier you can run real invoices through, published prices you can compare without a call, no implementation project, and monthly billing you can leave. That is what InletAP is structured as — and it is the main reason a small property management company can adopt it when it could not adopt AvidXchange or Stampli.
The trade is honest: InletAP does not have payment rails, three-way PO matching against a procurement system, or a decade of enterprise deployment behind it. If you need those, buy the enterprise product. If you need vendor invoices to stop being typed in by hand and you want to find out this week whether that works, this is built for you.
Capabilities
What makes it adoptable by a small team
A free plan, not a trial
25 processed invoices a month, unlimited users, one intake mailbox, QuickBooks Online sync and CSV export. No credit card and no expiry. It is a hard cap, so it cannot generate a bill you did not expect.
Published prices
$39, $99 and $249 a month for 150, 500 and 1,500 invoices. Overage from $0.35 down to $0.18 an invoice. Annual billing saves 17%. All of it on the pricing page.
No implementation project
Signing up creates the workspace and issues the first intake mailbox in the same session. Vendor mappings and approval tiers are added as you go, not configured before you start.
Useful on day one
CSV export is on every plan including free, so InletAP is producing something your ledger can consume before you have connected anything.
Everyone can have a login
Unlimited users on every plan, including free. Invite every approver, every property manager and your outside bookkeeper — the price is per invoice document, so headcount never changes the bill and nobody has to share a password.
Controls a small team can actually run
Separation of duties by role, approval thresholds by amount, duplicate detection at ingest and an append-only audit log — enforced by the system rather than requiring more headcount.
Why this one
The checklist worth applying to any AP tool you evaluate
- Can you see the price without booking a call?
- Can you run your own invoices through it before paying?
- Is there an implementation fee or a professional services requirement?
- Is there an annual minimum, or can you leave monthly?
- How long from signing up to processing a real invoice?
- Does it understand the coding dimensions your business actually uses?
- What happens to your documents if you stop paying?
Compare
Where InletAP sits against the alternatives
| InletAP | Enterprise AP (AvidXchange, Nexus) | Horizontal AP (Bill, Stampli, Ramp) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | Yes, with a free tier | No — demo required | Usually yes |
| Self-serve signup | Yes | No | Usually |
| Implementation project | None | Weeks to months | Days |
| Property / unit / entity coding | First-class | First-class | Generic dimensions |
| Per-property intake addresses | Yes | Varies | No |
| Payment rails | None | Included | Included |
| PO / three-way matching | No | Yes | Varies |
| Best fit | Small–mid property management | Large portfolios with procurement | General SMB finance |
Compiled from these vendors' public positioning in 2026. If payment rails or PO matching are requirements, InletAP is not the right product for you — and it is cheaper for both of us if you find that out here.
Pricing
Start at nothing, and only move when volume says to
Prices are in US dollars and exclude sales tax, which is added where it applies.
Paid plans renew automatically at the price shown — every month, or every 12 months on annual billing — until you cancel. Cancel any time in billing settings: the next renewal stops and you keep the period you have already paid for.
Small business AP — common questions
Run a month of invoices through it for nothing
25 processed invoices, unlimited users, no credit card, no expiry. That is enough to know whether the extraction holds up on your vendors and whether the math works on your volume.