Locate the decision in the purchase process
| Product | Starting point for evaluation | Demonstration question |
|---|---|---|
| Paylocity for Finance | Purchase request and modular spend operations | Who approves the purchase before the invoice exists? |
| Stampli | Invoice intake, coding and collaboration | Can finance resolve an exception without losing its context? |
| Friday Falcon Company | Work and invoice evidence for contractor amounts | Is the accepted obligation clear before it enters AP? |
Paylocity for Finance
Paylocity for Finance is the current offering reached through the Airbase website. That site retains Airbase customer and vendor login links while directing product exploration toward Paylocity's finance platform. Count Airbase and this current lineage once in your shortlist, rather than treating the renamed destination as a second independent alternative. Existing Airbase customers should confirm which commercial and implementation arrangements apply to their account.
The current finance product page presents guided procurement, AP automation, expense management and corporate cards as modules that can be adopted incrementally. Its guided-procurement page focuses on purchase intake, stakeholder routing and collecting documentation before the purchase. That makes it especially relevant when the operational problem starts earlier than an incoming invoice: a team may need security, legal or budget review before agreeing to spend.
There was no verified universal numeric price in the reviewed material. Ask for a quote naming the modules, entities, accounting environment, implementation work and applicable transaction charges. Do not assume an AP demonstration includes procurement in the same subscription. Similarly, a broader module set is not automatically better for a smaller team that has a dependable purchase-request process already.
For a fictional digital agency commissioning a specialist research project, create a purchase request with a maximum budget, a proposed supplier and an attached statement of work. Route it through the intended budget and contract reviewers before producing an invoice. Then submit an invoice with an additional scope item. Ask which part of the original decision can be reused and which part needs a new review. The aim is to establish responsibility for the change, not merely to verify that documents can be attached.
Stay with this platform if purchase governance and finance execution are the central needs. Friday Falcon might complement the review of contractor work supporting the invoice, but it does not replace the procurement process, issue cards or execute payment. No Airbase or Paylocity import is promised. If both are used, name the owner who reconciles accepted scope changes before finance acts on the payable.
Stampli
Stampli is worth evaluating when invoice exceptions get lost among email threads, accounting records and conversations with approvers. Its AP platform description centers invoice intake, extraction and coding, configured review, and invoice-associated communication and history. It describes the ERP as the system of record and the accounting handoff as part of the configured process. This is a useful orientation for finance teams that want to improve invoice handling while retaining their accounting environment.
The buying test should therefore focus on the relationship between an invoice and the decisions made about it. Can the relevant reviewer find the original document, explain the business purpose and resolve an exception without creating an unrelated side conversation? Can finance understand the decision later without relying on someone remembering what happened? Those questions matter more than an isolated extraction demonstration.
Stampli's pricing page requires a tailored commercial discussion rather than supporting a universal numeric price here. Ask for the expected invoice volume, entities, ERP integration, payment scope and implementation to be written into the proposal. Confirm how any purchase-order matching requirement maps to the data actually available from your ERP. A feature name does not establish that every accounting configuration supplies the necessary records.
For a fictional consulting partnership, enter an invoice that combines an approved workshop with an unapproved follow-up session. Ask the delivery lead to explain the disputed line in the invoice's review context, then have finance propose a correction. Inspect the original invoice, the response and the eventual accounting handoff. Add a supplier credit afterward and ask how the reviewer prevents the original full amount and the corrected obligation from both being treated as payable.
Keep Stampli if invoice coordination and AP controls are what the business needs. Friday Falcon is relevant only if a separate review of contractor work and compensation remains difficult before or alongside that process. It is not an ERP, a payment platform or an automatic Stampli integration. Define which record owns the accepted obligation and how a later correction reaches finance; otherwise, adding a second workspace can obscure the very decision the invoice review is meant to clarify.
Test scope changes before approving the invoice
In this fictional exercise, an agency approves a USD 3,000 research engagement. The supplier invoices USD 3,400 because a stakeholder requested an additional interview. The original scope is accepted, but the USD 400 addition has no recorded approval. Finance has already paid a USD 1,000 deposit externally.
The review should identify USD 2,000 accepted and unpaid, plus USD 400 awaiting a decision. It should not assume the purchase-request ceiling proves every invoice line was delivered, or that an uploaded invoice proves an extra was authorized. Ask each demonstrator to show where those decisions live and how an authorized reviewer changes the pending item after it is resolved.
Use a second invoice with a similar reference to test duplicate review. The goal is to make the relationship between the documents clear, not to assume every similarity is a duplicate or every duplicate detector is infallible.
Assign ownership at the accounting handoff
Before purchase, document who may accept the work, change the invoice amount, approve the payable and authorize payment. These can be different people. Have a reviewer step into the process halfway through the demonstration and explain the evidence without help from the original operator.
Inspect access using a contractor invoice with fictional private compensation details. Project visibility, purchase-request visibility and compensation visibility are different needs. A broad collaborative workspace should not become the reason to share a contractor's rate with every participant. If multiple systems are retained, decide how corrected evidence is identified and which person confirms that finance received the correction. No automatic synchronization between these products and Friday Falcon is claimed.
Price the separate contractor decision
Friday Falcon Company costs USD 59 monthly or USD 590 annually per Company, without seat or contractor fees. There is no free Company trial. Its narrower contractor amounts review is not an equivalent replacement for procurement, AP automation, accounting or payment execution. It does not transfer money, run payroll or provide tax or classification protection.
If the existing AP process already makes accepted contractor amounts and external payments clear, keep the process that works. Individuals can use free personal tools for their own records and manually composed invoices; those tools do not automatically convert tracked time into invoices.
Friday Falcon publishes this guide. Official sources were checked October 22, 2026. Recommendations are based on documentation, and the examples are fictional. We did not conduct hands-on evaluations.