Melio Review
Free bank transfers and mail checksThe simplest way to pay vendors & contractors
Seamless 2-way sync with QuickBooks
All your business payments in one place
Simple & intuitive UI
Pros & Cons
- No monthly fees. Send checks & pay with a bank transfer for free.
- Schedule & manage multiple due dates
- Seamless 2-way sync with QuickBooks
- Only integrates with Quickbooks
- Hard to find their phone support number
- Doesn’t support payments outside of the US
Plans & Pricing
Melio Payments has two plans called Accountant and Business. They’re both free and offer the same features. Instead of charging you a subscription fee, Melio only charges you for credit card transactions. You pay 2.9% per credit card transaction of the transaction’s value. The Accountant is designed for accountants to handle their clients’ payments, while Business is built for the entrepreneur who wants to handle their own payments. Both are quite similar, though.
Overview
Paying your bills is vital to maintaining strong relationships with suppliers and vendors — but also to maximizing cash flows. You want to pay your suppliers and vendors as late as possible withoutexceeding the deadline. There are plenty of payment management software options out there that can do this, but none are as simple and budget-friendly as Melio Payments. Melio Payments is a free online payment management solution — with one small “free” caveat regarding credit card payments — that helps businesses manage payments and pay more vendors with credit cards. Learn Melio Payments in our review below.
Features and Functionality
Credit Card Payments
Credit cards allow you to extend your cash flows by kicking payments down the road. Unfortunately, vendors vary in cards they take. Some may be quite limited in which cards they’ll accept from you. Fortunately, Melio Payments offers a way to pay your vendors, even if they don’t take your card. You pay Melio with your card, then they remit the proper amount to your vendor. All you pay is a 2.9% processing fee. If you’re earning cashback rewards, those will help offset the fee and make Melio Payments even closer to being totally free.
Payment Scheduling and Management
Businesses must strike a delicate balance with their payment scheduling to maximize cash flows and maintain supplier/vendor relationships. The consequences of paying late are obvious, but paying early isn’t optimal, either. If you pay too early, your cash flows decrease. You’ll have less cash on hand to put into investments and generate returns.
This is where Melio’s scheduling comes in. You can schedule several payments ahead of time by picking the date you’d like to make each payment. Melio will then charge you automatically when the time comes, remit it to your supplier/vendor, and notify you when the recipient will get their payment. Melio Payments lets you schedule numerous payments ahead of time to happen automatically. You can pick a date for each payment to occur, and it’ll inform you when the payment will be delivered to its intended recipient.
Permissions and Roles
Once your business starts growing, there’s a good chance you hand off your payment management to someone else. That way, you can focus on revenue-generating tasks. Thanks to Melio Payments’ permissions and roles, it’s easy to give someone else the payment management reigns. Just invite other users to the platform and set their permissions and roles for a payment schedule. From there, you can control each transaction’s approval with ease.
Accountant Client Management
Melio Payments was built for all business owners, including the one that helps manage other business’ payments — accountants. Accountants can manage bill payment information for all their clients inside Melio Payments. The accountant can switch seamlessly between each client, so there’s no need to “back out” to the dashboard every time.
Ease of Use
Melio Payments is quite easy to use. Signing up takes only seconds, and it doesn’t take much longer to add details for your vendors. After that, you’ll notice that the interface is simple to navigate. It’s easy to find everything you need on the platform and perform all the functions it offers.
Add-ons and Integrations
Melio Payments integrates with Quickbooks Online. This integration syncs your payment data with your accounting records, keeping your books fresh and up to date. Unfortunately, Melio Payments doesn’t appear to integrate with any other business software solutions at this time. They may change that in the future.
Customer support
Melio offers support via the phone, live chat inside your Melio dashboard, and email.
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Phone Support
Melio offers live phone support. -
Live Online Chat
Use the messenger pop-up box in the Support tab in your Melio dashboard to contact a live chat agent. -
Email
You can contact Melio support via email at support@meliopayments.com if you have any questions. -
FAQ
Melio has a FAQ page with some general questions and answers, as well as a more extensive library of FAQs with in-depth answers to more specific questions. -
Blog
Melio’s blog covers various topics pertaining to bookkeeping, payment processing, and small business.
Final Word
Melio Payments focuses on one thing — payment management — and does it quite well. Everything’s free except for the reasonably priced credit card processing fee. Even then, your cashback rewards and tax write-offs can recover some of those costs. Sure, it could use some more integrations, and it would be nice if it supported payments outside the US, but these are only minor drawbacks for most small businesses. Overall, if you’re looking for a simple payment management solution that’s easy on the budget, Melio Payments is the way to go.
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