For AP teams on a Tungsten or Kofax renewal
Tungsten AP Essentials Alternative and Kofax AP Essentials Pricing Compared
Tungsten AP Essentials is a quoted cloud AP product built for Dynamics 365, Oracle and NetSuite shops. If your renewal number feels heavy, or you run QuickBooks or Sage Intacct, the job you need done is often just reading vendor invoices. PayablesAgent does that for $49 to $499 a month.
Tungsten facts come from Tungsten Automation's own announcements and its authorized resellers' product pages.
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The short answer
Tungsten AP Essentials is the same cloud invoice automation service that used to be called Kofax AP Essentials and, before that, ReadSoft Online. It captures paper, email and e-invoices, codes them to the GL and routes them for approval. There is no public price list. You get a quote through Tungsten or a reseller.
If your approvals and payments already run inside your ERP, the expensive part of that quote is software you may not need. A capture plan that reads every header field and line item costs $49, $149 or $499 a month at PayablesAgent, billed monthly.
One product, three names
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ReadSoft Online
The original cloud invoice capture service. The name still shows up in Microsoft AppSource listings and older contracts.
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Kofax AP Essentials
Sold under the Kofax brand. Kofax bought Tungsten Network, an e-invoicing network, in June 2022.
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Tungsten AP Essentials
Kofax became Tungsten Automation on January 16, 2024. Same service, new name on the renewal.
What Tungsten AP Essentials does well
It is a mature AP product with a long capture history. Before you replace it, be clear about which of these you actually use.
Capture from any channel
Scanned paper, email attachments and e-invoices, with its own OCR and classification.
GL coding and approvals
Configurable business rules, user-driven approval and exception workflows, and line-item matching.
E-invoice network
e-Invoice Connect links you to suppliers already exchanging e-invoices on the Tungsten network.
Enterprise ERP connectors
Dynamics 365 Business Central and Finance, Oracle Cloud Financials, Oracle NetSuite and Coupa, hosted on Microsoft Azure.
Start with the ledger you run
Tungsten's resellers list a short set of ERP connectors. That list decides most of the buying question. A Dynamics 365 or Oracle shop gets a lot out of the box. A QuickBooks Online or Sage Intacct team is buying a product that was not built around its ledger.
The grid shows where each tool sends the data. "Listed" means the connector appears on the vendor's or reseller's own page. Anything else, ask about in writing.
| Your ledger | Tungsten AP Essentials | PayablesAgent |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamics 365 Business Central or Finance | Listed | CSV import or JSON through the API |
| Oracle Cloud Financials | Listed, out of the box | JSON through the API |
| Oracle NetSuite | Listed | CSV import or JSON through the API |
| Coupa | Listed | Not a fit, Coupa has its own capture |
| QuickBooks Online | Not on the lists we found | QBO export on Plus and Pro |
| Sage Intacct | Not on the lists we found | CSV import or JSON through the API |
| Excel or a shared spreadsheet | Not the use case | Excel and CSV on every plan |
How Tungsten AP Essentials pricing works
Tungsten Automation sells AP Essentials as a cloud subscription, directly and through value added resellers such as MetaSource and Genus Technologies. Their pages describe "flexible subscription options" and send you to a contact form. None of them show a number.
Review directories say the same: no plans listed, no free version and no trial. You will see dollar figures on third-party blogs. They are not Tungsten's, so we leave them out.
What you can do is make the quote comparable. Ask for it per year, per invoice volume band, and with each connector and service as its own line.
Six lines to get on a Tungsten AP Essentials renewal
01
The annual subscription and the invoice volume band it covers, plus the price per invoice above the band.
02
Each ERP connector priced on its own, including the one you already run.
03
Whether e-Invoice Connect and supplier onboarding are in the base or billed separately.
04
Implementation and reseller service hours, with a cap.
05
Contract term, the renewal uplift cap and the notice window for cancelling.
06
How your invoice data is exported if you leave, and in what format.
Divide the yearly total by twelve and set it next to $149 or $499 a month. The gap is what you pay for approvals, coding rules and the e-invoice network inside Tungsten.
Tungsten AP Essentials vs BILL vs Tipalti vs PayablesAgent
Tungsten from Tungsten Automation and reseller pages, checked October 7, 2026. BILL from bill.com/pricing, checked October 2, 2026. Tipalti from tipalti.com/pricing, checked October 7, 2026.
| Tungsten AP Essentials | BILL | Tipalti | PayablesAgent | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published price | None, quote through Tungsten or a reseller | $49, $65 or $89 per user a month | From $99 a month plus per-invoice and per-payment fees | $49, $149 or $499 a month, billed monthly |
| What drives the price | Subscription terms in the quote | Users and payment fees | Invoices, payments, entities, modules | Pages a month |
| Invoice capture | Yes, paper, email, e-invoice | Yes | Yes | Yes, line items on every plan |
| Approval workflows | Yes | Yes | Yes | No, approve in your ERP |
| Vendor payments | No, pay from the ERP | ACH $0.59, check $1.99 | Global payouts | No, pay from your bank or ledger |
| Accounting output | Dynamics 365, Oracle, NetSuite, Coupa | QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, Sage Intacct | QuickBooks, NetSuite, Sage Intacct and more | Excel and CSV on every plan; QuickBooks Online on Plus; JSON through the API on Pro |
| Buy without a sales call | No | Yes | Base plan yes, mid-market quoted | Yes |
The capture half, at a price you can see
A lot of teams on Kofax-era AP software only lean on one thing every day: getting vendor, invoice number, dates, terms, tax and the line items off the PDF and into the books. Approvals already happen in the ERP and payments go out from the bank.
PayablesAgent reads those fields from PDFs, scans and phone photos, multi-page invoices included, and hands them back as Excel, CSV, a QuickBooks Online file or JSON.
- ✓Starter $49 a month, 2,500 pages, one seat
- ✓Plus $149 a month, 10,000 pages, three seats, QuickBooks Online export
- ✓Pro $499 a month, 35,000 pages, five seats and the API
When to stay on Tungsten AP Essentials
Switching only pays when the capture is the part you use. Keep Tungsten if one of these describes you.
You run Dynamics 365 or Oracle
The listed connectors post coded invoices straight into the ledger. Replacing that with file imports is a step backward.
Approvals live in Tungsten
If your approval chains and exception queues are configured in AP Essentials and not in the ERP, you would be rebuilding them.
Suppliers send e-invoices
A large share of suppliers on the Tungsten network is a real asset. A PDF reader does not replace an e-invoice network.
Kofax alternatives for accounts payable, grouped by the job
Decide which job you are replacing before you book demos. An enterprise capture suite, an AP platform and a capture tool are priced in very different ways.
Quoted enterprise capture
ABBYY FlexiCapture, Yooz, Quadient AP
The closest like-for-like peers. All three are sold on volume quotes with no public price list.
AP platforms with payments
BILL, Tipalti, Stampli
Capture, approvals and vendor payments in one product, usually built around QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite and Sage Intacct.
Invoice capture only
PayablesAgent
Reads invoices into rows and leaves approvals and payments where they already run. Published monthly prices, line items on every plan.
Test the switch before the renewal date
- 1Export a month of invoices from AP Essentials, including the bad scans and the long multi-page ones.
- 2Run them through PayablesAgent and check vendor, totals, tax and line items against the paper.
- 3Import the CSV, QBO file or API output into your ERP and approve the bills there as usual.
- 4If the month closed cleanly, put the yearly Tungsten quote next to twelve months of the plan you used.
Start this at least 60 days before the renewal date so you are not negotiating against your own notice window.
Questions buyers ask about Tungsten and Kofax AP Essentials
How much does Tungsten AP Essentials cost?
Tungsten Automation does not publish a price for AP Essentials. It is sold as a cloud subscription through Tungsten and its resellers, and you get a number after a demo. Review directories list no plans, no free version and no trial, so the only real figure is the quote you receive.
Is Kofax AP Essentials the same as Tungsten AP Essentials?
Yes. Kofax renamed itself Tungsten Automation on January 16, 2024, and Kofax AP Essentials became Tungsten AP Essentials. Before Kofax, the same cloud service was sold as ReadSoft Online. Older contracts, invoices and help pages may use any of the three names.
Does Tungsten AP Essentials integrate with QuickBooks?
The reseller and marketplace pages we checked list Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Dynamics 365 Finance, Oracle Cloud Financials, Oracle NetSuite and Coupa. QuickBooks is not on those lists. Ask your reseller in writing before you sign if your books are in QuickBooks Online.
What are the best Kofax alternatives for accounts payable?
For a full AP platform with approvals and payments, BILL publishes $49 to $89 per user a month and Tipalti starts at $99 a month plus transaction fees. For quoted enterprise capture, ABBYY FlexiCapture and Yooz are the usual peers. If you only need invoices read into your ERP, PayablesAgent costs $49 to $499 a month.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Tungsten AP Essentials?
Yes, when approvals and payments already run in your ERP. PayablesAgent reads header fields and every line item from PDFs and scans for $49 a month (2,500 pages), $149 a month (10,000 pages, 3 seats, QuickBooks Online export) or $499 a month with the API, billed monthly with no contract.
Get vendor invoices read without a capture contract
Line items on every plan. Excel and CSV exports, QuickBooks Online on Plus, API on Pro. Monthly billing, no demo required.