Although the Accounts Payable automation market has been trending toward the Software as a Service (SaaS) approach as the best option for your AP workflow solution, be aware that not all Accounts Payable SaaS solutions are the same under the hood. Many new accounts payable automation providers in the Accounts Payable automation marketplace are claiming to offer a SaaS based AP workflow solutions but many of these companies do not offer a true SaaS based automation solutions and are just trying to use the SaaS name as a marketing ploy to capitalize on the growing popularity of a SaaS based accounts payable solution. A true SaaS based solution is by nature multi-tenant. Wikipedia gives a clear definition of multi-tenancy referring to software architecture where a single instance of the software runs on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor’s servers, serving multiple client organizations (tenants). Multi-tenancy accounts payable automation is contrasted with a multi-instance accounts payable automation where separate software instances (or hardware systems) are set up for different client organizations. Many Accounts Payable SaaS automation providers are truly multi-instance architecture as opposed to multi-tenant architecture. Many of in Accounts Payable might be saying who cares if our AP workflow solution is multi-instance vs. multi-tenant as the difference might not be evident. Well the primary difference is in the cost, support, easy of rollout and configuration, especially of the as our accounts payable business needs change after we select an AP automation solution and we need to make adjustments to how the accounts payable approval workflow occurs. Additionally a true multi-tenant accounts payable automation solution provides ease of upgrades when a new feature is added to the product. All customers on a multi-tenant accounts payable automation solution get the benefit of the upgrade if the AP automation provider is running on a true single multi-tenant code base. As opposed to a multi-instance architecture where each customer needs to be upgraded separately and does not gain the benefit of a single code base.