Tipalti’s software helps Finance teams manage accounts payable, procurement, purchase order generation, expenses, and global payments automation. The platform is designed for finance and general accounts payable (AP) automation with a host of features built to support Finance teams.

Tipalti has made a marketing push into supporting influencer marketing payments with sponsorships at Creator Economy Live and other influencer marketing events and dedicating a new section of their website to influencer marketingpayments.

When it comes to managing influencer and other creator payments, Tipalti's strengths, which are built to support Finance teams, present major challenges to companies using Tipalti for these use cases. Tipalti was built for the Finance team, not for influencers or the marketers who partner with influencers and other creators. But first, let's cover where Tipalti excels.

Strengths of Tipalti:

1. AP automation: By automating PO creation and payment workflows, Tipalti claims they can reduce accounts payable workload by up to 80%, allowing companies to scale more efficiently. This includes features like customizable approval policies, electronic funds transfer, and advanced OCR for invoice processing.

2. Visibility and control over spend: Tipalti excels at providing workflows for employees to submit requests for new suppliers, POs, and budget. It helps Finance centralize all vendors, purchase requests and contract details to monitor and report on spend by vendor.

3. Compliance and Controls: Tipalti offers robust features for tax and regulatory compliance, including the ability to handle IRS and VAT tax IDs, generate 1099/1042-S tax forms, and maintain compliance documentation. These features help mitigate risk and ensure financial controls. **It is worth noting that Tipalti helps collect data for tax compliance but it is on the company to ensure everything is correct and complete and file 1099 tax forms at year end.

Challenges faced when using Tipalti for Influencer Payments:

1. Onboarding complexity for influencers: One of the significant challenges with Tipalti is the complexity of onboarding influencers. Most companies that implement Tipalti The process requires considerable manual support from the business and finance teams to set up influencers to be payable. This can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive task, especially for companies that work with a large number of influencers. Here is an example of a 6 page onboarding PDF guide for a company using Tipalti. Even with these handoff materials, teams have to provide substantial support to ensure their influencers and creators get set up correctly.

2. User Experience: In addition to onboarding difficulties,  Influencers and talent management often require support to figure out when they were paid and what a payment was for. This leads to support between influencer → Marketing → Finance and can take up more time than expected. While Tipalti offers a robust set of features, users often report issues with the ease of use and how long it takes to set up ERP and accounting software integration. The initial implementation process can be more work than anticipated, and certain functionalities, such as the OCR feature for submitted invoices require thorough reviews by an internal accounting team. 

3. Rigid workflows (built for Finance): Tipalti works well for an AP managing supplier payments. A typical payable workflow via an ERP + Tipalt helps automate the purchase order (PO) to payment process:

Following the above process for every influencer payment can quickly turn into a time consuming and ultimately frustrating process at any sort of scale. For teams managing a few influencers and creators per year it is definitely manageable.

Tipalti was not designed to support cross team collaboration between Marketing (who manage the day to day influencer relationships) and Finance (who process approved payouts, record expenses, and track spend against budget). This typically leads to the Finance team needing to take on a front line support role to manage issues that arise with the influencers that Marketing is working with.

4. Reporting and visibility into payouts: Tipalti provides a limited number of standard reports, which can be a drawback for companies needing comprehensive and customizable reporting capabilities to manage their influencer payments and relationships effectively. Typically reporting is limited to the Finance team which leads to marketing needing to create and track their influencer campaign spend in a separate tool or worksheet.

How Lumanu Helps with Influencer Payments:

1. Seamless Integration with existing ERP or Vendor Management systems (e.g.) Coupa: Lumanu acts as a single vendor for all influencer payments within a company's existing financial software. This simplifies the payment process, for example instead of creating a PO for EVERY vendor and payment, POs can be created at the campaign level or monthly/ quarterly.
   
   

   

   
   
   Following this process on a periodic basis saves significant time and reduces manual errors, ensuring timely and accurate payments.

2. Comprehensive Vendor Onboarding and Support: Lumanu handles all aspects of vendor onboarding and support, making it easy for both the business and influencers. This reduces the administrative burden on your team, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives rather than operational tasks.

3. Master Vendor who Manages Compliance: Tipalti is a money transmitter which helps you pay others. Lumanu acts as your single vendor for influencer payments, verifying submitted tax documentation is correct and ensuring compliance with relevant regulations, which means less work for your finance team.

4. Dedicated Payment Network: As a payment network, Lumanu provides a more specialized and streamlined solution for managing influencer payments. Similar to consumer apps like Venmo or PayPal, creators and talent managers only need to onboard to Lumanu once. Lumanu’s focus on influencers means that the platform is built to meet the unique needs of influencers and talent management.

While Tipalti offers a robust solution for managing accounts payable and global payments, its complexity in onboarding and supporting influencers can be a significant drawback for companies with influencer marketing programs.

Lumanu is a network built for the influencer marketing space which provides dedicated influencer support, takes on all compliance and offers an efficient solution for managing influencer payments and compliance. With Lumanu, you can simplify your payment processes to save time, ensure compliance, and maintain strong, positive relationships with your influencers, ultimately allowing your team to focus on creating impactful marketing campaigns.