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Written by: Anand Sasikumar and Rahul Radhakrishnan.
Fact checked by: Shruti Kesavan.
Gone are the days when traditional expense management stood a chance in the current market. Post-COVID, SMBs, and enterprises are rapidly switching to automated expense management to bridge the gaps that plague the business landscape.
The benefits of an automated expense report software are multifold for business owners, finance and accounting teams, and employees. While business owners and finance teams benefit from automated compliance, real-time access and control over all expenses, employees benefit from a seamless way to be reimbursed for business expenses incurred without the customary back and forths.
Whether you’re an SMB owner taking care of your organization’s expenses or a CPA who handles the expenses of multiple clients, an expense management software can simplify and streamline your expense management process. It can also add a layer of compliance and security, ensuring your financial bottom line is always under check.
The benefits are endless for businesses considering the switch to automated expense management. And for those who are looking to switch from one software to the other, the wait ends here. This article will take you through everything you need about expense management and help identify and evaluate the best expense management software in 2023.
Expense management is a multi-step process that includes tracking, reporting, submitting, approving, and reimbursing employee business expenses. These business expenses can range from travel-related expenses to employee corporate card spends to buying office supplies.
When employees incur expenses on behalf of the organization, they can apply for expense reimbursements by submitting an expense report that combines all business expenses and their corresponding expense receipts. Depending on an organization's workflow, the expense reports must be validated, verified, and approved by the reporting manager or the finance team, sometimes both.
Once approved, the employee gets refunded for the expenses they have incurred on behalf of the company in the form of employee expense reimbursements. This process, from report submission to reimbursement, is called expense management.
While traditional expense management barely gets the job done, it leaves your business at financial risk with a high probability of errors and expense fraud. This is mainly why successful companies are actively adopting automated expense reporting to combat the issues that come along with traditional expense management.
The expense management industry is spoilt for choice, making it challenging for a business to pick the best expense management software based on its specific needs. To help streamline the process, here are six features your software must have, whether the provider is a legacy or new-age expense software.
Here are our top picks for the best expense management tools available in the market today. These expense management systems have been evaluated according to our review methodology to ensure an unbiased view of our picks. They are also backed by real human reviews, as seen on reputed review sites such as G2. So let's get started!
Fyle is the leading expense management automation software that simplifies and streamlines expense reporting and tracking for SMBs and mid-market companies. It is the best app for managing business expenses and employee reimbursements as it enables employees to report their expenses from everyday apps like Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, or its expense reporting mobile app. Finance teams and approvers can also access and approve all employee expense reports online with a simple click of a button.
Recently Fyle launched its real-time spend management solution for the owners of Visa and Mastercard business credit cards across the U.S. This means any SMB or mid-market company can now access the powerhouse of features in the expense management platform without changing their cards.
Also, with real-time feeds, Fyle notifies finance teams via text about credit card spend seconds after an employee swipes your corporate credit card. Employees just need to reply with a receipt, and the finance team can instantly reconcile the card transaction. This eliminates the dependency on bank feeds, making the expense management process truly seamless.
Features:
Pricing: Standard plan starts at $6.99 per active user*/month, billed annually.
*An active user creates at least one expense report in a month
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Expensify is an expense management app that aims to manage expenses by cutting out all the accounting hassles and simplifying bookkeeping. The expense reporting app allows employees to track personal and business expenses, improve receipt management, book travel, and more. Once tracked, Expensify generates reports and submits them for approval. They also issue credit cards with their expense management software to make reconciliations easy.
Features:
Pricing: $5.00/month/user with the Expensify Card
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Concur Expense is an expense management tool that helps capture receipts, process expense reports, enforce business rules and make more informed business decisions. When you create a business expense report with Concur, your charge from the credit card, vendor, and a picture of the receipt are auto-populated. And as for approvers, they can review and approve team expense reports as soon as employees capture transaction data and submit the expense reports.
Features:
Pricing: Contact for pricing
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Certify is one of the best business travel expense softwares. It supports seamless business expenses tracking, analyzing, and reporting for business travel spend. Users can scan and attach paper and e-receipts of restaurants, flights, hotels, and more, eliminating the need for spreadsheets and manual expense management. It also streamlines the entire approval process, considerably reducing employee reimbursement times.
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Pricing: The standard plan for 25 users starts at $12/user/month, and the enterprise price plan depends on the organization's needs.
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Zoho Expense is a powerful reimbursement software that enables organizations to automate everything from receipt submission to accounting, saving time and effort. Users can make travel bookings and track expenses right from the platform. Credit card reconciliation is also easier with Zoho Expense as it automatically converts transactions into expenses. finance teams can set up multi-level approval hierarchies, spend policies, budgets, and analytics.
Features:
Pricing: The premium plan for Zoho Expense starts from $5/active user /month, billed annually. They also offer a free plan with basic expense tracking features.
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These above expense reporting tools rank highly in expense tracking, travel and expense management, and receipt management. Now if you’re looking for more options, we’ve listed out other tools in no particular order categorized based on their market fit and more.
Some of the most common challenges SMBs face with expense management is human error, data entry errors, expense fraud, approval and policy compliance, and a lack of visibility and control of business expenses. Using an automated expense reporting system eliminates these challenges and ensures your financial bottom line is always secure.
Ramp is the complete package when it comes to finance automation. With Ramp, organizations get credit card expense management software, accounting, bill payment, and expense reporting in one simple and easy-to-use platform. It also supports direct integrations with accounting software, auto-matching receipts, and analytical spending insights. And to top it all off, customers earn 1.5% cash back on all spend using a Ramp credit card.
Features:
Pricing: Ramp is free to use.
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Airbase unifies three systems: accounts payable, an advanced corporate credit card system, and an expense management system. Coupled with automated accounting and approval workflows, Airbase makes all non-payroll spend control and reporting a breeze for finance teams, opening up productive time and reducing manual effort. This easily makes Airbase one of the top expense management software out there.
Features:
Pricing: Contact for pricing
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Spendesk comes with seven financial solutions in one complete package. It can handle corporate credit cards, employee reimbursements, expense approvals, budgets, compliance management and reporting, invoice payments, and pre-accounting. Spendesk is designed to deliver automation, visibility, and control to the modern finance team.
Features:
Pricing: Contact for pricing
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Abacus by Emburse streamlines expense reporting for individuals and businesses accurately while offering complete control and transparency. It also works as a reimbursement management software and credit card expense management software, thereby automating critical parts of accounting.
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Pricing:
Abacus starts at $9 per active user per month.
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FreshBooks is an online accounting and invoicing software that simplifies bookkeeping for small businesses. FreshBooks makes financial recording simple and lets the finance team focus on other value-adding tasks. As a result, the finance team can save time, automate admin tasks easily and ensure the business is tax-ready.
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Managing business travel is a lot of work. However, the right expense management solution can make business travel much easier to book, cancel, and monitor. Additionally, it helps you save money by letting you identify potential areas of overspending. This is essential for SMBs that operate with limited budgets.
TravelPerk is one of the best travel and expense management softwares that enables businesses to manage business travel end-to-end. It has powerful integrations with expense management platforms and travel suppliers like airlines and hotels, allowing you to book and track expenses in the same place. TravelPerk also comes with 24/7 customer support that can be beneficial when it comes to resolving any travel-related issues.
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Navan (formerly TripActions) is a corporate travel and expense management platform that provides businesses with travel booking, expense tracking, and spend control. It also has various integrations with travel providers, giving employees multiple options to book flights, hotels, transportation, and more while staying in line with company policy and budget. Navan also has a powerful mobile app that helps users stay on top of their trips and simplifies tracking expenses. This makes it a tough contender in the business travel expense software category.
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Enterprises are synonymous with one word: large. Large budgets, large projects, large numbers of employees, and larger expenses. Enterprise-level software means a tool with a significant investment but one that also delivers immense value.
Brex is a spend management platform that also issues corporate credit cards. It has features like virtual cards, spend analytics, receipt capture, policy checks, and more that can help businesses control spending. Brex also offers a rewards program that enables companies to earn rewards on business spending from their credit card. It also supports real-time expense tracking and integrates with all the major accounting platforms making it easier for employees and finance teams.
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Chrome River Expense is an expense reports software that helps automate the process of tracking expenses and receipts, reporting expense reports, and reimbursing employees. This t&e software allows employees to submit expenses from their mobile app and seek approval and payments. Chrome River Expense claims it helps businesses improve efficiency, reduce errors, and eliminate manual expense management efforts.
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Most expense management solution providers offer pricing plans tailored to your organization's needs. The average pricing starts from $4.99 per month and increases depending on the features and capabilities. Most expense programs also provide free trials or demo accounts to test before choosing.
The growth of a company ultimately depends on its financial health. This makes it imperative to clearly understand where your employees spend money and what they spend it on. Access to little or no expense data can be detrimental to an organization.
An expense management software for your company will help it grow, control costs where needed, and improve your overall financial health. Investing in it has become a no-brainer in today's financial environment.
We hope the above list of recommendations has brought you closer to identifying an expense management solution that perfectly fits your organization’s needs.
Additionally, if you’re wondering where you could start your search for an expense management platform that can handle everything end-to-end, please feel free to sign up for a demo and check Fyle out today!
