Best Expense Tracking Software Solutions for Small Businesses

Expense tracking software is an essential part of your business, even if it’s a startup or a large enterprise, but it gets complicated with manual workflows. When you track expenses with the help of a manual spreadsheet, there is an administrative burden, and it also introduces unnecessary errors. Expense tracking software is an automatic way through which cash flow can be increased, as it eliminates manual work.

This software helps in resolving the key challenges faced by the finance team, along with the employees. It also helps with issues like delayed reimbursements, lost receipts, policy violations, and manual month-end reconciliation challenges. If you get to use the modern platforms, it will optimize workflows, maintaining compliance, increasing transparency, and also deliver actionable insights that will help you with financial decision-making.

It’s important for every controller seeking better expense oversight or a CFO who wants to optimize deeper business insight to understand these types of essential tools. These tools not only help in making wise financial decisions, but they will also help manage your time. In this article, you will learn about different software and their importance.

Understanding expense tracking software

Expense software for small businesses is a platform that automates and helps streamline how you can handle your business and its expenses in a proper manner. This is also known as expense management software; these platforms allow companies to monitor expenses as they take place, which gives a company an idea about their expense management and how they are being used.

Moreover, expense tracking software is not just limited to tracking expenses; it goes beyond its usual work by processing, reimbursing, approving, capturing, and analyzing the business expenses. They also maintain compliance policies and provide valuable financial insights. That’s why it is said that modern expense tracking has evolved as a replacement for spreadsheets. It’s always better to use artificial intelligence to reduce manual work and keep financial visibility and other functionality.

The traditional methods usually involve employees keeping a track of physical receipt scanning, filling out the paper forms or spreadsheets, submitting the same for approval via email or in person, followed by the wait for the approval process to start along with the expense reimbursement. We clearly can see that this is a time-consuming procedure for business owners and also lacks real-time visibility.

Today, expense tracking software has become an indispensable tool for modern businesses which has complex financial processes, real-time financial data, and remote workforce requirements. Since global operations and distributed teams are the new way companies work, digital expense tracking solutions play a wide role in allowing businesses to track their expenses in different locations. They also help with different currencies and tax jurisdictions that the traditional methods can’t match.

Best expense tracker for small business

Below is a list of some of the best way to track expenses for small business that is user-friendly and also aligns with the company policies.

Expensify

Expensify is an easy-to-use tool that helps businesses keep track on their spending and manage reimbursements. It’s a smart choice for small businesses that need to use corporate cards and want a simple way to upload receipts. Expensify helps users to scan their receipts, book travel, and track travel expenses and keep an eye on their expenses all at one place.

Expensify offers two pricing plans. The First is the Collect Plan, which starts at $5 per user each month and includes features like receipt scanning and travel booking. The second is the Control Plan, which starts at $9 per user per month and offers features that involve ERP integrations, custom expense rules, and multiple approval flows for bigger business needs.

Concur

Concur provides a free trial of 30 days, and the minimum fee for an organization for purchasing this software for the first time is around $83 every month. It basically means $8 for each employee for a company where there are 10 employees.

SPA concur expense has a standout feature of capturing high-quality image of receipts with easy to track mileage. It works seamlessly with other SAP products like SAP Travel and SAP invoice.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is an easy-to-use expense management process. The Lite plan offers many features, although the costs may vary depending on the plan you select for your company. It’s easy to upload receipts (including mileage) and create invoices. The app offers time tracing and has a very mobile-friendly interface.

If you have a team of ten members or fewer, then you can opt for its lite plan. It is also good for freelancers and self-employed people, and you will also get price incentives and discounts for the first 3 months with the sign-up. FreshBooks usually categorize your expenses automatically and itemizes them to make it simple for you during the tax filing season. It allows you to take photos of the receipts and store them in the cloud.

QuickBooks

QuickBooks is a comprehensive financial management platform that helps businesses streamline their reimbursement process and implement effective spend controls. It tracks income and expenses in real time, offering tools for invoicing, accepting payments, managing cash flow, maximizing tax deductions, tracking mileage, running financial reports, sending estimates, handling bills, managing 1099 contractors, and even processing payroll. The platform syncs seamlessly with bank accounts, credit cards, and third-party apps, providing real-time dashboards for full visibility into your business’s financial activity.

QuickBooks offers a 30-day free trial and several plans to suit different business needs. The basic “Simple Start” plan allows a single user to track income, expenses, and sales, organize receipts, create invoices, prepare taxes, categorize trips, and generate essential reports like profit and loss statements and balance sheets. The “Essentials” plan includes all these features while expanding access to up to three users and adding employee bill payments and time tracking. The “Plus” plan builds on that by adding project tracking and inventory management for up to five users. For larger teams, the “Advanced” plan supports up to 25 users. It includes advanced reporting, faster transactions, and access to QuickBooks Priority Circle, a VIP service with dedicated support and free training. Additionally, freelancers can benefit from the “Self-Employed” plan tailored to their unique needs.

QuickBooks also emphasizes data protection with robust security features such as Verisign scanning, 128-bit SSL encryption, and customizable user access to ensure financial data remains secure and accessible only to authorized personnel.

Certify

Certify offers a 14-day free trial, after which users can choose from various subscription plans based on team size. The "Now!" plan charges $12 per user monthly for teams of 1-25 employees. For larger groups of 20-200 people, the professional plan includes a monthly service fee and a one-time implementation charge ranging from $1,500 to $3,500. Enterprise plans involve additional implementation costs and a combination of fixed and variable charges.

Key features include access to comprehensive video tutorials via the Certify Training Camp, seamless integration with different tools, and managing travel bookings. A standout function is the proprietary ReceiptParse Technology, which extracts details such as date, location, and category from receipts to streamline expense categorization. The platform also ensures a strong audit trail for accounting purposes and minimizes manual data entry through automation.

Features of expense tracking software

As discussed in the above sections, expense tracking software is not just limited to tracking expenses but also does other things. Below are some key features of this software.

Automated expense reporting

The best expense tracking software helps with the automation of expense reporting. Receipts will generated automatically when the employees are using their credit card. It will also get uploaded, and digitized using OCR technology. Moreover, the expenses will be categorized using AI, which will save employees from manually reviewing and classifying costs.

Expense policy enforcement

One of the most significant advantages of these modern expense tracking software is their ability to enforce expense policies during the purchase time automatically. Instead of being dependent on manual reviews to catch policy violations, these platforms help businesses in building expense policies into the employee credit cards. When the employee submits an expense that exceeds a threshold, the platform will flag it as per the predetermined rules.

Automatic receipt scanning

Today’s tracking software uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology for converting physical receipts into digital data. In this case when an employee takes an image of the receipt through mobile, OCR will identify information like transaction date, merchant name, individual line terms, and total amount. It can also process the receipt in multiple languages.

Conclusion

Expense tracking software is no longer a luxury; it’s necessary for businesses of all sizes aiming to gain financial clarity, enforce spending controls, and improve overall efficiency to have the best software to track small business expenses. Whether you're a startup managing limited resources or a large enterprise with complex workflows, the right solution can transform your financial processes.

From real-time data access to automated reimbursements and seamless compliance, these platforms eliminate manual errors and delays. Tools like Expensify, Concur, FreshBooks, QuickBooks, and Certify cater to different business needs, ensuring a fit for every type of operation. Investing in the right expense tracking software leads to more thoughtful, faster decisions.

FAQs about expense tracking software

What is the best software for tracking expenses?

If you are looking for any software that can help you with personal expense tracking, then you can opt for YNAB (You Need a Budget), Mint, and EveryDollar. But if you want business expense tracking software, then you should go with Expensify and Zoho Expense, as they are well-regarded. Another most-used software is FreshBooks, for small businesses.

What is the best app for tracking business travel expenses?

If you want to track your business travel expenses, Expensify is an app which is widely used. It provides features such as automated receipt scanning, integration with accounting software, and mileage tracking, which makes it easy to manage and report expenses. There are other options as well, which include SAP Concur, TripLog, and Zoho Expense.

Is Expensify good for small businesses?

Expensify is one of the most user-friendly software programs for managing expenses for small businesses. It automates approval workflows and receipt tracking. It also simplifies the management of expenses with strong AI-driven tools. This expense tracking software provides real-time tracking, policy enforcement, and receipt scanning.

What is the easiest way to keep track of business expenses?

The easiest way to track any kind of business expense is by using a combination of practices and tools. You can open a dedicated business bank account, divide your expenses, utilize accounting software, or apps for tracking your expenses. This way, you will also be able to maintain a record of all the receipts.

Is Excel good for tracking expenses?

Excel is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to tracking expenses, as it has the ability to automate calculations. There are some essential formulas, like SUM, for calculating the expense of a particular category or time. Another formula includes AVERAGE, which is used to better understand monthly spending.

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