Returning to the office after a business trip, one regular chore was smoothing out ruckled till receipts and manually entering an expense claim. Frequently, you put it off for weeks after your return, leaving your overworked bookkeeper to reconcile your expense claim against a long-forgotten project.

How much easier to snap your receipt on your smartphone and instantly upload your café bill to expenses software for immediate reconciliation.

With employees constantly booking trips, receiving invoices, and making expenses claims it can be difficult to keep track of where and when money is being spent. With automated expenses software it simple. These systems help you see where expenses occur so that you can manage it.

Cloud-based, expense software lets employees capture receipts and submit claims in real time.

Automation speeds up the review, processing, payment and auditing of expense claims, making it easier for finance to manage expenses and budgets effectively.

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How to choose expenses software for business

Rick Smith, managing director of insolvency and business consultancy Forbes Burton, says there are six things to watch out for when choosing business expenses software.

#1 – Ease of use

When it comes to choosing expenses software, ease of use should be a major factor in the decision-making process. The software should be easy to use for both employees and administrators and the employee interface should be simple and straightforward, with clear instructions on how to enter expenses and submit effective reports.

Essentially, the administrator interface should be powerful enough to manage multiple users and reports, but not so complex that it is difficult to use.

#2 – Mobile app

If it has mobile applications too, that’s always a bonus. These days, this is essential for employees who need to track expenses on the move. The app should be easy to use and should allow the scanning of receipts, the ability to add notes, and to submit reports from your phone or tablet.

#3 – Automated approval process

This will save time for both employees and administrators. The approval process should ideally be customisable to meet the specific needs of your organisation.

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#4 – Digital receipt capture

Digital receipt capture is also something that is highly recommended. The software should allow employees to scan receipts and attach them to expense reports. This will help to ensure that receipts are not lost or misplaced, which is more common than the average business will admit.

#5 – Mileage tracker

If your employees travel for work, the software should have a mileage tracker. This will help to calculate the cost of mileage reimbursements and save on paperwork or ineffective tracking systems you might already have in place.

#6 – Accounting integration

As well as effective reporting and analytics, the software should be able to integrate with other business systems, such as your accounting software and HR systems. This will help to streamline your workflow and reduce data entry errors, which can provide you with inaccurate data and working practices.

Best expenses software for your business

Caxton

Founded in 2002, Caxton is a one-stop-shop for finance departments, including supplier payments, payroll, international payments and expenses management. Currently it has over 500,000 customers including SMEs.

Its expense management function includes:

• Loadable corporate cards
• Spend tracking
• Automated expense reports
• Bookkeeping integration with accounting systems

As to why a business should opt for Caxton over any rival business expenses system, Caxton’s chief executive Rupert Lee-Browne said that its unified platform lets customers hold funds in different currencies, transfer funds from one location to another and pay using a myriad of methods.

Clients:

St Edmund’s Catholic Academy, University of Essex, Silver Birtch Care, Rockpool Tour Catering, Ruskin Mill Trust, Illingworth Research Group.

Pricing:

Caxton is a subscription service, with £660pm for 10 Mastercard debit cards for your team, including the platform fee and account fees. There are no other additional fees. However, the cost of each card reduces dependent on how many cards you use, going as low as £4 per card, as the case may be.

ExpenseIn

Seven-year-old ExpenseIn processes half a million receipts each month in over 40 countries. The company points to its 98 per cent retention rate as proof of customer satisfaction.

Its simple-to-use system tracks purchases, mileage and time. Expenses can be submitted on the go via the ExpenseIn app with receipt scanning and mileage calculations.

ExpenseIn also integrates with accounting software including Sage, Xero, NetSuite and Intuit Quickbooks. Amazon AWS manages the servers and data centres that power ExpenseIn.

Features:

• Mobile app
• Receipt scanning
• Automated policies
• Advanced approvals
• Real-time reporting
• Card reconciliation
• Compliant with UK tax law
• Multichannel, UK-based support team

Add-ons:

Invoice approval: digitally capture, process and approve supplier invoices from anywhere, 24/7

Ad-hoc expenses: Quickly reimburse users who are not on the company payroll such as charity volunteers or research participants

Clients:

Liberal Democrats, Ascot Racecourse, Vent-Axia and Prodrive

Pricing:

Business expense management solution starts from £6.50 per active user per month.

ExpenseIn uses an “active user” pricing model, which means that companies are only charged for claimants, not users who merely have access to the account.

Spendesk

French company Spendesk offers an all-in-one corporate spend management platform for aimed at mid-sized companies.

What this means is that Spendesk businesses can order physical debit cards for employees, while staff can use the platform to pay outstanding invoices, file expense reports, manage budgets and generate spending reports.

In particular, Spendesk helps you formalise your internal processes. You can define team budgets, set up complicated approval workflows for expensive payments, and automate some pesky tasks, such as VAT extraction.

Spendesk integrates with your ERP system, bank and accounting software such as Xero, Netsuite and Quickbooks.

Funds are loaded into a Spendesk wallet from your company bank account, you define the rules/team members/card limits and then employees can request funds, pay securely and submit receipts using the Spendesk app.

Features:

• Real-time visibility
• Built-in authorisation processes
• Subscription overview
• One-click export to accounting tool
• Automatic receipt capture
• Instant expense reimbursement
• 95% receipt reconciliation within two days

Clients:

Soundcloud, Depop, Bloom & Wild, Seedrs and Wonderbly.

Pricing:

Spendesk has a fixed monthly fee, dependent on which of its three tiers you opt for, plus variable pricing based on the number of transactions (expenses claims, card purchases, invoice payments).

Spendesk offers three pricing plans for businesses, all of which offer the following:

• Support via live chat and email
• Full visibility over all spend via expenses, cards and invoices
• Certified receipts
• Approvals & individual spending limits
• Mobile app for easy approval, receipt & invoice submission

Starter

Up to seven users and one approver.

• Unlimited virtual and physical cards
• Supplier invoice tracking
• Expense tracking & reimbursement
• One automated receipt collection rule
• Custom accounting exports
• Xero integration
• Slack integration
• Support via live-chat, email & onboarding webinars

Essentials

Everything in Starter plus:

• Multi-steps approval flows
• Cost center and expenses categories tracking
• Unlimited automated receipt collection rules
• Pay invoices from Spendesk
• Advanced control rules for physical cards
• Control dashboard reporting

Scale

Everything in Essentials plus:

• Budgets
• Purchase orders tracking
• Spend trends dashboard reporting
• Automatic data entry of expense & VAT accounts (ML based)
• Assisted set-up with onboarding manager
• Dedicated Account Manager

MyExpenses

Founded in 2000, Myexpenses has more than 200,000 users worldwide.

Integrates with banks including Barclays, Lloyds and HSBC as well as Sage accounting software.

Staff expense management solution, with OCR mobile receipt capture, GPS mileage and carbon emissions tracking.

Features:

• OCR receipt reading
• Built-in policy adherence
• Mobile working timesheets
• DriverCare automatically checks and validates driving licences, vehicle tax and MOT details
• Self-service leave and absence management
• InvoiceFlow captures, auto-reads and organises supplier invoices

Clients:

Diesel, LEON, Malmaison, Wagamama

Pricing:

n/a

Moss

Moss is an all-in-one integrated solution for expense management for small and medium-sized businesses.

Founded in Germany, Moss issues virtual and physical cards, enabling digital invoice management, easy accounting of employee expenses, and liquidity management.

All four modules integrate and automate common accounting software and ERP systems. Moss works with other parts of your fintech stack, including SAP, Oracle Netsuite, Xero and Intuit QuickBooks.

Moss claims that its expenses management software helps finance departments process payments 30 per cent faster and eliminates invoice approval bottlenecks and month-end reconciliation delays.

The wider Moss offer includes:

• Corporate cards
• Invoice management
• Reimbursements
• Budget control
• Accounting & integrations
• Advance approvals

And its employee expenses module features:

• Customisable limits
• OCR receipt-reading software
• Easy data export/import

Clients:

Florence, Fatsoma, Crunch Media, Pizza Pilgrims and AVM Solutions

Pricing:

Pricing unavailable but Get Moss offers three tiers of subscription.

Starter

• Uncapped cashback on card spend for eligible customers
• Unlimited Moss virtual Mastercard corporate cards
• Moss physical Mastercard cards
• Automated inbox receipt fetching
• Invoice management
• One-click reimbursements for out-of-pocket expenses
• Xero and more accounting integrations
• Personio, Travelperk, and more HRIS integrations
• Apple & Google Pay compatible
• Slack integration
• Onboarding support

Professional

Everything in the Starter plan plus:

• Set budgets for teams and control in real-time
• Customisable approval policies to mirror your company set-up
• Automated invoice approvals to reduce payment bottlenecks
• Spend insights dashboard

Enterprise

Everything in the Professional plan plus:

• Premium accounting integrations including NetSuite and more
• Streamlined login process using single sign-on (SSO)
• Dedicated Customer Success team support

SAP Concur

Over 86 million users worldwide access SAP Concur, which offers integrated cloud solutions for travel, expense, and invoice management which scale as a business grows.

The core SAP Concur platform comprises Concur Expense, which integrates total travel and expense data into one solution, while automating and simplifying expense management; Concur Travel, which helps simplify the travel booking experience, monitor spend and control company costs; and Concur Invoice, which automates the AP invoice process allowing users to capture, process and pay invoices.

Each one stands alone, but they also integrate seamlessly to give you a single, complete source of discretionary spend data.

Plus, it’s the only provider accredited by accountancy body the ICAEW for both its expense and invoice solutions.

Sap Concur has an ecosystem of 700 partners including travel suppliers, credit card companies, global distribution systems and technology providers, which plug into a seamless, end-to-end travel booking and expense claim reporting solution. This includes SAP Concur’s App Center, which offers a range of partner applications connecting to and enhancing the solutions, such as the optimisation of travel and spend programs.

Cassie Petrie, MD SMB Emea Sap Concur, says: “SAP Concur is a expense, invoice and travel management software solution that enables businesses to handle complex procedures seamlessly by automating and integrating expense, travel and invoice processes.

“We offer an array of products and services for big and small businesses operating across various industries including retail, manufacturing, financial services and more.”

Concur Expense

• Create, manage, and submit business expenses and expense reports on the web, or while on the go with the SAP Concur mobile app
• Automate and streamline expense management every step of the way, from receipt capture to report approval
• Unlock the full potential of Concur Expense with integrations to other SAP solutions, ERPs, accounting systems, supplier e-receipts, credit card data, and other systems

Concur Travel

• Easily book flights, trains, hotels, and rental cars from a desktop or mobile device, using one online booking tool
• Increase compliance by automatically enforcing corporate ravel policies
• Get information and guidance about sustainable travel

Concur Invoice

• Efficiently capture invoices using OCR (Optical Character Recognition), machine learning, and human verification
• Review and authorize payments from a desktop or mobile app
• Create predefined reports, dashboards, and key metrics to gain one view to manage business spend

Clients:

BigBus, BiC, City & Guilds Group, Devon Air Ambulance, University of Oxford, VMware, Vodaphone

Pricing:

The costs for SAP Concur are based on a transaction-based model.

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