Managing and tracking expenses can be a challenging task, especially for a growing business. After all, you must ensure that your employees get reimbursed on time while not overburdening your finance team.
To tackle this issue, more companies are using automation software to streamline their expense management processes. However, with the growing market for financial solutions, deciding which option is the best fit for your company can take a lot of time and research.
This blog will assist you by providing a list of some of the best expense management software on the market. Further, we will summarize each platform’s key functionalities, helping you find the top match for your business.
What is Expense Management Software?
Expense management software is a digital pre-accounting solution that automates the receipt-to-reimbursement process by eliminating many mundane manual tasks like data entry and document sorting.
Expense management software allows companies to free employee time by automatically handling expense submissions, processing, approvals and data booking, ultimately liberating employees to tackle more meaningful jobs.
Moreover, various features of expense management software provide users with many benefits, improving the overall workflow of handling company expenses.
Benefits of Expense Management Software
Expense management software offers numerous benefits for businesses of all sizes. Depending on the specific technology that powers each solution and its features, your company can simplify and speed up expense claim processing.
The majority of expense management software offers the following benefits of expense automation:
- Faster reimbursements: Expense management automation ensures that employees are reimbursed quickly and accurately, eliminating the need for manual processing and reducing delays.
- Reduced administrative costs: Expense automation reduces the administrative burden associated with managing expenses, allowing finance teams to focus on more strategic tasks.
- Enhanced compliance: Automated expense management ensures that submissions comply with corporate expense policies and regulations, reducing the risk of violations and penalties.
- Improved accuracy: Companies reduce the risk of errors with expense automation, ensuring that expense reports are accurate and compliant with company policies.
- Real-time overview: Expense automation provides a real-time overview of company spending, allowing finance teams and executives to monitor expenses and identify areas for cost savings.
As you can see, by automating your expense management, you not only improve the accuracy and speed of reimbursements but also protect your company from penalties and gain a thorough overview of its financial health.
In the next section of our blog, we will outline some key features of effective expense management software that can level up your financial management.
What to Look for in Expense Management Software
When considering an expense management software provider, it is essential to research all potential options thoroughly. To ensure that your platform has all the necessary features, let’s discuss some of the most important functionalities that good expense management software should offer:
- Accurate Data Processing: AI and machine learning-powered technology like Optical Character Recognition (OCR) enhances expense processing by utilizing precise data extraction and drastically reducing turnaround time.
- Built-in Fraud Detection: Detection of fraudulent and duplicate receipts prevents financial fraud by scanning for Photoshop activity and Exif data anomalies of submitted expenses, further detecting whether any elements, like total amount, have been altered.
- Approval Workflows and Business Rules: Multilevel approval workflows and custom business rules allow companies to streamline expense approvals by involving solely authorized employees based on spending limits, department or other set criteria.
- Expense Dashboards: An expense dashboard allows the finance team to monitor all transactions in real time, quickly identifying trends and spending patterns through a detailed overview. Moreover, a dashboard helps accurately and efficiently manage expense accounts, such as accrued expenses.
- Safe and Accessible Data Storage: A secure system, such as cloud-based data storage, allows companies to have accessible financial data through the web or mobile application, simplifying the preparation of financial reports and audits and allowing organizations to comply with financial regulations successfully.
- The Right Accounting Software Integrations: The possibility of integrating expense management software with other accounting and ERP systems provides financial visibility, synchronizes payment processes, and reduces operational costs.
It is a common practice to identify your company’s wishes and deal breakers and match them with features offered by software providers. For example, you will save time researching solutions that don’t support your language or synchronize with your company’s accounting system.
In the next part of our blog, we will list the top expense management software options and a summary of their unique features that might fit your business.
8 Best Expense Management Software
Expense management software can bring countless benefits to your organization’s financial management. However it is important to study and match functionalities of the solution with your company’s wishes.
Here is a list of some of the 8 best expense management software available in 2023:
#1 Klippa
Klippa SpendControl is a state-of-the-art expense management solution. Perfect for automating expense processing and approval, SpendControl saves your organization precious time and money in expense management processes. With this solution, you get the perks of:
- Expense management and invoice processing software in one solution
- User-friendly web dashboard and app design
- Fully customizable approval management with smart business rules
- Excellent customer support with quick reaction time
- Integration possibilities with accounting and ERP software, like Xero, NetSuite, SAP and many more
- Submit files via email, app, or website
- Compliant with tax and data privacy regulations
- Supports multiple currencies for enhanced expense management
- Prevents fraud, by detecting duplicate documents or false invoices
- Records mileage through Google Maps integration
- Maximize cost control with business expense cards
#2 Chrome River
Chrome River is an expense management solution that helps simplify and streamline financial processes, such as accounts payable. It can be customized at any step in the workflow for enhanced business efficiency. These are some of the advantages that come with using Chrome River:
- Multiple technology integrations
- Combines travel- and expense management
- Developed business rules to support reconfigurability in approval processes
- User-friendly on a multitude of devices
- Supports more than 100 currencies
- Compliant with local tax regulations
- Customer support for implementation
#3 Soldo
Soldo is a digital expense management platform that is designed to cover card spendings and business expenses.Soldo allows companies to automate their finance processes from decision to spend to reconciliation with the following features:
- Data access through web console and mobile app
- Corporate expense cards powered by Mastercard
- Fuel cards assigned to employees or vehicles
- Custom approval workflows
- Mobile app for continuous expense tracking and monitoring
Check out our comparison page for a more thorough analysis of Soldo and its features.
#4 Expensify
Expensify is a platform that helps companies manage all corporate expenses from receipt scanning and expense management to paying bills and booking travel. These are some of the advantages that come with using Expensify:
- Multi-level approval workflows
- Creation of mileage expenses in app and web
- Business credit cards for expense tracking
- Smart expense limits for company cardholders
- Travel system integrations for business trip expenses
You can check out our comparison page for a more thorough analysis of Expensify and its features.
#5 Freshbooks
FreshBooks is a bookkeeping platform that automates all expense processes within an organization. From balance sheets to accounts payable, FreshBooks keeps track of all financial processes, offering you multiple benefits:
- Consolidated and user-friendly dashboard
- Customizable chart of accounts and expense categories
- Clear expense tracking
- Automated bank reconciliation with general ledger
- Expense and asset tracking
#6 Basecone
Basecone is a cloud-based software platform that helps digitize and automate expense management and invoice processing. With the Basecone app, it is possible to swiftly upload, authorize and submit expense claims. Basecone offers the following features for straightforward financial management:
- Document submission through the web, app or email
- Custom authorization flows for expense approval
- Secure data storage for 10 years
- Linking to purchase order matching software
- Addition of up to 10 custom booking rules
Check out our comparison page for more details about Basecone and its features.
#7 Tipalti
Tipalti is an automated expense management solution, specialized in automating accounts payable. It accurately processes invoices and other financial documents, helping streamline invoice management and inventory management processes. Tipalti helps you benefit from:
- User-friendly interface
- Both expense management and invoice processing options
- Two-way matching and three-way matching
- Currency management
- Integrations with multiple accounting and ERP software
#8 Airbase
Airbase is an expense management software that simplifies the manual tasks of finance teams. This software enables you to manage financials in a single dashboard and offers a corporate card program with simplified employee reimbursement functions. In addition, it offers you:
- Comprehensive platform with a clear user interface
- Real-time visibility into financial data
- Flexible solutions for managing finances
- Approval workflows
- A diverse variety of integration possibilities
Conclusion
Finding the right solution for your organization depends on which factors you deem the most important. While we presented a summary of some of the best solutions on the market, we truly believe that Klippa SpendControl has it all to help your organization save precious time and money, while having even more control over your expenses.
Are you ready to level up your expense management? Book a free demo to see our product in action, or contact our SpendControl specialists for more information. Start investing your time into things that really matter!