Unlocking efficiency: The best expense management software
Expense management software helps organizations manage, process, and track employee expenses. This type of software streamlines the process of expense reporting, reimbursement, and auditing by automating many of the tasks involved.
Expense management refers to the processes organizations use to review, reimburse, and record their employees’ job-related purchases. Regardless of an organization’s size, it’s essential to find an efficient way to oversee, process, and monitor employee expenses. The process of managing expenses, expense reports, and expense reimbursement is more than receiving a receipt and reimbursing the employee. Expense management is integral part of an organization’s overall financial strategy and health and involves many factors including:
- Expense policies
- Reimbursement requests
- Approval management
- Repayment processing
- Bookkeeping and reconciliation
Implementing business expense management software is instrumental for organizations that want to simplify this process by automating, tracking, and processing reimbursements for employee spending.
What is expense management software?
Expense management software streamlines and assists organizations in managing, processing, and tracking company and employee expenses. By reducing manual input and minimizing errors, the software can improve accuracy and streamline financial management processes. Expense management also reduces the administrative burden of manual processing for employees and the finance team.
The software typically enables employees to input their expenses, attach receipts with receipt scanning, and submit reimbursement requests. Ideally expense management software has capabilities that enable organizations to automate approval workflows, enforce company expense policies, and generate detailed reports. Organizations can easily monitor spending and compliance as well as streamline the reimbursement process.
Today’s CFOs and their teams need to be meticulous bookkeepers, capable forecasters, and masters of budget allocation. Manual administrative work often slows financial teams down and delays decision-making. Expense management software is key to enabling finance leaders and empowering strategic financial management.
The 10 best expense management software systems
Choosing the best expense management software is crucial for any organization looking to streamline its financial processes and maintain control over spending. The ideal software should offer features for recording, tracking, and managing expenses and expense reporting, while being user-friendly and adaptable to the company's specific needs. By selecting the right expense management tool, businesses can enhance efficiency, ensure compliance, and gain better insights into their financial health.
Amid all the expense management software options, how do you find the solution best fit for your company’s finance needs? Below are 10 expense management software tools for you to consider.
1. Rippling
Rippling consolidates all of your company’s finances—from payroll and benefits to corporate cards and expense management–giving you an up-to-date view of cash flow across your company and offering unprecedented control over spending patterns.
While most expense management solutions only allow for basic employee-manager approval chains, with Rippling expense management’s advanced policy engine, you can set hyper-custom policies based on the vendor, dollar amount, and expense category, helping you block out-of-policy expenses with ease. You can also tee up automated workflows that help you control spend, like triggering an alert when a department’s expenses sharply increase.
2. Brex
Brex launched in 2017 and helps companies streamline their business spending with customizable expense policies, automated receipt capture, and accounting software integrations. The AI-powered spend platform also offers corporate credit cards, travel booking shortcuts, and invoice scanning for vendor bills.
3. Ramp
Ramp is an expense management software platform that helps companies issue corporate cards, automate accounting workflows, and pay vendors. Businesses can also use Ramp to monitor employee spend policies and reconcile expense reports.
4. BILL
BILL Spend & Expense is an expense management solution that offers adjustable spend controls, automated expense categorization, and virtual credit cards, which mitigate fraud and help finance teams manage their budgets.
5. Expensify
Expensify categorizes and codes each receipt, and automatically submits business expenses for approval and reimbursement. This app has corporate card reconciliation, multi-level approval workflows, and syncs with many accounting softwares.
6. QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is a cloud-based accounting solution that helps small businesses manage their accounting, income, expenses, and payroll. QuickBooks does not offer corporate credit cards, which adds complexity when reconciling accounts.
7. SAP Concur
Concur's cloud-based expense management platform has integrations across travel, invoice, and expenses. It also syncs with accounting software like QuickBooks, NetSuite, and SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. SAP Concur has a variety of travel and expense products.
8. Airbase
Airbase consolidates guided procurement, accounts payable automation, expense report management, and corporate cards into a single, user-friendly interface.
9. Navan
Navan is an all-in-one travel, corporate card, and expense management solution. It offers automated expense categorization, adjustable spend controls, and global reimbursements across 45 countries and 25 currencies.
10. Zoho Expense
Zoho Expense is a travel and expense management solution that streamlines receipt management, per diem and mileage tracking, and expense report management. Zoho Expense also facilitates automated expense reporting. Zoho does not offer corporate credit cards, which adds complexity when reconciling accounts.
Key features to look for in an expense tracking software
When selecting expense management software, it's essential to consider key features that will maximize efficiency and accuracy. Look for tools that offer what your organization needs now and in the future. Top features to consider include customizable spend policies, automated approval workflows, expense tracker apps for employees, global expense management, and spend analytics.
Customized spend policies
One of the critical features to look for in expense tracking software is the ability to create and enforce customized spend policies. Every organization has specific rules and guidelines that align with their financial policies. Your expense management software should allow you to confirm that all expenses adhere to the company's standards, thus cutting non-compliant spending.
Customizable policies, such as a business expense or travel policy, in expense management software will help you maintain control over expenses, prevent overspending, and streamline the approval process by flagging any non-compliant expenses for review.
With Rippling, you can automate approvals with granular rules using employee data like role, department, and level, or transaction data like specific vendor, transaction category, and amount.
Automated workflows
Automated workflows are a must-have feature in modern expense management software. Once an expense report is submitted and reviewed, ideally many steps can be configured to run automatically, or prompt reminders to check the system, reducing the manual workload on finance teams.
Automated workflows ensure timely processing of expense reports, eliminate bottlenecks, and enhance overall efficiency. This feature is important for organizations looking to scale their operations without additional administrative costs.
Instead of waiting to review weeks-old charges at the end of month, with Rippling you can build automated workflows that closely monitor your company spend and trigger actions, like sending an alert when a team’s spend suddenly grows.
Global expense management
For businesses with a global presence, managing expenses across different countries is a complex task. In these cases, expense management software should include multi-currency support, enable compliance with international regulations, and provide multilingual options.
Global expense management ensures that employees can submit their expenses seamlessly from any location, and finance teams can process and audit these expenses in compliance with local and international policies.
It’s complex to reconcile foreign expenses, especially with business travel. Rippling helps make global expense management easier. Rippling expense management offers the ability to issue payments in any currency, collect receipts in any language, and convert expenses into each user’s local currency.
Spend analytics
Understanding spending patterns is crucial for making informed financial decisions. Spend analytics in expense management software offers insights regarding where and how the organization’s money is spent. These analytics help identify trends, highlight areas for cost reduction, and improve budgeting accuracy.
Reports offer a clear picture of an organization's expenses that will enable better financial planning and strategy development. With reporting capabilities, it’s easier for financial managers to review expense reports for any misuse of travel expenses, mileage, or corporate cards.
Benefits of implementing an expense management software
Instead of relying on a lengthy, manual reimbursement process, you can automate the most tedious aspects of expense management with specialized software. These platforms streamline every step, facilitating compliant spending, timely reimbursements, and accurate bookkeeping. Below are some of the key advantages of using expense management solutions in more detail.
Streamlined expense reporting
Expense management software simplifies the process of recording and submitting expenses, allowing employees to efficiently input data and attach receipts. This streamlining improves turnaround times for reimbursement, enhances transparency, and reduces administrative burden.
Expense tracking gives finance teams visibility over employees’ purchasing patterns. When employee spend is consolidated among the rest of your company’s finances, businesses have an easier time setting budgets and forecasting a company’s future needs.
Integrated financial management
By integrating with existing financial systems, expense management software provides a cohesive view of financial data. This integration ensures consistency in reporting, eliminates manual data entry errors, and facilitates better decision-making based on real-time financial insights.
Reduced errors and fraud
Automated expense management reduces the risk of errors associated with manual data entry and calculation. Additionally, built-in controls within expense reports that support policy enforcement help detect and prevent fraudulent activities, ensuring compliance with company policies and regulatory requirements.
Enhanced expense management with Rippling
While most expense management tools can save companies time and simplify the employee reimbursement process, they typically aren’t connected with the rest of your company’s finance systems.
In Rippling, all of your company spend—expense reimbursements alongside vendor bills, payroll, and corporate cards—are together on one intuitive platform. This gives companies unprecedented control and visibility over spend. With Rippling, you can create customizable reports, approval chains, and policy enforcements.
Since Rippling uses employee data to connect finance with the rest of your workforce management processes, company expense management policies will automatically apply to new employees as soon as they onboard and automatically adjust if they ever change roles.
What's more, if your company has an international presence or eyes global expansion, Rippling’s expense management solution lets you reimburse employees around the world in their local currency—all while reviewing transactions in your native currency.
FAQs about expense management software
What is expense management in a company?
Expense management in a company refers to the processes and systems used to track, manage, and monitor employee spending. Effective expense management helps organizations monitor spending patterns, optimize budgets, and reduce costs, ultimately improving financial accountability and transparency. By leveraging tools like expense management software, companies can automate these processes, improving both accuracy and efficiency.
How to choose the right expense software for my company?
By carefully evaluating various factors, you can select the best expense management software that meets your company’s unique needs. With a smooth process and system, organizations can streamline travel and expense reimbursements, including mileage. Choosing the right company expense management software involves several key considerations:
- Organizational requirements: Assess the specific features you require, such as receipt scanning, automated workflows, or reporting capabilities. It’s also important to evaluate if the system will integrate with your existing accounting software.
- User-friendliness: Find software that has a good track record for being easy to use and quickly adopted by employees for expense reports and expense tracking.
- Integration: Ensure the software and expense tracking software will work with your existing accounting software or financial systems.
- Scalability: Find software that will scale with your business expense tracker needs, accommodating additional users, increased transactions, and overall management of expenses, receipts, and reimbursements.
- Budget: Consider your budget and compare pricing models, including subscription costs and any hidden fees.
- Customer support: Confirm customer support availability, including resources like tutorials and methods to get help.
- Data security: Ensure the software has robust security measures to protect sensitive financial data, including travel and expense reimbursements and employee bank accounts.
- Reviews and recommendations: Research reviews and ask for recommendations from people in your network regarding reliability and performance of the software they use for expense tracking and reimbursement purposes.
What is the best expense management software for startups?
The best expense management software for startups typically includes user-friendly interfaces, affordability, and essential features to streamline processes. Many expense applications and expense software will provide expense reporting that helps startups manage expenses, including travel and expense reporting.
Can employees easily submit expenses using expense management software?
Most platforms offer user-friendly interfaces that offer business expense tracking apps which allow employees to quickly input their expenses, attach receipts via mobile or desktop, and submit business expense reimbursement requests with just a few clicks. Many solutions also include features like automated expense categorization and receipt scanning for submitting expense reports. This further simplifies the submission process and reduces the time spent on travel and expense paperwork. Rather than manual processes to track business expenses, employees appreciate tracking software that allows them to manage business expenses and receipts.
How does expense tracking integrate with accounts payable?
Expense tracking and accounts payable (AP) are closely intertwined components of a company's financial management system. Within the expense management process, employees keep receipts and provide pictures of receipts, copies of invoices, and any mileage tracking related to business expenses. Based on the business expense and travel policy, the AP team reviews and tracks business expenses during monthly reconciliation of accounts. They will then provide the employee with a reimbursement or facilitate the payment of the corporate credit card.
This blog is based on information available to Rippling as of July 16, 2024.
Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.
