Best Business Expense Trackers

Best Business Expense Tracker Review

Business expense trackers help you manage your business’ spending by organizing all of your expenses in one place and giving you a clear picture of how cash is flowing through your company.

Read our reviews of the top expense trackers to help determine which one best meets your needs. Our guide will help you understand how to use them and answer some of the most commonly asked questions about business expense trackers.

• Best for self-employed: Freshbooks
• Best for international business and travel expenses: SAP Concur
• Best features: Emburse Certify
• Best for small businesses: Ramp
• Best for heavy spending: QuickBooks
• Best for ease of use: Expensify
• Best for new businesses: Zoho

Why we chose it: FreshBooks lets self-employed individuals manage their expense tracking and other business needs all in one place.

Highlights:

• Integrates with over 100 apps
• Supports multiple currencies
• Unlimited invoicing and payment acceptance

FreshBooks has many useful expense tracking features such as daily bank account and credit card reconciliation, receipt capture, time and mileage tracking and automatic categorization of expenses by tax categories. You can easily turn your expenses into invoices or add them to your cost of goods sold (COGS) value. The mobile app helps you manage your expenses on the go.

FreshBooks offers three plans to choose from with discounted pricing for the first three months. Regular prices range from $15 to $55 a month. You also have the option to customize your own plan. If you prefer to test drive your business expense tracking apps before committing, FreshBooks offers a 30-day free trial.

Why we chose it: We chose SAP Concur as the best for international business and travel expenses because it gives employees the tools they need to manage their own travel, all while keeping travel details organized for easy oversight and tracking.

Highlights:

• Creates an itinerary out of travel reservations
• Ensures compliance in foreign countries
• Shows the sustainability footprint of your travel program

SAP Concur offers a travel and expense (T&E) package that makes it simple to track real-time travel details while giving employees the ability to manage their itineraries.

It partners with hundreds of apps that make it easy to take charge of corporate travel. You’ll be able to compare your actual T&E spending against what you have budgeted to keep your company’s travel expenses in check.

Concur supports multiple languages and currencies. It calculates currency exchange rates and value-added taxes automatically to facilitate smooth international travel and transactions. The business expense tracker solution offers automated expense tracking, real-time analytics, receipt capture and a mobile app that lets you submit and approve expenses from anywhere.

Why we chose it: Emburse Certify boasts unique features such as virtual corporate credit cards with customized budgets, automated reporting, user reviews of local businesses and mileage tracking using GPS.

Highlights:

• Supports 64 languages
• Supports over 140 currencies
• Unlimited receipt storage

Emburse Certify streamlines your expense tracking with mobile receipt capture, mileage tracking, reimbursement management and auto-categorization of expenses. You can store receipts without internet access which is useful when traveling. Its ReportExecutive feature allows you to generate expense reports for all employees automatically.

Certify's basic plan starts at $12 a month and there are two other advanced plans to choose from, each with customizable fees. All plans allow for multiple users. You also have access to 24-hour live support and the Training Camp website with a wealth of resources to help you set up and navigate the software. A free trial is available, though it's only good for 14 days.

Why we chose it: Ramp makes it simple to manage expenses with unlimited physical and virtual corporate cards that earn cash back and automate expense tracking.

Highlights:

• Thousands of app integrations
• AI-powered receipt matching
• Burn rate calculator

This free business expense tracker reduces the need for traditional expense reporting by issuing corporate charge cards that don't require a credit check or a personal guarantee.

You'll receive unlimited 1.5% cash back on all spending, but you’ll need to pay the balance in full at the end of each month. All transactions are reported in real-time and you can pre-approve expenses or restrict expenses to specific vendors, putting you in control of employee spending.

You can set rules for each expense category separately and auto-lock cards when employees spend inappropriately or don't turn in receipts. This program also lets you pay bills and sync with accounting software. Unfortunately, its mobile app isn't compatible with Android devices.

Ramp provides real-time reporting and AI-powered insights into how your business can save money. Although Ramp comes with many of the sophisticated features you'd expect from paid services, it's a free business expense tracker, making it one less cost to worry about.

Why we chose it: QuickBooks' comprehensive accounting software is our top choice for heavy spenders as its robust features let you track large volumes of expenses and sync with Excel spreadsheets.

Highlights:

• Mobile card reader for accepting payments
• Optional payroll add-on
• Mileage tracking

QuickBooks offers all of the usual expense tracking features such as receipt capture and bank reconciliation. In addition to expense tracking, QuickBooks lets you send customized invoices and receive payments, create estimates and track income. Most accountants are familiar with QuickBooks which is an advantage when it's time to prepare your tax returns.

QuickBooks is more expensive than the other expense trackers on our list, with plans ranging from $30 to $200 a month, but it boasts extra features that might make it worth the price if your business has a lot of expenses.

There are four plans to choose from. With the basic plan, you are limited to one user. With each successive plan, an increased number of users can access your plan. Reporting features also become more advanced with each plan upgrade. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial to determine whether QuickBooks is the right tracker for your business.

Why we chose it: Expensify has an intuitive and straightforward dashboard with an easy-to-use app available for iOS and Android devices.

Highlights:

• Mileage tracking with GPS
• Next-day direct-deposit employee reimbursement
• Approval workflow

Expensify is a full-service expense tracker offering unlimited receipt scanning and expense entries and automatic expense reporting. You can choose to automatically approve employee expense reimbursements that are under a certain threshold, which can reduce some of the hands-on work.

Expensify's guided review feature flags expenses that potentially violate your company's spending policy. You can even schedule the frequency of employee receipt submission to optimize convenience.

In addition to the expense tracking features, Expensify also lets you invoice clients, receive payments and run payroll, plus it integrates with hundreds of popular apps. There is a free plan available as well as two paid plan options. Paid plans allow you to generate custom reports, sync with accounting software and manage corporate cards.

You can save 50% off the original price by using the Expensify corporate credit card and another 50% off that by paying annually. Fully discounted plan prices range from $5 to $9 a month, per user. There is a short, seven-day free trial available as well.

Highlights:

• Supports multiple currencies
• Employee reimbursement
• Offline expense tracking
• Travel management

Why we chose it: Zoho offers a free expense tracker for when your business is just starting up, and you can easily upgrade to one of the affordable paid plans as your business grows.

All of Zoho's plans offer receipt capture, mileage tracking, and integrations with Zoho Books, QuickBooks, Sage and Xero. Advanced plans integrate with many more popular apps. You can create custom expense limits and policies, and the software automatically detects duplicate receipt submissions.

Zoho's free plan works for up to three users. It limits receipt auto-scans to 20 per month, and receipt storage is limited. The lowest-cost paid plan keeps receipt auto-scans at a maximum of 20 per month but allows unlimited receipt storage and unlimited users. All other plans come with unlimited receipt auto-scans.

All plans come with email and phone support. For an additional monthly fee, you can get access to live chat customer support, faster response time and product onboarding with Zoho specialists.

In addition to its free plan, Zoho offers three paid plan options, ranging from $3 to $8 a month, per user. Zoho Expense offers prospective customers a 14-day free trial.

Other business expense trackers we considered

When choosing the top business expense trackers we also looked at Everlance, Shoeboxed and MMC. All three trackers have many of the basic features needed by small businesses but lack some of the more robust features available in the software that made our top picks. We also evaluated them based on their cost and app integrations.

Everlance

Everlance is primarily a mileage-tracking app that also offers receipt storage and expense management tools such as approval workflow. Limited app integrations keep this software from making it into our top choices.

Shoeboxed

With Shoeboxed, you can submit receipts by scanning them in the mobile app, sending them in the mail, forwarding them from your email, using the drag-and-drop method on your computer or using the Gmail plug-in. Despite the many different ways you can submit receipts, you are limited in the number you can submit. Shoeboxed also lacks some advanced features such as approval workflow and it costs more than most other expense trackers.

MMC Receipt

MMC Receipt offers receipt capture with unlimited scans and unlimited storage. There is only one plan available and you can choose to pay monthly or annually or get lifetime access for a fixed one-time fee. MMC Receipt only integrates with FreshBooks, QuickBooks and Excel-Export, so capabilities are limited.

Best Business Expense Tracker App Guide

This guide will help you understand business expense trackers, how they work and how to determine which business expense tracker app is best for your business needs. We will also answer some of the most commonly asked questions about expense apps.

What is a business expense tracker?

A business expense tracker records all of your company's expenses so you can manage your cash flow. It eliminates the need for manual entry by connecting with your business credit cards and bank accounts, and scanning receipts to automatically identify and record expenses.

Besides tracking expenses, many applications also track mileage, allow you to approve and reimburse employee spending and generate financial statements that provide valuable insights into your company's spending habits. Understanding where your money is going will help you find places where you can cut costs and increase profits.

Like the best budgeting apps for personal use, the best business expense trackers can help you organize your company’s finances. You get a snapshot view of your company's financial health through the website or mobile app dashboard. Your expense-related documents are organized in one spot. And you can easily see what your money is being spent on. Some business expense trackers offer additional services such as travel management, employee reimbursement, billing, invoicing and payroll.

Using a business expense tracker helps you prepare to file taxes as well. Keeping all of your expenses organized in one place makes it easy to keep track of tax-deductible expenses. Many expense trackers automatically categorize your spending into taxable categories.

Most apps integrate with accounting software and allow you to either add your accountant as a user or export your expense tracking reports and documents so they can be accessed by your income tax preparer. If your business is audited by the IRS, you won't be scrambling to find the receipts and documents you need.

How does business expense tracking software work?

Every expense tracker works a bit differently. Most are available on a computer or by mobile app and offer cloud storage so you can access your account from any device. Trackers let you add your corporate cards so they can automatically sync with the tracking software. Many trackers include a spending limit feature on employees' cards and provide notifications when they have reached the limits you set.

You may also be able to create other limits like banning transactions with certain vendors. When transactions violate company policies, they are automatically flagged and receive a notification. Some expense trackers even issue their own credit cards.

Expense trackers capture receipts so you don't need to worry about losing the physical copies or storing them all until you're ready to record your expenses. Most trackers allow you to add receipts manually from your computer. Many also have mobile apps that let you take pictures of your receipts, automatically capture data and create expense reports from them.

Most business expense trackers have multiple plans for companies at different stages of growth. As a new or very small business, a free or inexpensive plan may have all the features you need. As your business grows, the best expense-tracking apps will scale with your company, allowing you to seamlessly upgrade plans to add more users and access more features. If you find that your business needs additional resources in order to expand, you can look for the best small business loans or best bad credit loans to increase your available capital and scale your business.

How to pick a business expense tracker

When choosing a business expense tracker, there are several factors to consider including pricing, features, flexibility and integrations. Here is what you need to know about each of these factors.

Budget and pricing

Your company's budget will play a role in deciding which expense tracker is the best one for your business.

Before shopping around, it is a good idea to calculate how much you have to spend on expense-tracking software. Once you know what your budget is, you can compare the prices of different trackers. Luckily, if you have very little or even nothing at all to spend, you'll be able to find a free business income and expense tracker with many powerful features. Once your company starts to bring in more income you'll be able to upgrade to a more advanced plan if necessary.

If you're on a tight budget, it can also be helpful to look for the best business checking accounts and best savings accounts to complement your expense tracker. This is a good way to save money by avoiding paying unnecessary fees and may improve your company's cash flow.

Capabilities and features

Some of the most important considerations when purchasing a business expense tracker are its features and capabilities. Before you begin shopping for a tracker, determine which features are the most important to your business. Will you need to add multiple users? Do you have a lot of travel-related expenses? When looking for trackers, take into account which features they offer and whether they are included with all plans. Some features are common to most trackers, such as receipt capture, but their specific functionalities will vary by company so be sure to read the fine print and look for user reviews whenever possible.

The best accounting software for small businesses combines expense tracking with other accounting features such as billing and invoicing, accounts payable and comprehensive reporting. Using a full-service accounting software as your expense tracker may be a good decision for your business depending on the complexity of your financial management needs. Shop around and take advantage of free trials before making a final decision.

Flexibility

The best expense trackers are flexible in a variety of ways. Having a range of plans with different price points will allow you to upgrade or downgrade if your business needs or budget changes. Having the flexibility to pay monthly rather than annually can also be helpful as it lets you switch plans or services at any time. It may also be easier to fit small monthly payments into your company's budget as opposed to one large yearly sum. Being able to access your account from both a computer and your mobile device is also important to many businesses.

Integrations

Most expense trackers integrate with at least a few basic accounting apps. This may be all your business needs. If your needs are more complex or you want to bring the apps you have been previously using to the new software, it will be important that you check which apps each tracker integrates with.

Expense trackers commonly integrate with accounting software, payroll applications, travel apps and e-commerce channels. With some expense tracker companies, certain integrations are only available with higher-cost plans, so be sure to find out if the apps you intend to use are available with all plans.

How We Chose the Best Business Expense Trackers

When selecting the top business expense trackers of 2023, factors we considered included:

• Cost: We looked for affordability and companies that offer a range of price points to fit different budgets. The trackers we reviewed range in price from free to $200 a month.

• Number of plans offered: Trackers that offer multiple plans provide greater flexibility.

• Features available: We found expense trackers that offer a wide selection of features such as receipt capture and spending approval.

• Ease of use: The trackers we selected are popular with users because of their intuitive, easy-to-use platforms.

• Integrations: We looked at the number of popular apps each expense tracker integrates with, as well as the ease of integration.

• Customer support: The best expense tracking companies offer you simple ways to reach out when you need assistance and are responsive to customer inquiries.

Summary of Money's Best Business Expense Tracker of 2023

• Best for self-employed: Freshbooks
• Best for international business and travel expenses: SAP Concur
• Best features: Emburse Certify
• Best for small businesses: Ramp
• Best for heavy spending: QuickBooks
• Best for ease of use: Expensify
• Best for new businesses: Zoho