Best Expense Management Software

What is Expense management software?

Expense management software consists of tools that help companies track their expenses related to their business operations. It is commonly used by employees who need to make frequent business trips. These systems let you process, pay and audit employee-initiated expenses related to travel, boarding, lodging, vehicle rentals, and shipping of work-related equipment.

Moreover, an expense management system allows your administrators to have complete visibility of all related expenses and track employee usage of business resources. Thus, it helps you keep on top of your finances by analyzing overall costs, identifying cost-saving opportunities, and controlling excessive spending.

Benefits of Using Expense management software

The benefits of using an expense management solution include:

1. Brings Transparency

Reporting and analysis capabilities of an expense management software let you, your managers, customers, and investors get real-time information into employee-related expenses and the policies.

2. Reduces Manual Errors

Expense management solutions are designed to automate your business processes like tracking, reporting, and expense submissions. This, in turn, reduces human intervention and reduces the scope of errors.

3. Save Money

An expense management software simplifies the processing of invoicing and calculating business expenses. Moreover, the in-built reporting and accounting modules within the expense management systems let you easily track individual employee expenses.

4. Increased Accountability

Tracking employees' business expenses lets you ensure that they are always held accountable for their expenses and purchases. It also helps check if the expenses comply with company policies.

Common Features of Expense Management Software

Some of the standard features of an expense management software include:

1. Advanced Analytics

Your business transactions generate a lot of data that needs to be analyzed. Expense Management tools monitor expenses at different levels of your company. Your accountants can also use analytics to forecast future amounts and consider them when creating your company’s budgets.

2. Generate Expense Reports

Your employees are required to submit bills and associated reports to get reimbursed for their approved and legitimate business-related expenses. Expense management systems let you generate reports and get information on each type of expense, the amount, and the date and purpose.

3. Easy Approval Process

Business expenses need to be approved by your managers to be further processed and reimbursed. In some cases, your accountants also need to approve expenses before being processed for higher amounts. Expense management software provides workflows for determining the steps of the approval process.

4. Categorize Expenses

You would need to segregate business expenses to better streamline and collate company spends. Thus, your company needs to differentiate between tax-deductible and non-deductible business expenses. An expense management software would help you figure this aspect in a systematic and timely manner.

Things to Consider While Buying An Expense Management Software

As a business owner, it is important for you to first understand how expenses within the business operate. When selecting expense management software, you need to familiarize yourself with a wide variety of available options. Here are some things you should consider before finalizing a software.

1. Business Expansion

Before selecting a software, you and your team must also keep in mind the business expansion that would happen over a period of time. You will need to explore the possibilities of software up-gradation and integration with various other existing software.

2. Compare Different Products

Expense management software solutions have diversified functions and features. Once your team has made a list of your micro and macro level desirables, draw out a comparison between all products offered by various vendors.

Another factor to consider when creating this list is to analyze how user friendly the software is in capturing and submitting expenses. Most often, expense management solutions built for small businesses are more user friendly but have fewer features than their enterprise version.

Expense management systems are designed to suit all budgets. You must keep in mind that the more specialized a software is, the more expensive the software becomes.

3. Get An Extensive Demo

As soon as you are ready with your wish-list, schedule a demo. Your demo must include the end-users of this software, so they are hands-on with the software options being considered.

4. Negotiate Prices

Negotiating a software contract is important to minimize risk. Be it for security protection, performance protection, or interoperability. If your business has sufficient cash on hand, seek a massive discount for annual upfront payment. Sometimes, a software provider may also offer your company unlimited usage if you pay upfront instead of buying a monthly or quarterly package price.

While negotiating the contract, also consider the inclusion of implementation and integration. Usually, a software provider's initial offer may include some implementation services in a given timeframe. However, if your team can handle this aspect on your own, it can give you a huge negotiating edge to drive down the costs.

Lastly, if your company will be using the software for the long-term, you can further negotiate longer terms, resulting in more discounts.

5. Finalizing A Product

Your team’s final decision should be based on all the information collected previously. Select a solution that meets most of, if not all of, your requirements.

You must remember that there is no one perfect software. However, there is one that is best for your business, suiting your budget, timeframe, and ease of use.

Relevant Trends About Expense Management Software

1. Rise in Integrated Systems

Business information systems share a lot of common data that is generated across various sources. Thus, it makes perfect sense to synchronize all those platforms. This helps you ensure data integrity and superior data protection.

Cloud-based systems significantly reduce IT costs and allow users to use the expense management solution from any device.

2. Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) in expense management is still in its early stages. However, it can provide extensive benefits for the users of these solutions. AI can analyze large volumes of data from a diverse range of expenses and identify errors and trends more accurately than traditional software.

3. Consolidation

Integration with other tools like travel management allows the users to search and book flights and make accommodation arrangements. Moreover, they can do it while complying with the expense rules and policies of the company. Depending on the roles of the respective users, each individual user has limited options when it comes to the number of their travel expenses.

Top Expense Management Software For Your Business

Some of the top solutions available for expenses management software are:

1. Happay

Happay is a leading cloud-based expense management solution that helps large enterprises, small and medium businesses automate their corporate spend management system.

2. Rydoo

Rydoo is a leading travel and expense solution that automates and streamlines processes for high-growth companies and enterprises.

3. XpenseCo

XpenseCo is an expense management solution that automates and simplifies the process from creating travel requests to booking flights. The solution is designed for startups to medium and large enterprises. 

4. QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks Online is a small business accounting software and mobile application that allows you to manage your business anywhere, anytime.

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