The 5 best expense management software solutions in November 2024

Expense management automation optimizes how you track, approve, and reimburse business expenses. It saves you time and reduces errors.

With automated expense tracking, you can:

• Categorize expenses automatically

• Remove manual data entry

• Capture receipts instantly

The expense approval process is also quick and painless with automation. For example:

• Automated systems flag out-of-policy expenses for managers to review. They also automatically approve expenses that do comply with the policy. This helps managers focus on only the exceptions flagged for them versus having to review every single expense.

• Reimbursements are automated. Employees get paid back quickly — and you get clear records showing their transactions. This transparency makes audits and tax preparation much easier.

Let’s take a look at more reasons you should consider expense management automation.

Expense management software allows you to track, manage, and control employee spending with automation, and helps you reduce the internal burden of managing employee expenses. Using expense management software is a fairly straightforward process that ensures employees, managers, and finance teams can do their expense work in one place.

Six steps to follow in your expense management workflow

Step 1: Employees input expenses and receipts

Employees use mobile or desktop applications to record expenses as they occur. This process can include taking a picture of a receipt, scanning it, or entering the details manually.

Step 2: Employees submit expenses for approval

Once employees record all expenses for a designated period (e.g., a month of overtime meal expenses or a completed business trip), they submit them for managerial approval.

Step 3: Managers review and approve expenses

Submitted expenses are routed to managers or designated approvers for review. Modern expense management software simplifies the review process with optical character recognition (OCR) technology that checks every expense against company policies for compliance and flags any outliers (like duplicate entries or non-approved categories like alcohol).

Step 4: The software generates an expense report

Approved expenses get compiled into an expense report, creating an audit trail for each transaction. Any expenses flagged in the previous step will undergo additional review by managers, who will approve or reject depending on the situation.

Step 5: Those expenses sync with your existing tech stack

Approved expenses will sync with accounting or ERP systems for financial tracking and reporting, a crucial step for closing the books at the end of the month.

Step 6: Employees get reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses

This step only applies if employees use personal credit cards (or cash) to make business-related purchases. If your organization uses a corporate card, the process ends at step five. Once expenses are approved and recorded, the software facilitates reimbursement, and employees receive payment for out-of-pocket expenses. Expense reimbursement can happen right from a spend management platform like Brex or through the company payroll system.

Just six simple steps in an expense management solution can reduce errors and save time. Plus, it’s more accurate than the manual approach using spreadsheets and physical expense reports, which are time-consuming and prone to mistakes.

So what are the must-haves in a modern expense platform? Below are the key features of the best expense management software.

Ease of use

From a survey of 150 finance leaders, Brex found that 71% agreed they prioritize ease of implementation and usability in a modern spend management solution.

Effectively managing business expenses is already tedious enough. Your software should make the process easier, not complicate it further. That’s why an intuitive interface, automated data entry, and seamless integration with other business systems are so important.

Plus, a premium user experience will increase adoption rates, reduce errors, and boost overall productivity.

Flexibility and control

You’ll want expense management software that allows you to adapt and respond quickly to changing business needs. As your business earns new customers, brings on new employees, and even expands geographically, your expense management needs become more complex. Be sure your solution can:

• Process a larger volume of transactions

• Evolve your approval workflows for growing teams

• Support new geographies and global entities

• Onboard new users automatically, no matter where they are

Flexibility and control in expense management allow you to adapt accordingly. Look for capabilities like customizable configuration, scalable infrastructure, global capabilities, and adaptive reporting and analytics.

Integrations

Being able to instantly sync approved expenses with your ERP or accounting software dramatically simplifies your month end close process. Look for an expense management tool that tightly integrates with the accounting and ERP solutions your business uses.

For example, you can map Brex directly to NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Sage Intacct using custom rules and field entries as well as automatic general ledger coding. This bidirectionally syncing of your financial data eliminates manual data entry and allows you to review and reconcile payments faster.

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Global capabilities

Do you have a global workforce? Then, you’ll want to look for an expense management solution that handles payments and expenses in various currencies. One that supports local-currency cards, reimbursements, and billing will save you money on FX markups and help you manage your global spend in one platform.

It is also important to stay compliant with country- or region-specific regulations. A global expense management system can help you navigate local tax laws, currency conversions, and reporting standards.

Real-time data visibility

More than half of finance leaders (51%) want access to real-time visibility into spend. Why? Because reactively reviewing spend data at the month's end — after it’s happened — is too late.

Leaders have much more control when they can see how employees are spending at any given moment and track actual spend against their budgets. They can prevent overspending before it happens and also help employees understand their impact on the company. This increased accountability helps build a culture of financial discipline among your employees.

Scalability

Expense management software with scalable features allows you to easily add new users, manage new subsidiaries, and support new geographies as your business and financial needs change.

As companies expand globally or acquire new businesses, they’ll need to manage expenses across multiple entities. Additionally, larger organizations often have more complex compliance needs and expense policies. Scalable expense software like Brex can support multiple subsidiaries, custom policy rules, and local compliance within a single platform.

Here are the best expense management tools to help control your company’s spending and automate your financial processes.

1. Brex

Brex is the leading expense management software because of its integrated approach, which combines cards, expenses, reimbursement, bill pay, travel, and business banking on a single platform. With customizable spend controls, thousands of software integrations, and AI-powered accounting automation, Brex ensures businesses of all sizes and stages can manage their expenses effectively.

It starts with the Brex card seamlessly integrated into our expense management platform. You can provision spend limits and auto-enforce your policy at the time of purchase. This prevents out-of-policy spend or rogue transactions before they happen and helps employees use their credit card with confidence. You also get full visibility into your overall transactions, whether made by card, ACH, wire, or business bank account.

Brex also automates document collection on expenses for you by automatically generating receipts for thousands of merchants. Brex Assistant even helps employees get answers to common expense questions and complete tasks in real time, so they don’t have to bog down finance to complete the expense process.

Further, Brex’s expense platform provides AI-generated suggestions for accounting teams as well as AI-generated mapping rules to enable accounting automation. This removes much of the manual work for expense reconciliation, eliminating errors and saving countless hours so you can close the books faster.

Key features

• Automatic receipt capture

• AI-powered expense categorization

• Automated approvals and reviews

• Customizable, auto-enforced spending policies

• An integrated corporate card with 20x higher limits

• Real-time spend tracking and seamless ERP integrations

• Global bill payment capabilities

• Real-time reporting

• An integrated business account that industry-leading yield from your first dollar

• Multi-currency, multi-entity, and global compliance support

Key benefits

• Holistic expense management automation

• Increased employee and finance team productivity

• Less risk due to improved employee compliance

• Faster month-end close

• Up-to-the-minute visibility and reporting

Drawbacks

• Must use Brex cards to unlock the full benefits

• Small businesses may not qualify for the Brex card

• Travel product more suited for early-stage and growth companies

Pricing

Brex offers flexible pricing for companies at every stage. Brex Essentials is free for startups and growing organizations. Brex Premium is great for midsized companies that need custom expense policies, approvals, and integrations and starts at $12 per user/month. Brex Enterprise unlocks more global capabilities and is priced by customer.

Overall

High-growth businesses, from ambitious startups to established enterprises will benefit from brex’s comprehensive spend management software solutions. Brex's advanced spend controls and automation features will help organizations with lots of transactions automate the expense and accounting processing. Those organizations with global operations or multi-entity structures will benefit from Brex’s multi-currency support. However, smaller businesses with limited expenses may find less value in Brex’s full suite of services.

2. Zoho Expense

Zoho Expense is a popular travel and expense management solution for growing businesses. It will help you organize the expense management process, from receipts to reimbursement. With expense report automation, Zoho Expense will add expenses to a report and submit it for you.

The platform also allows you to automate your card reconciliation process. Get visibility into how employees are using their corporate cards, and see spending summaries, an overview of all unassigned cards, and more.

You can also use Zoho Expense to manage transaction approval flows. This feature allows you to set up hierarchical approval, access approvals from a single place, delegate team members to approve requests, and receive automatic notifications.

Key features

• Automated expense and receipt management

• Expense report automation

• Corporate card reconciliation

• Third-party integrations

• Automated and custom approvals

• Mileage tracking

• Extensive customization options

Key benefits

• Comprehensive expense management platform

• Increased employee and business efficiency

• Advanced customization and flexibility

Drawbacks

• Limited support for global expenses

• Integration challenges with other business applications

• A bit of a learning curve to get started

Pricing

Zoho Expense is free for small businesses and freelancers. Growing businesses can access Standard licensing for $4/month and Premium licensing for $7/month, which includes more global capabilities. Zoho offers custom pricing for large-scale enterprises.

Overall

Zoho Expense is particularly well-suited for small and midsize businesses looking to streamline their expense management processes. Its automated expense reporting, card reconciliation, and customizable approval flows, makes it an excellent choice for small businesses and freelancers seeking to enhance efficiency and reduce manual work. However, enterprises with complex global operations or those requiring seamless integration with a wide range of business applications may find more value in solutions like Brex.

3. Expensify

Expensify is a decent option for large companies with complex software integration needs that are looking for a better way to manage expenses. It also can serve small businesses, startups, solopreneurs, and freelancers.

Users says Expensify's interface is fairly easy to use, making it suitable for beginners. All plans allow users to upload unlimited receipts, submit and share expenses, and offer next-day expense reimbursements. Using its expense tracking feature, employees can easily track their transactions and submit their expenses

They can also scan receipts through the mobile app with just one click. The SmartScan feature will automatically read and log receipt details, including the date, merchant, and amount. Expensify even offers mileage and GPS tracking, which eliminates the need for manual data entry and helps with precise mileage calculations for expense reports.

Key features

• Unlimited receipt tracking

• Global reimbursements

• Receipt scanning technology

• AI-powered employee expense assistant

• Native integrations

• Invoicing and bill paying solutions

• In-app travel booking

• Corporate cards

• Mileage tracking

Key benefits

• Save time and improve productivity with automation

• Manage expenses, book travel, and pay bills in one place

• Can import transactions from external card programs

Drawbacks

• Slower domestic and global reimbursements

• Limited capabilities for multi-currency expenses

• Expect upcharges for premium functionality

Pricing

Pricing for Expensify seems pretty straightforward, though there is no free tier for businesses (only individuals). The Collect license is best for 1 to 10 employees and costs $5 user/month. The Control tier can serve anywhere from 10-1,000 employees and costs $9 user/month.

Overall

Expensify’s user-friendly interface and feature set appeal to midsize companies seeking to simplify their expense management processes. However, companies with international operations or those requiring rapid reimbursements might need to look elsewhere. While Expensify's tiered pricing structure allows for scalability, businesses should carefully consider their needs to ensure they're not overpaying for premium features they may not need. Modern, global businesses will likely benefit from more comprehensive expense capabilities from Expensify alternatives like Brex.

4. Coupa

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Coupa offers a cloud-based spend management platform that helps businesses improve their procurement, expenses, and financial processes. It offers a range of applications that help you improve spending processes, visibility, and compliance.

Features include invoicing, payments, expense management, and travel management solutions. Coupa also features an AI-driven platform that helps you extract insights from spend data, simplify workflows, and facilitate collaboration.

The AI helps users take the guesswork out of business decision-making by providing recommendations at every stage of the spend management process, from expenses to invoicing.

Key features

• 150 global ERP integrations, including Oracle, Sage, Microsoft, SAP, and Workday

• Travel and expense management

• Accounts payable automation

• Supply chain collaboration

• Procure-to-pay software

• AI-driven insights

Key benefits

• Industry-leading procurement solution

• Cost management and process efficiency

• Scalable for global organizations

Drawbacks

• Fewer expense management capabilities than most competitors

• Difficult integration with NetSuite

• No integrated corporate card

Pricing

To get pricing, contact Coupa’s sales for a demo and personalized quote for your business needs.

Overall

Coupa's platform is more well-suited for medium to large enterprises with complex procurement and financial processes. Organizations looking to optimize their entire spend management lifecycle, from procurement to payment, will find significant value in Coupa's comprehensive suite of tools. However, businesses specifically looking for a robust expense management solution might find Coupa's broad scope and potential complexity excessive. Additionally, firms that rely on NetSuite might benefit from using Brex due to its award-winning NetSuite integration.

5. Concur Expense

SAP Concur is an expense management and travel solution that helps companies of all sizes manage their expense, travel, and invoice processes. It integrates various aspects of travel and expense management into a single platform, increasing visibility, compliance, and control over business spending.

This spend management system helps teams manage back-office processes, avoid errors, and track every expense. Concur also allows you to reimburse employees without the hassle of sorting through paper receipts to fill out expense reports.

Concur integrates with the overall SAP ERP system, which means you can get a complete view of human resources, payroll, compliance, and more. That way, you can visualize your finances and valuable data insights all in one place.

Key features

• Mobile accessibility and convenience

• Policy compliance and enforcement

• Easy-to-use expense management

• Integration with corporate systems

• Advanced reporting and analytics

Key benefits

• Comprehensive expense, travel, and invoicing solution

• Save time and data entry through email receipt collection

• Accelerated expense and invoice policies with templates

• Enhanced accuracy through business software integrations

Drawbacks

• Outdated interface makes it difficult to use

• Manual receipt matching and expense reconciliation

• No integrated card offering, so transaction data is delayed

• Reimbursements take weeks through payroll

Pricing

To get pricing, contact Concur’s sales for a custom quote.

Overall

SAP Concur can benefit medium to large enterprises seeking a comprehensive travel and expense management tool. Its integration with SAP's broader ERP ecosystem makes it valuable for organizations already using SAP software. However, today’s tech-forward businesses might find Concur's complexity challenging and its interface outdated. Additionally, companies needing real-time transaction data or rapid reimbursements may need to consider Concur's limitations in these areas. Concur alternatives like Brex offer elevated automation capabilities via a more modern UI.

In a recent Brex survey, 32% of companies cited slow reimbursements and time-consuming approvals as the main challenges with T&E programs. Thirty-one percent struggled with integrating software, like accounting systems. And 29% had issues with employees not submitting expense documentation.

Here’s how automated expense management can change that.

Improved integrations

Expense management automation software integrates seamlessly with accounting systems and existing HR platforms.

Accounting integrations can help you close the books faster. And HR system integrations can help you automate employee onboarding and offboarding to Brex.

Better compliance

Automated systems allow you to embed your policies into every transaction. They automatically enforce rules, generate receipts and memos — and even learn your policies over time. This improves compliance and helps employees follow the expense policy.

Achieve up to 99%* compliance and save your team up to 4,000 hours a year with expense automation. Try Brex now.

*The metrics provided are from July 2023 and are for illustrative purposes only. Past performance does not guarantee future results, which may vary.

Increased efficiency

Automated expense management makes the entire expense reporting and reimbursement process more efficient.

Here are some ways it enhances efficiency:

• There are fewer errors which means less problems and delays related to fixing problems (remember it costs $52 to correct an expense reporting error)

• It’s faster than manual data entry so employees can get back to work quicker

• Automated approvals help employees do their jobs and free up managers

Ensure agile expense processes

Agile expense processes help teams adapt to changes like mergers, expansions, or new hires.

Automated systems offer the flexibility and scalability to accommodate these changes — without additional investments or licensing. Try them today to see the difference they can make for your team.

Enhanced security

Automated expense management prevents fraudulent or inappropriate spending. A platform like Brex protects and accurately records your expense data.

The system strengthens internal controls and reduces risks with features like:

• 24/7 fraud protection: Our advanced fraud monitoring, industry-leading AI technology, and 24/7 support are here to protect you

• Account security: We use encryption, idle lockouts, 2FA, and more to ensure secure browsing and authentication

• Fraud prevention: To help prevent fraud, only authorized users can access accounts and make changes

Don’t waste hours reviewing every global expense — and risk missing ones that‌ need a closer look.

Instead, let artificial intelligence support your accounting teams.

AI can be your team’s tireless teammate. It’s as skilled as the top industry firms and instantly understands your company’s data. (You’d need an army of associates to achieve this manually.)

For instance, with AI, you can:

• Set up automated approval workflows based on spending limits and policy rules.

• Add notifications and reminders to promote timely approvals and avoid delays.

• Use an electronic system for managers to review claims digitally.

How AI-powered expense automation works

AI-powered expense automation transforms how you handle expenses.

It can analyze each reported expense, detect non-compliant claims, and automate approval workflows. It can also instantly flag issues to make sure every report meets your policy rules.

AI expense automation can also help you:

• Review and approve claims digitally, with AI sending reminders to keep things moving.

• Scan receipts, categorize expenses, and match them with transactions.

• Create automated workflows to accelerate the approval process.

Ready to see how Brex AI can help your business streamline workflows? Let’s take a look at its features.

Brex AI helps you streamline your workflows and expenses.

Here’s how you can accelerate expense management with Brex AI.

Automate workflows for every spend

Brex AI is your decision-making partner, providing the automation and suggestions you need. Every spend type gets an optimized workflow to reduce manual tasks and save time.

Give every employee their own assistant

Executives aren’t the only ones who deserve an assistant. Brex Assistant extends that luxury to every employee. Team members can ask their dedicated assistant questions to instantly learn about a spending limit or policy.

Put expense reports on autopilot

Brex auto-generates receipts from L3 payment data. It uses large language models (LLMs) and real-time integrations to fill in memos, attendees, and expense categories. This makes expense reporting a breeze.

Offload expense tasks to AI

Delegate tasks to Brex AI, like assigning charges to specific budgets or adding memos to expenses. Brex Assistant follows your commands and handles these tasks effortlessly.

Automate expense resolution

Brex AI automates in-policy approvals, custom routing, and exception detection. It even starts conversations to resolve issues faster, providing smooth operations.

Reduce receipt reviews

Brex AI searches receipts and data for policy violations using LLMs. (It can detect issues like unauthorized alcohol purchases, so you don’t have to.)

Find transactions fast

Get instant insights into spending patterns with natural-language search. Quickly find transactions like “marketing expenses over $200 without receipts last month.”

Ready to transform your expense management? Try Brex AI today.

Businesses today are global and complex. You might have overseas vendors and employees in different countries. You might also have global subsidiaries with local tax rules.

This makes manual global expense management a time-consuming hassle.

Thankfully, automation makes global expense management easy. It removes manual errors and helps you capture receipts in any language or currency. You can also track VAT across markets and integrate your expense system with financial tools like NetSuite.

Here’s how Brex helped DoorDash automate expense management.

Company

DoorDash connects consumers with local businesses. The company serves 32 million users across 27 countries.

Challenge

DoorDash uses multiple cards and platforms to manage spending. As they grew, this became complicated. The user experience suffered, and managing global expenses was a headache. They needed one integrated solution for global corporate cards and reimbursements. Managers wanted a proactive way to track spending — and employees needed an intuitive experience.

Solution

DoorDash chose Brex for corporate cards and expense management.

Brex deployed a fully configured solution for DoorDash. We transitioned its ERP, HRIS, and SSO integrations quickly.

Impact

Brex’s global spend solution has empowered DoorDash employees with:

• Card acceptance in 100+ countries

• Reimbursements in 4 days or less

• Local and USD currency visibility

• 24/7 support

The finance and travel teams now have a single, real-time view of global spending.

DoorDash can pre-approve travel spending or stipends and enforce custom expense policies automatically.

The Brex mobile app also enhances the user experience. Employees can use their virtual cards, check spending budgets, request reimbursements, and add receipts from anywhere in the world.

According to Josh Pickles, Head of Global Strategic Sourcing and Procurement, DoorDash:

“The Brex app has been a major gain for us in both user experience and efficiency for T&E. It’s easy for employees to understand where and how to spend, driving accountability from top to bottom.”

Expense management automation simplifies your processes and gives you control over your finances. It’s a smart move for any business looking to improve expense management.

By automating global expense management, you reduce errors, policy violations, and fraud. You also improve efficiency and transparency throughout the expense management process.

The bottom line? AI expense automation amplifies human effort — so your team can skip the fact-finding and go straight to better decision-making.

Want to see it in action? Try Brex for free now, or schedule a demo.