6 Best Business Expense Tracker Apps for 2023

Entering an expense entry in Zoho Expense

When managing expenses, you can create entries one by one or by batch as well as upload receipts from suppliers. Bulk-adding expenses is a great feature because it saves a lot of data entry time and helps the bookkeeper enter similar expenses in one window. You can also store receipts in Zoho Expense and attach them to expense entries for proper tracking. Zoho can also detect if an uploaded receipt is unreported, uncategorized, or a duplicate.

You can also use it to track reimbursable expenses from employees and apply approval workflows to ensure that all reimbursement requests are legitimate or allowable expenses. You can either use simplified approval or make custom approvals. In simplified approvals, you’ll use the approval preset in Zoho Expense. But if you want to match the approval process with your organization’s overall workflow, you can create custom approvals and levels.

Zoho Expense also has a built-in mileage tracker so that you can track your mileage expense plus possible mileage deductions. There are also mileage policies within Zoho Expense to help you manage mileage limits. Through the Zoho Expense app, users can track mileage expenses via GPS or manual entry.

We recommend Zoho Expense as our best overall because of its affordable pricing and wide array of expense tracking features. It can also integrate easily with Zoho Books, Zoho’s dedicated accounting software, and other popular small business accounting software your business may use.

Emburse Spend Transactions

Emburse Card transactions are automatically reported in the cardholder’s transactions. If you use a card not enrolled as a corporate card, such as personal card, in the platform, you must manually enter a reimbursement entry to track the expense. Through real-time expense reporting, users need not create expense reports before they can go through the approval and reimbursement process.

Managers can also set spending limits and replenishment frequencies for Emburse cards. It also allows expense rules settings that can help filter expenses that don’t follow company expense policies. Emburse even connects with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and accounting software like QuickBooks Online and NetSuite.

If your focus is real-time expense tracking and reimbursements, we recommend Emburse Spend as its real-time expense reporting makes approval and reimbursement faster. However, if you want to fully utilize its features, we recommend that you use Emburse Cards as it’s easier for users to submit and process expense reimbursements. Your existing corporate card program can still work in Emburse Spend but there will be applicable charges.

Entering an expense in QuickBooks Online

You can sync corporate cards and bank accounts for automatic feeds. Uploading receipts is also possible, allowing you to upload either a PDF file or image. Its dashboard even shows your expenses presented in different expense categories so that you can track your top expenses. You can also add billable expenses that you can later charge to customer invoices.

QuickBooks Online is our best small business accounting software, and it can also serve as a small business expense tracking tool. Given that it’s a full-fledged accounting system, choosing it’s a cost-efficient option since it’s already a combination of an expense tracker and bookkeeping software. As such, we highly recommend it if you want a two-in-one software solution for accounting and expense management.

If you’re already using QuickBooks Online but are still in need of an app for expense approval and reimbursement, then we recommend Zoho Expense or Fyle as an auxiliary and standalone expense tracking app.

Adding an Expense in Fyle

Fyle offers real-time tracking of Visa and Mastercard (coming soon) transactions. Your transactions are reported automatically in the system the moment you use the card—you won’t have to wait for bank feeds that take several hours before they are fetched from your corporate card provider. After using the card, the cardholder will receive an SMS requesting them to send a picture of the receipt.

Besides real-time Visa transaction synchronization, Fyle offers convenient expense tracking on Gmail, Slack, and Outlook. It can recognize expenses and receipts sent through these platforms and pick them up automatically for recording.

If you want to set expense limits and rules, its approval workflow makes it easy for you and your managers to filter out expenses that aren’t related or reimbursable. These approval workflows can also work in third-party providers like Gmail, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. Approvers can accept or reject within the Gmail inbox and in the Slack or Teams interface.

Fyle is a convenient solution if you already have a corporate card program using Visa. However, its expense tracking solutions are still worth it even if you use non-Visa cards or don’t use cards at all. For non-Visa cards, you still get feeds from your card provider, but they’re not real-time.

As for its expense tracking features, it can give you a 360-view of all expenses, from submission until reimbursement, rivaling the functions of Zoho Expense. We recommend Fyle if pricing isn’t a major factor in your decision because it’s a bit expensive. Otherwise, choose Zoho Expense for more flexible pricing tiers.

Personal view or expense submitter view in Rydoo

Rydoo offers a visually appealing user interface. It presents a clean and simple interface that employees can navigate through easily. It is our best expense tracker for third-party integration because it can integrate with ERP software (SAP, Oracle NetSuite, and Microsoft Dynamics), accounting software (QuickBooks Online, Xero, and Exact), major payment channels (Master, Visa, and Amex), ride-hailing apps (Uber, Grab, and Lyft), and sustainability apps (Planetly and Watershed).

Its approval workflow is also worth noting. It has two roles: Personal and Approver. Personal roles are given to employees who need to submit expenses while Approver roles are given to managerial or administrative positions. Under the Personal view, users can submit expenses to their Approvers. They’ll also be alerted if the Approver rejects their expense submission. In the Approver view, users can still add expenses that will be reviewed by other approvers.

The main job of the Approver is to evaluate expense submissions and approve them for reimbursement. Once approved for reimbursement, you can process payment using a third-party app because Rydoo can’t pay employees from within the app. However, Rydoo also has Expense Policies to filter out or warn submitters of limits automatically.

Rydoo is an affordable expense-tracking service for travel expense tracking. It’s a great expense tracker for established small businesses that use different kinds of software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps. However, while it helps manage expenses, it doesn’t have a built-in reimbursement feature like Fyle.

Entering an expense in FreshBooks

FreshBooks offers an easy accounting solution to self-employed individuals who don’t have knowledge of bookkeeping. Adding expenses into its software is done through bill creation—you’ll need to supply vendor information and line items. It has an intuitive and attractive interface for adding bills, making it more user-friendly than other accounting software.

You can also add reimbursable or billable expenses and charge them later to clients during invoicing. There are also visual analytics within the FreshBooks interface to help you see income, expense, and cash levels.

FreshBooks is our best mobile accounting app for freelancers and entrepreneurs because it’s an all-in-one app that contains accounting, expense tracking, time tracking, and project management. It’s also easy to learn and suitable for business owners who prefer to do the bookkeeping themselves.

However, it isn’t suitable for businesses needing inventory management or those requiring more than three users. QuickBooks Online is a great alternative to FreshBooks as it has outstanding inventory accounting and other bookkeeping features as well.

Every business has different needs in reporting and reimbursing expenses. Sometimes, manual tracking of expenses is more cost-efficient and beneficial for businesses with very few employees, such as fewer than 10. But as your team grows, an app for tracking business expenses can speed up and standardize the process.

Here are some factors you should consider in choosing an expense tracker:

• Affordability: Consider your budget first. Can you spare a few dollars per employee for an expense tracker? If yes, do you think paying annually at a lower monthly cost can give you more savings? Alternatively, does choosing a monthly plan at a higher monthly cost better for cash flow?
• Integration: A small business expense tracker that can’t integrate with your accounting software requires more work for your accountant. It would be best if the expense tracker could automatically export expense data to your accounting software to reduce data entry.
• Reimbursement capabilities: Some business expense trackers can process debit and ACH transfers for reimbursements. Having a built-in reimbursement system makes it easier to reimburse instead of doing it manually in your online banking app or a third-party reimbursement software.
• Security: Data breaches aren’t rare nowadays. Big and small companies can be a target for hackers. Hence, your expense tracker must have bank-level security features to protect your data from breaches.
• Compliance: Not all expenses can be reimbursed, especially if it’s beyond the allowance or outright nonreimbursable. Your expense tracker must have approval workflows in place so that all approved expenses are business expenses.

Not all businesses need an expense tracker, as some small businesses can manage expenses adequately through a basic bookkeeping system. However, getting an expense tracker becomes important if you meet one or more of the requirements below:

1. There Are Expenses Passed on to Customers

2. There Is a High Volume of Reimbursable Expenses

3. There Is a Need To Streamline Business Processes

Accounting software tracks income, expenses, liabilities, and assets and provides financial statements to monitor your business performance. By definition, accounting software tracks expenses—but sometimes, it requires manual entry and doesn’t provide for reimbursements to employees.

Expense trackers provide for the easy recording of expenses, often by scanning a receipt. Some accounting software has this feature built-in, whereas other accounting software needs to be integrated with an expense tracker.

An expense tracker can also help monitor your expenses with detailed charts and reports. Many developers go a step further by including an employee expense submission, approval, and reimbursement process. Others even offer integrations with ride-hailing and travel apps to record expenses automatically.