8 Best Business Expense Tracker Apps for 2023

When managing expenses, you can create entries one by one or by batch and 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 even 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.

Entering trip expense in Zoho Expense (Source: Zoho)

You can also use the platform 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.

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

Emburse features an API that can help companies create custom workflows with unique controls, limits, and policies. Emburse’s API lets you create expense cards based on your business’ needs and enables you to personalize your card-issuing processes.

Emburse Spend Transactions (Source: Emburse)

Emburse Card transactions are automatically reported in the cardholder’s transactions. If you use a card not enrolled as a corporate card, such as a 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 within Emburse Spend. 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.

Ramp’s expense management features are integrated with its corporate card. By using Ramp cards, transactions are automatically recorded and categorized in Ramp while waiting for employees to forward receipts. If receipts are forwarded in Gmail, Lyft, or Amazon Business, Ramp’s integration with these software can automatically collect these receipts and input them into the system.

Ramp Dashboard

You can also set spending limits and approval thresholds to control all spending that gets charged to Ramp cards. In case employees pay out-of-pocket, Ramp allows electronic and manual reimbursements to employees, provided the reimbursement is within the expense policies set by the company. Ramp can also integrate with multiple productivity software and banks to make it easy for you to process reimbursements and payments.

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.

Entering an expense in QuickBooks Online

Fyle offers real-time tracking of Visa and Mastercard 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.

Adding and Saving an Expense in Fyle

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.

Wave’s expense tracking features are embedded in its accounting features. You can upload receipts to support expense entries, assign expenses into categories, and modify transaction details. Expenses will reflect automatically in the general ledger (GL) and accounting reports that can be generated.

Uploading Receipts for Expenses on Wave (Source: Wave)

Rydoo offers a visually appealing user interface. It presents a clean and simple interface that employees can navigate through easily. Its approval workflow is also worth calling out. It has two roles: 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 (see image below), 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.

Web and Mobile App Expense Dashboard in Rydoo (Source: Rydoo)

Rydoo also offers controlling services that can help your organization in approving expenses and give back more time to managers. We like this add-on because you can let Rydoo experts approve expenses based on your policy and let your managers focus more on their work. If your organization is growing, you can let Rydoo handle expense approvals and let your team focus on critical tasks.

As accounting software by default, also includes expense tracking as a feature integrated within its accounting system. FreshBooks’ expense tracking is integrated with its accounts payable feature. To add expenses, users need to create a New Bill (see image below).

Adding Expenses Using a Vendor Bill

The platform’s highlight is simplicity and ease of use, making it perfect for do-it-yourself (DIY) business owners and freelancers. The sample image above shows how well-designed FreshBooks’ interface is. Users will understand easily how to fill out the fields. FreshBooks also tracks expenses in multiple currencies, categorizes expenses, and tracks expenses for projects.

You can also enter expenses using the FreshBooks mobile app. The provider made it to our top mobile accounting apps because the app can record expenses and track billable time.

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. Can you spare a few dollars per employee for an expense tracker? If yes, then do you think paying annually at a lower monthly cost can give you more savings? Alternatively, would a monthly plan at a higher cost be cash flow-friendly? These are only some of the questions that you need to consider.
• 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 alike can be a target for hackers. Hence, your expense tracker must have bank-level security features to protect your data from breaches. All of the providers in this guide have bank-level security features.
• Compliance: Not all expenses can be reimbursed, especially if it is beyond the allowance or is 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 scenarios below:

1. There Are Expenses Passed on to Customers

Professional and personal services sometimes bill clients or customers for expenses incurred. Many expense trackers allow you to assign expenses to customers and even projects, so the information will be easy to gather when it is time to bill the client.

2. There Is a High Volume of Reimbursable Expenses

Some companies reimburse the out-of-pocket expenses of their employees. Considering that documentation will be a challenge, having an expense tracker can help employees record their expenses.

The tracker facilitates everything and can require the proper documentation to be attached prior to submitting the expense. The digital process and complete documentation will make the submission, approval, and reimbursement process go much faster.

3. There Is a Need To Streamline Business Processes

A streamlined business process flow leads to cost reduction. If your business grows and expands to a larger area, expense tracking via traditional methods can be difficult and costly to manage.

Instead of hiring new employees to satisfy the demand for processing, getting a business expense tracker can help you save money. With automated and integrated tracking features, you can retain your current workforce and let them use these tools to reduce their load.

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.

Meanwhile, 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.

Yes, business expense tracker apps are safe to use because of bank-level data security like secure sockets layer (SSL) 256-bit encryption and two-factor authentication (2FA). While that may be the case, proper password hygiene and other such practices are still necessary to enhance the security of expense tracker apps.

Yes, you can, with free options—such as Zoho Expense Free, Emburse Spend, and Ramp—that are good for basic business expense tracking. Other free software on the market may focus more on personal expense tracking rather than business expenses.