The best spend management software should help businesses plan spending before it occurs. It must allow its users to set spending limits, implement card controls, and allow cardholders to pay for transactions easily. With that in mind, here are the six business spend management softwares suitable for your small business:
- Ramp: Best overall with cashback rewards
- BILL Spend and Expense (Formerly Divvy): Best free spend management software for Bill Subscribers
- Brex Empower: Best for Brex Business Account holders
- Emburse Spend: Best for connecting third-party cards
- Bento for Business: Best for affordable spend management cards
Looking for a free suite of financial management tools? Check out Ramp Today |
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We are driven by the Fit Small Business mission to provide you with the best answers to your small business questions—allowing you to choose the right spend management software for your needs. Our meticulous evaluation process makes us a trustworthy source for spend management software insights. We don’t just scratch the surface; we immerse ourselves in every platform we review by exploring the features down to the finest nuances.
For our roundup of the best spend management software, we have created a special rubric that evaluates the features of our chosen providers which gives our audience–small businesses, professionals, and freelancers–an unbiased opinion about the software’s capabilities and fitness in your organization or self-employed business.
Comparison of Business Spend Management Software
Provider | Types of Cards | Accounting Software Integration | Set Spending Limits | Multicurrency Payments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Debit and Credit cards | QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, NetSuite, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics | ✓ | Unlimited |
 | Debit and Credit cards | QuickBooks and Xero | ✓ | Unlimited |
 | Debit and Credit cards through Brex Business | QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, and NetSuite | ✓ | N/A |
 | Debit and Credit cards | QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, and NetSuite | ✓ | Unlimited |
 | Debit Cards only | QuickBooks, Xero, Sage, NetSuite, Zoho Books, and FreshBooks | ✓ | 10 to 100 or more than 100 |
Ramp: Best Overall With Cash Back Rewards
Pros
- Has no subscription or platform fees
- Offers multiple payment modes
- Grants up to 1.5% cash back rewards for purchases paid using Ramp Cards
- Can manually process reimbursements
Cons
- Cannot be used for cash withdrawals
- Doesn’t accept freelancers, sole proprietors, and unregistered businesses
- Cannot carry unpaid balances to the next month
- Requires $50,000 bank balance
Ramp is free to use for spend management, card issuance, and bill payments. Ramp makes money through interchange and transaction fees.
Ramp is our best overall because it is startup-friendly and offers cash back rewards on most transactions. There is no fee for the spend management platform, and you can issue unlimited cards to employees (read our review of Ramp Credit Card). You can also send manual reimbursements in the system for payments made using personal funds.
That’s why Ramp is a flexible choice for small businesses new to spend management tools, expense reimbursements, and card programs. It also integrates with QuickBooks Online, our best small business accounting software. You can sync transactions in Ramp and QuickBooks Online for a smoother bookkeeping process.
Ramp scored excellently in our overall evaluation. It only didn’t get a high score in ease of use because they only accept registered businesses. Even though it’s free, it’s not a suitable pick for sole proprietors. But aside from that, Ramp’s scores in different criterias are excellent. It only missed a few points in card features because the software doesn’t issue special types of cards. However, we don’t see that as a major miss. If issuing special purpose cards is what you’re looking for, take a look at Bento for Business instead.
BILL Spend and Expense (Formerly Divvy): Best Free Spend Management Software
Pros
- Works best with BILL
- Charges no additional fee for interested businesses
- Creates budgets for expenses
Cons
- Requires a BILL subscription
- Is not a standalone software
- Doesn’t issue physical cards, only virtual cards
BILL Spend and Expense is a free spend management app for BILL users. You need to have a BILL subscription before using this app. Below are BILL’s pricing:
- Essentials: $45 per user per month for Billing (A/P) or Invoicing (A/R)
- Team: $55 per user per month for Billing (A/P) or Invoicing (A/R) with accounting software integration
- Corporate: $79 per user per month for both Billing (A/P) or Invoicing (A/R) and accounting software integration
- Enterprise: Custom pricing; includes Billing (A/P) or Invoicing (A/R) plus premium support
If you’re a BILL user looking for a spend management app, we recommend that you pick BILL Spend and Expense. Since you’re already within the BILL environment, you can further streamline your processes and make things easier for your accounting team. BILL Spend and Expense offers expense management for employees by allowing them to submit and report expenses. It also includes approval workflows that’ll enable business leaders to review expenses and ensure the correctness of expense information.
In our evaluation, BILL Spend and Expense got decent scores, but not as high as other providers in the guide. Particularly, it took a hit in card features since the platform doesn’t issue physical cards and allow withdrawals. However, BILL Spend and Expense received high marks in ease of use and spend management features.
Since the platform is free and convenient for BILL users, it gave BILL Spend and Expense additional points overall. Moreover, its spend management features are competent as well because of the expense policies and multilevel approvals. This biggest drawback here is that the software is only for BILL users. If you’re not planning to get BILL, we recommend Ramp or Bento instead.
Brex Empower: Best for Brex Business Account Holders
Pros
- Is free for Brex Business Account holders
- Integrates with popular accounting and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software
- Offers cash management tools
- Has artificial intelligence (AI)-powered expense reporting features
Cons
- Requires a Brex Business Account before using Brex Empower
- Doesn’t accept freelancers, sole proprietors, and unregistered businesses
- Has specific financial requirement for Brex Business Account eligibility
- Cannot carry unpaid balances to the next month
Brex Empower is free for existing Brex Business Accounts, which also have no monthly fees. For more information, read our review of Brex Business Account to know more about its eligibility requirements and perks.
Brex Empower is a good spend management software for those with a Brex Business Account. It is a central hub where you can manage debit and credit card transactions and card policies. As a spend management software, Brex Empower users can create expense policies and card controls to manage card usage. For example, admin users can allow or block certain merchants in a particular card to limit purchases.
However, the biggest disadvantage of Brex Empower is its high barrier of entry because of its strict requirements and qualification policies. Small businesses without significant cash balances or equity investment cannot qualify for a Brex account.
If you have a Brex Business account, Brex Empower is a good companion software that can help you manage company spending. Our evaluation revealed that Brex Empower got a high score in spend management features because it can help users track spending for charges directly tied into their Brex accounts. They also issue credit cards, which is a big plus for businesses.
It only got an above average score in card features because it doesn’t allow withdrawals using their debit cards. There is also no rewards system for using Brex Empower cards. If you want a rewards system for using cards, we recommend Ramp because of its cash back system. Otherwise, Bento for Business is more suitable for smaller businesses that can’t qualify for a Brex Business account.
Emburse Spend: Best for Connecting Third-party Cards
Pros
- Allows connection of non-Emburse corporate cards
- Has application programming interface (API) feature for creating customized workflows
- Offers analytics software through Emburse Analytics (paid separately) to help businesses make data-driven decisions
Cons
- Limits free automated clearing house (ACH) transactions to 150 transactions for non-Emburse cards
- Charges additional monthly fee for connecting non-Emburse cards
Emburse Spend’s pricing is quote-based depending on the size of the business and features enabled. However, the custom plan comes with the spend management platform and unlimited issuance of Emburse cards.
Emburse Spend is a good spend management platform for businesses because it allows users to connect third-party cards aside from using Emburse cards. Though there is an additional charge, we believe that allowing third-party cards opens more room for flexibility for businesses with existing corporate cards from other providers.
In our evaluation, Emburse Spend took a hit in pricing because it offers a custom pricing model. While a custom pricing model enables flexibility in terms of cost, we’d prefer if the provider can provide tech buyers an actual or estimated price to aid in decision making. However, Emburse Spend still got high scores in spend management and card features.
We believe Emburse Spend is a great spend management app that can issue debit and credit cards. Using Emburse Cards enables companies to track and manage expenses in a single platform. But just like Ramp and Brex, Emburse Spend only accepts registered businesses. If you’re a freelancer or sole proprietor, you’re ineligible for Emburse Spend. We recommend Revolut for freelancers and Bento for sole proprietors.
Bento for Business: Best for Affordable Spend Management Cards
Pros
- Offers spend limit and fixed value cards
- Has transaction tags that can be mapped to your accounting software
- Works with Google Pay and Apple Pay
Cons
- Doesn’t offer corporate charge cards
- Limits the number of issuable cards per plan tier
- Starter: $29 per month for up to 10 cards
- Team: $69 per month for up to 25 cards
- Professional: $149 per month for up to 100 cards
- Enterprise: Custom priced for more than 100 cards
You can try Bento for Business for 60 days.
Bento for Business, a spend management platform that features prepaid cards, is perfect for businesses wanting to control cash flow and spending. With Bento’s diverse card types, you can select different card types for specific expenses.
For example, it has a travel and entertainment card for authorized business trips and a ghost card for one-off payments to third parties. Bento doesn’t impose bank balance requirements for legally registered businesses, making it more flexible for startups and small businesses.
Bento took a huge hit in spend management features. Our evaluation revealed that Bento lacks expense reimbursement features, which has a large allocation in the total score. However, we understand why it took a hit because Bento’s services revolve around its cards. All expenses must be charged and paid for using the cards. This system eliminates manual expense reimbursements. If you think your business still needs manual reimbursements, we recommend looking somewhere else.
However, Bento scored above average in card features because it can issue different kinds of cards. You can have a card for a specific purpose like travel or entertainment. It also got a high score in ease of use because Bento is flexible to all kinds of businesses whether self-employed or an established business. Our best alternative for Bento is Ramp, especially if you’re looking for a free option and the ability to issue credit cards.
How We Evaluated the Best Spend Management Software
In our roundup of the best spend management software, we considered the following criteria in our evaluation:
10% of Overall Score
The price of the software is essential in your decision. Our scoring system involved determining if the provider offers monthly or annual contracts, charges per user or per organization, and has different plan tiers for flexibility.
25% of Overall Score
Our focus in this criteria is the software’s ability to create expense policies, apply policies in expense processing, and reimburse expenses. As a spend management software, the provider must have some, if not all, of these features.
25% of Overall Score
We have found out that most spend management platforms issue cards. We believe that issuing cards makes sense for spend management because it reduces manual reimbursements and streamlines disbursements. Hence, our evaluation included card features such as the ability to issue virtual and physical cards, issue credit or debit cards, and provide a good rewards system.
20% of Overall Score
We also considered user reviews in our evaluation to include actual customer feedback.
20% of Overall Score
The software’s ease of use centers on customer support and user experience. In our evaluation, we gave higher scores to providers with 24/7 customer support and help centers. We also included having a mobile app for efficiency. Lastly, we included an expert score to give more points to providers with unique features that aren’t included in our sub-criterias.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
No, a spend management software allows managers and admins to monitor spending before expenses occur. On the other hand, expense management monitors expenses after the fact.
It is software that lets your business control all spending through spending limits and card controls. It also controls the users of each card for accountability. The software should enable you to limit the kind, nature, and amount of spending for better management of funds.
Bottom Line
The best spend management software should aid in managing and planning cash flows. It should allow issuance of multiple cards to employees to accommodate purchases and avoid cash transactions. Overall, we hope this list helped you pick a spend management platform for your small business.
