A simple expense tracker can be your solution for cutting your expenses and increasing your profits. By using software for business expense tracking, you can save time and money, help you to control costs and allow more time to concentrate on growing your business. As a result, business owners can spend more time on customers and revenue growth.
What is expense tracking software?
Need to expense a meal with a client or track the mileage you put on the company van? Simply put, expense tracking software eliminates the need for manual entry of receipts and makes it easy for managers to check in on employee spending and track company spending.
In addition, your business is going to need expense tracking software that can integrate (or at least not conflict) with your existing accounting software so your team’s accountant can easily keep a tax-complaint trail of your business expenses.
How much does this software cost?
Expense tracking software can vary in price depending on the size of your business, the complexity of reports, department structure, categories (e.g. travel, office supplies) and functionality. When choosing our recommendations, we focused on 10 popular pieces of software that offer free trials so you can test them out before you choose the tier that’s best for your company’s needs.
Why is this software good for small businesses?
If you’ve got a small business, your project manager or accountant may have their hands full and would rather not spend valuable time sorting through receipts, invoices and reams of paperwork. The aim of this software is to reduce the time that your team spends tracking and logging expenses for reimbursement (and making life easier for managers who have to approve them).
With the exception of Expensify, we chose software that offers more than just the ability to create invoices and photograph or scan receipts. As your business grows, you’re going to want software that can grow in complexity to suit your needs, growing expense categories and expanding team.
Why should small business owners track their expenses?
Expenses are more than just coffees and trips to conventions. If your small business is on a lean budget, tracking and approving expenses can make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars in your annual budget. This software can reduce time wasted on paperwork and most importantly, increase employee satisfaction by not having them just through hoops to get reimbursed.
Our methodology
The apps we’ve chosen receive high marks for being:
- Beginner-friendly
- Available for Android, iOS and web
- Easy to navigate interface
- Helpful integrations with other business software
- Easy to customize according to your company’s needs and policies
To test the software, we downloaded the apps and tested the functionality by creating an invoice, adding expenses using a receipt and generally testing how easy the whole process is for a small business to get started.
We watched dozens of brand tutorials to see if they did a good job of explaining advanced features and spoke with users who use these products every day to understand the pros and cons of the software.
The five apps Select chose offer a free trial and have a version that costs $10 or under per employee, per month. They each have at least 1,000 reviews in both the App Store and on Google Play, as well as a rating of 4 stars (out of 5) or higher on both platforms.
To determine the best expense tracking software for small businesses, Select reviewed six top reviewed applications and zeroed in on their cost, ease of use and ease of access on multiple devices, as well as extra features.
Note: Unless indicated otherwise, all the pricing is for what you’d be billed annually, which is less expensive than you would pay if billed monthly.
It’s never been so simple to track your small business’s expenses. A variety of user-friendly and even free expense tracking software and apps have cropped up that every small business owner should take advantage of.
High-quality accounting softwares take the burden of accounting off your shoulders and lets you focus on the important things.
These programs simplify and automate your expense tracking by letting you track your time, snaps photos of receipts, make invoices and reimburse expense reports, all in one place. It’s a great way to cut down on admin work and stay on budget, too.
With intuitive business expense management on your side, you can start taking care of business the right way.
In this article, we’ll cover:
1. FreshBooks
FreshBooks eliminates the need for confusing spreadsheets or file folders of receipts. This powerful expense tracking software can be used on your desktop and any mobile device and since it’s cloud based, data is synced between mobile and desktop.
Cloud based business expense tracker apps let you keep an eye on your income and transactions from wherever you are. All you need is a device with a connection to the internet, and you’re ready to go. Other perks include the ability to collaborate with your team from anywhere, which encourages productivity and workflow.
We know the security of your data is of the utmost importance. That’s why your data will be stored safely behind 256-bit SSL encryption. Now you can securely access payments, generate reports, and verify data safely from any of your devices.
Instead of trying to keep a hold of bulky paperwork that can be accessed by anybody, you can safely access your most important financial data with ease.
It’s designed for small business owners, not accountants, so the learning curve is minimal, too.
One of its best time-saving features is the automatic importing of expenses. Connect your bank account and credit card to FreshBooks and it imports all your expenses automatically, eliminating the need for manual entry. It’ll even automatically add categories for you, making matters much easier at tax time.
Learn how to manage expenses without breaking the bank or breaking a sweat.
Custom-made small business expense management software puts control back in your hands. You don’t have to hire a costly accountant or struggle with manual invoicing.
The app also lets you take photos of your receipts, add tax-friendly categories and input crucial details. All the data is then added to your expenses. You can also mark an expense as billable, add your markup and import it into an invoice to send to the client.
FreshBooks offers a free 30-day trial and tiered pricing according to your number of clients. Plans start at $15 per month.
With scaled business expense tracking software, the only way you can go is up.
2. Everlance
Everlance does double duty by tracking both your expenses and mileage. This free mileage tracker app is 100 percent automatic, meaning it uses GPS to create mileage logs.
It also calculates how much you can deduct on your taxes according to current IRS mileage rates. Everlance estimates that subscribers to their mileage tracking app deduct over $6,500 a year on their taxes, which is a considerable savings.
The app is user friendly and simple to use—you can classify each drive with one swipe as business, personal, charity etc. It also integrates with FreshBooks so you can automatically import your mileage.
Everlance also lets you take photos of receipts and integrates with your bank account and credit cards to automatically import expenses.
Everlance is free for iOS and Android but you can get unlimited mileage tracking for $7.99 a month. The subscription price also happens to be tax deductible.
3. Expensify
Expensify is an expenses app that automatically imports expenses from your bank account and credit card and generates reports. Create accounts for your employees too so they can make expense reports within the app. You can then view and approve the reports and pay back your employees, all in the app.
Expense tracking apps make it that much easier to manage your financial transactions. You can manage your payments with ease and not have to worry about missed payments or deadlines. Keeping an eye on your budget ensures a steadier cash-flow that can be put to use constructively for your business.
Another bonus is its automatic SmartScan receipt scanner software. Take a photo of the receipt and the app takes care of picking out and recording all the important details. Another option is to email digital receipts to an Expensify email address to automatically add the expense or use their Chrome extension.
Expensify is a budget-friendly option for freelancers, small businesses and contractors at $5 per month per user. It’s best suited for businesses with lots of expenses or that want a simpler way to reimburse employees.
4. Abukai
Abukai is another great automatic expense tracker app for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices. The app automatically imports data from photos of receipts, categorize your expenses for you and calculates exchange rates.
Intuitive expenses management software takes the onus off you and back where it belongs.
It acts as a receipt app by letting you take a photo of the receipt and pressing “submit.” Abukai then automatically adds an expense entry with the category, date, vendor and other crucial information, with an image of the receipt attached.
This cuts down on valuable administration time and saves you from tediously recording every relevant business purchase.
You won’t have to go back and correct details, either. Abukai is known to accurately read every kind of receipt, even foreign receipts. It does up-to-date currency conversion, as well.
It’s an intuitive and user friendly option that’s will substantially cut down on your admin work. Beginners will love it. Abukai also syncs with your FreshBooks cloud accounting software and automatically posts your expenses to FreshBooks.
Even better, this is a free business expense tracker. You can also get a free trial of its corporate plan which is $99 per year per user with a $49 one-time setup fee. Try out tracking expenses for free to see how much easier your accounting process can be.
5. MMC Receipt
MMC Receipt is a receipt capturing app which captures, processes and categories all your receipts instantly using OCR and machine learning so you can stop spending time on manual data entry.
Customers can add unlimited receipts, unlimited users and have unlimited storage of data in a simple monthly plan with no hidden charges.
We swear by the quick turnaround time of 5 minutes and the accuracy with which we process your receipts including multi currency data.
You can also take advantage of recording each and every line item in the transaction so you always have accurate data.
MMC Receipt integrates with FreshBooks allowing you to record expenses in real time through receipt capturing and categorizing them instantly using OCR and Machine Learning.
Free expense management software is the easiest way to keep track of your expenses for the savvy small business owner. Take control of your finances with FreshBooks.
Automatic Expense Tracker Apps
1. FreshBooks App
This is a full-fledged finance tracker app that lets you make and send invoices on the go. It even notifies you when clients view or pay invoices. It’s also an expense tracker app that has a feature to take photos of your receipts, input details and even mark the expense as billable so you can add it to an invoice.
2. Everlance
This free mileage tracker app does everything. It tracks your mileage, imports it into FreshBooks and lets you take photos of receipts. It tracks your mileage using GPS so almost everything is automatic—you just need to categorize the drive with one swipe.
3. Expensify
Expensify makes it easy to record all your expenses with minimal effort on your part. It imports expenses from your bank account and credit card and sends them to FreshBooks automatically. It can also scan receipts and import all the details.
4. Abukai
This app makes it simple to scan and save all kinds of receipts. It’s known for automatically picking up details on all kinds of receipts, even foreign ones, and does currency conversions for you.
5. MMC Receipt
This is a receipt capturing app which captures, processes, and categories all your receipts instantly using OCR and machine learning so you can stop spending time on manual data entry.
Conclusion
When it comes to accounting, whether you are working for a small company or freelancing, expense tracking is often one of the most painstaking things. Expense management software offers quick solutions to your needs.