Expense Management Software

Expense Management Software Overview

Expense Management Software is a financial product that allows users to submit, track, process, and reimburse employee expenses. It is also used to invoice billable hours and/or reimbursable project expenses.

Expense management capabilities are often found within broader accounting products, as well as in standalone tools. You may also be able to find these features bundled with tools for procurement, invoicing, budgeting, and other financial processes.

There are three main users of expense management software:

  • Employees who submit their own expenses or project hours
  • Administrators who review, approve, and report on employees' expenses.
  • Bookkeepers or accountants who balance the general ledger or close the business’s books

Top Rated Expense Management Products

TrustRadius Top Rated for 2021

These products won a Top Rated award for having excellent customer satisfaction ratings. The list is based purely on reviews; there is no paid placement, and analyst opinions do not influence the rankings. Read more about the Top Rated criteria.

Expense Management Software TrustMap

TrustMaps are two-dimensional charts that compare products based on trScore and research frequency by prospective buyers. Products must have 10 or more ratings to appear on this TrustMap.

Expense Management Products

(1-25 of 110) Sorted by Most Reviews

The list of products below is based purely on reviews (sorted from most to least). There is no paid placement and analyst opinions do not influence their rankings. Here is our Promise to Buyers to ensure information on our site is reliable, useful, and worthy of your trust.
Webexpenses

Webexpenses

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Webexpenses is a global provider of online expense management software to businesses of all sizes across 70+ countries. The software is used across all industries, including retail, finance, technology, construction, and not for profit. Features of the Webexpenses desktop and mobile…

MIP Fund Accounting

MIP Fund Accounting™ is a configurable fund accounting solution. The solution includes functionality for fund accounting, procurement, budgeting, payroll, human resources, timekeeping, fixed asset management, grant management, and dashboards for nonprofits and government agencies.…

Key Features

  • Accounts payable (348)
    87%
    8.7
  • Standard reports (335)
    84%
    8.4
  • Custom reports (325)
    82%
    8.2
Concur Travel and Expense

Concur is a SaaS expense report management product, and handles corporate travel booking, expense report automation, reimbursement, audit, and business intelligence, and corporate card integration. The product is used by over 15,000 clients. Concur is now an SAP company.

Oracle Cloud ERP

Oracle Cloud ERP

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a core suite of Oracle Cloud software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Oracle Expense Management and Oracle Risk Management are part of this solution. Other apps include Financials, Revenue Management, Accounting Hub, PPM, and…

Key Features

  • Accounts payable (229)
    83%
    8.3
  • Accounts receivable (220)
    82%
    8.2
  • Standard reports (215)
    82%
    8.2
Paycom

Paycom

Customer Verified

Paycom is a core HR management software solution. It includes features such as talent acquisition and management, time tracking, and payroll management. It offers some automation capacities, particularly regarding payroll.

Key Features

  • Update personal information (223)
    89%
    8.9
  • View and generate pay and benefit information (224)
    86%
    8.6
  • Pay calculation (214)
    80%
    8.0
Xero

Xero

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Xero is an online accounting software product for small businesses and personal finance. Its features beyond general ledger and double-bookkeeping include quotable invoicing, bank reconciliation, purchase order and expense management, and tax management. Third party apps can extend…

Key Features

  • Bank reconciliation (126)
    89%
    8.9
  • Accounts receivable (121)
    86%
    8.6
  • Standard reports (121)
    86%
    8.6
Emburse Chrome River

Emburse Chrome River

Customer Verified
Top Rated

Chrome River EXPENSE is expense management software, from Chrome River Technologies in Los Angeles, California.

Expensify

Expensify enables users to manage expenses, pay bills, send invoices, and book travel. Supports unlimited receipt scanning and mileage tracking to next-day reimbursement, to automate preaccounting systems. - Unlimited receipt scanning: Snap a photo of any receipt and Expensify 's…

SAP Ariba Procurement

SAP Ariba Procurement

Customer Verified
Top Rated

SAP Ariba's Procurement capabilities are to provide innovations in guided buying and spot buy, plus supplier and catalog enablement, and integration with Ariba Network – which the vendor states is more than 4.6 million connected companies strong and growing.

Emburse Certify

Certify is travel and expense management software developed by the company of the same name in Maine, which merged with Chrome River in 2019 to form Emburse.

Harvest

Harvest is an expense management, time tracking, and budgeting tool from Harvest in New York. It supports many accounting solutions as an add-on (e.g. Quickbooks, Xero), or it can function in a standalone fashion for some small businesses that have simple expense tracking and also…

BQE Core

BQE Core

Customer Verified

BQE Core is a business management solution built specifically for professional service firms. According to the vendor, BQE Core is a combination of a billing assistant, project management, and accounting solution. The vendor’s value proposition is that Core does the hard work for…

Key Features

  • Time tracking (27)
    85%
    8.5
  • Role-based user permissions (19)
    80%
    8.0
  • Dashboards (23)
    77%
    7.7
BigTime Software

BigTime IQ is time and expense tracking software from Chicago-based BigTime Software.

Coupa

Coupa Unified Spend Suite is a solution for procurement, invoicing, expenses, sourcing, inventory, contract lifecycle management, budgets, analytics, etc.

OpenAir PSA

NetSuite OpenAir is a cloud-based Professional Service Automation (PSA) product which includes capabilities around project management, resource management, project accounting, etc.

Key Features

  • Resource Management (13)
    76%
    7.6
  • Timesheet Tracking (13)
    73%
    7.3
  • Task Management (13)
    41%
    4.1
Emburse Abacus

Abacus is a web and mobile application that helps manage employee expenses and reimbursements. Some key features include: Real-Time Expense Submission, Integrated ACH Payments, and Dynamic Custom Reporting. Abacus was acquired by Certify in summer 2018 and is now part of Emburse,…

Emburse Tallie

Tallie is an expense reporting tool that integrates with other billing or accounting platforms (e.g. bill.com, Quickbooks, etc.) to present an expense management solution. It was supported by Certify since the 2017 merger with that company and Nexonia under the new company Certify…

ProcurementExpress.com

ProcurementExpress.com is designed for small to medium-sized companies to gain full control of purchasing. Team members raise requests against specific pre-defined budgets. Managers approve, decline, or comment on requests - straight from their inbox. Once approved, team members…

Divvy

Acquired by Bill.com in May 2021, Divvy offers their expense management application and corporate credit card service, supporting virtual card functionality and pre-allocated budget, expense tracking and receipt retention, automatic fraud detection, and real-time spend tracking.

Upland PSA (formerly Tenrox)

Upland PSA formerly (Tenrox) is a modular cloud project management, service delivery and billing solution that is designed to support globally dispersed customers and project workers who are operating in multiple remote locations, currencies, tax jurisdictions and time zones. Tenrox…

Emburse Nexonia

Nexonia, by Emburse, is a tool designed to streamline employee expense reporting. It is designed to increase visibility into spendings and make the expense tracking, approval, and reporting process paperless. Nexonia was part of a merger with Certify in 2017 and is now part of the…

Zoho Invoice

Zoho Invoice is a cloud-based invoicing solution designed to help small businesses with invoicing, tracking expenses, and accepting online payments. Key features include project billing, time tracking, reporting, customizable templates, and a client portaI. Teams using Zoho Invoice…

Journyx

Journyx's time and expense tracking software aims to streamline the collection and processing of timesheets – reducing payroll time, growing client billings, and increasing project profitability. The vendor says Journyx helps you collect better time and expense data for better, more…

Rydoo (formerly Xpenditure)

Rydoo (formerly Xpenditure) is a cloud based travel management solution that also handles the expense management process from receipt to accounting. After taking a picture of a receipt, Rydoo will extract all relevant data, and make it ready to be exported to the accounting software…

ClickTime

ClickTime is a time tracking platform from the company of the same name in San Francisco, California that may include expense tracking and light project management capabilities via modules and add-ons.

Learn More About Expense Management Software

What is Expense Management Software?

Expense Management Software is a financial product that allows users to submit, track, process, and reimburse employee expenses. It is also used to invoice billable hours and/or reimbursable project expenses.

Expense management capabilities are often found within broader accounting products, as well as in standalone tools. You may also be able to find these features bundled with tools for procurement, invoicing, budgeting, and other financial processes.

There are three main users of expense management software:

  • Employees who submit their own expenses or project hours
  • Administrators who review, approve, and report on employees' expenses.
  • Bookkeepers or accountants who balance the general ledger or close the business’s books

Expense Management Software Features & Capabilities

Typical expense management features facilitate and automate invoicing and approval processes. Expense management software usually includes some document management for capturing receipts and creating an audit trail. This allows administrators to approve expenses (e.g. for travel) and generate reports.

Most expense management products should also include these core tracking and reporting capabilities:

  • Receipt scanning and management
  • Manual expense entry and administrative editing
  • Mobile accessibility
  • Customizable expense approval routing
  • Expense tagging
  • Configurable expense policies
  • Basic expense reporting
  • Integration with leading 3rd-party accounting systems

Many expense management products also offer additional features that can benefit companies depending on their scale and use case, including:

  • In-system business cards or pay cards
  • In-system reimbursement
  • Budget limit enforcement
  • Customizable reporting
  • Integrations with large-scale financial systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning systems

Employee Reimbursement vs. Project Expense Invoicing

Though some tools span both use cases, products in this category are often more focused on either reimbursing internal employees or capturing time and resources spent on client projects, in order to generate expense invoices. These invoices may be for billable project hours (tracked against a project or contractor budget), or for reimbursable expenses, like materials used. In terms of this second use case, there is some overlap with time tracking software.

Expense Management Software Comparison

When comparing different expense management software, consider these factors:

  1. Level of automation vs. manual entry: How many of your business’s employees’ expenses can be automatically input, routed to the appropriate approver, and formatted for reporting? The ability of your expense management software to automate various functions and processes will become increasingly impactful as your business scales in size and number of discrete expenses. Product-offered pay cards, or prebuilt integrations with the company cards you already use, will significantly improve how easily you can automate these functions.
  2. Integrations: Most expense management software will be able to integrate with some external financial systems. However, they may not already integrate with your specific accounting system. Be sure to track which systems can natively integrate with your accounting, tax prep, or ERP software.
  3. Reporting capabilities: When evaluating expense management software, consider what prebuilt reporting capabilities each product offers, and how customizable the reporting features are. Your expense reporting needs may be affected by what regulatory bodies, external stakeholders, and internal leadership or management you report to. Given the range of possible reporting needs, not all products may be able to meet the same level of requirements.

Pricing Information

Expense management software is usually priced per user per month. The starting price is in the range of $5 to $10 per user per month. There are typically price breaks for large numbers of users. There may also be implementation costs if clients want to integrate with other business systems or build organization-specific workflows.

Expense Management Software Best Of Awards

The following expense management software offer award-winning customer relationships, feature sets, and value for price. Learn more about our Best Of Awards methodology here.

Best Expense Management Software Products

Frequently Asked Questions

Why use expense management software?

Expense management software allows businesses and employees to more easily track, attribute, and reimburse employee expenses. It centralizes the management process, and can automate routine manual tasks, saving time for managers and accountants.

What is expense reporting software?

Expense management software is sometimes referred to as “expense reporting” software. WHile these products usually still manage expenses, they focus more on easy and presentation-ready reporting. Most expense management software includes some reporting capabilities, but the depth and customizability of reporting varies by product.

What are the most crucial features to manage employee expenses?

Expense management software should always have the ability to document receipts, have a mobile application or interface, have some approval routing configuration, and be able to work with accounting software.

How much does expense management software cost?

Expense management tools are usually priced per user per month. Most products start at $5-8/user/month, with custom pricing for larger organizations and enterprises.