The best expense trackers for businesses in 2024

Monitoring your business expenses regularly helps you budget accurately, plan your tax deductions, and minimize the misappropriation of your business finances.

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That's why easy-to-use expense management software tools are essential. Sure, you might get away with manual expense tracking, especially if you’re a small business owner or a startup, but as you grow and expand, using expense management software to automatically track costs will make your life a whole lot easier. In this article, we'll introduce you to some of the more popular expense trackers in the market today, including Zoho Expense, Expensify, SAP Concur, Freshbooks, and our own Ramp. 

Top business expense trackers

Ramp

Pricing per month: Free plan, or $15 per user (Ramp Plus) with a 30-day free trial.

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Ramp is an all-in-one expense management platform and corporate card. Its user-friendly online and mobile software automates expense tracking by leveraging the power of AI, and integrates seamlessly with popular accounting platforms like Xero, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite and Sage Intacct. Some of Ramp’s features include:

• AI-powered receipt capture: Ramp's mobile app lets your employees upload receipts using their smartphone cameras, and automatically matches the expense with pre-set expense categories. This feature does away with the time-consuming manual reviewing of receipts.‍
• Automated receipt generation and categorization: Ramp automatically categorizes receipts, making expense reporting and reimbursements fast and easy.‍
• Bank integrations: Ramp has over 60+ bank integrations, which allows you to manage all your accounts from one centralized platform.‍
• Real-time spend reporting: Ramp's expense management system lets you see all your business's expenses in a single dashboard. Using AI, we provide actionable insights related to your expenses, like alerting you to overpriced vendors and duplicate subscriptions.

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Zoho Expense

Pricing per month: Free for up to three users, then $5, $8, and $12 per user for Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans, respectively.

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Zoho Expense is another popular expense tracker for businesses, accessible via both web-based platform and app. Zoho Expense can also integrate seamlessly with Zoho's dedicated accounting software. Its features include:

• Request advances: Zoho’s platform allows employees to automatically request advances ahead of work trips or upcoming expenses. 
• Delegation: Zoho’s platform allows users to delegate admin roles to other employees, such as team leaders and managers, by giving them the power to perform employee expense approvals and rejections as well as manage expense reports submitted by other employees.‍
• Budgeting: Zoho lets users create budgets for your projects or business and compare them against real-time or current expenses.

Expensify

Pricing per month: Free for up to 25 receipt scans per user. For unlimited scans, prices start at $5 per user (with a six-week free trial).

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Expensify is another expense tracker for businesses that doubles as an expense management app and a credit card. The Expensify mobile app allows for expense management on the go. Some of Expensify's features include the following:

• Corporate card reconciliation: The Expensify app allows users to track all their corporate card data on one platform for easy confirmation, review, and expense management workflows.
• Accounting systems integrations: Expensify integrates with accounting systems.‍

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Compared to other expense trackers, Expensify is more expensive. It charges a monthly fee for a few of its core expense tracking features, such as accounting sync and multi-approval flows.

SAP Concur Expense

Pricing per month: Customizable based on features and number of users with a 30-day free trial.

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SAP Concur Expense allows users to come up with a customized plan price based on their business needs. However, for existing Concur customers, the platform is free. Its features include:

• Integration with existing systems: SAP Concur has integrations for over a hundred systems, and lets users customize their integrations according to their specific needs.
• ROI calculator: SAP’s platform lets users calculate their return on investment (ROI), which is crucial for justifying business expenses.

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Note that Concur may take more time for employees to learn to use, due to its somewhat dated interface. It also doesn't analyze your spend for savings insights, unlike many other tools on the market today.

FreshBooks

Pricing per month: $17 for the Lite Plan, $30 for Plus, and $55 for Premium. You can also contact sales for a customized plan under Select.

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FreshBooks is another option for business expense tracking. Here are some features that FreshBooks offers:

• Bill business expenses: This platform allows users to mark expenses as billable and automatically convert them into invoices for their clients.
• Cloud receipt storage: FreshBooks stores all of its users’ receipts in the cloud, so it doesn't matter where they update their expenses—mobile or desktop—all of the records will match.

Factors to consider when choosing an expense tracking tool

As you’re zeroing in on the best expense tracking tool for your business, it’s important to keep these aspects in mind before making a decision. 

Cost-effectiveness 

Make sure the pricing structure of the expense tracking software you’re considering aligns with your budget. Are there features that you could do without and get these excluded from the pricing? Could you make do with just the free features, sparing yourself the expense of the paid ones? Can the price be negotiated? The idea is to balance your affordability with features.

Ease of use 

It’s important to evaluate the expense tracking tool for user-friendliness before committing to it. We recommend doing an online demo to get a sense of user navigability. A good UI always makes it easier to move around the site seamlessly.

Integration capabilities 

This is one of the most important areas to explore. Always check if the tracking tool integrates well with the systems and software you already use, including ERP systems or accounting packages. This will help you get real-time visibility of spending patterns and identification of cost-saving opportunities. 

Scalability 

Always consider whether the tool can evolve with your business. As time passes, it must be able to process bulk transactions and merge with growing changes or replacements. Further, it should allow easy onboarding of new users without any performance issues. 

Customer support 

Last but not least, make sure to research the reputation of the software’s customer service support team before making your purchase. When things go wrong, customer service can be the way out of a big mess. 

Best ways to track business expenses

Expense tracking software is your best bet for keeping on top of your business finances. But aside from these platforms, you can also make use of the following tools:

• Accounting and bookkeeping software
• Cloud-based spreadsheets
• Bank account and business credit card statements
• Automated bank alerts

If you're self-employed or a freelancer, you might consider starting out with a self-employment ledger to track expenses. This document records all your business's income and expenses, and it can be a spreadsheet, manual book, or accounting software.

Free business expense tracking apps

There are a number of free business expense tracker apps on the market that allow for the easy logging and reporting of business expenses, These include:

• Everlance for iOS and Android
• Divvy for iOS, Android and web
• Marcus Insights for iOS, Android and web
• Mint for iOS and Android

How to create an expense tracker

If you want to start with something simple to track your business expenses, you can create a free expense tracker in Google Sheets or Excel. Here’s how to easily set one up:

1. Categorize your expenses: First, decide which expense categories you’d like to track. You might choose between 8 and 15 categories for optimal visibility without becoming overwhelming. For ideas of what to include, check out our expense category classifier.
2. Setting up your sheet: After establishing your categories, create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets. Here are some possible columns you may want to include that could be tailored to your specific requirements.
   • Payment date: The date the expense was paid.
   • Paid to: The name of the vendor or payee.
   • Description: A description of the expense.
   • Category: The expense category. Use data validation to create a pull-down menu of your expense categories so that you can easily select one.
   • Amount paid: The cost of the expense.
   • Running total: A running total taking into account each expense in your sheet. This allows you to see how much your expenses are adding up over the week or month.‍
3. Summarizing expenses: Once you've inputted your expenses, you can summarize them in a separate tab. Use the SUMIFS function to calculate the total expenses in each category over a weekly or monthly period. This summary can then be visualized using charts or graphs within Sheets to provide a clear picture of where your money is being spent.

Automate expense tracking with Ramp

Need an expense tracker that you can depend on? With Ramp, not only do you get all the most important features for expense tracking, but you also get added advantages such as:

• Easy policy enforcement: Ramp makes enforcing expense policies easy by reducing the back and forth usually involved in approving reports and reimbursements by automating these processes.
• Accelerated reconciliation: Ramp reduces the lengthy reconciliation process businesses go through by accurately coding, categorizing, and mapping thousands of transactions using AI.
• Accounts payable automation: Beyond expense management, Ramp can also help you save valuable time on recording, approving, and paying your small business invoices.

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Learn more about Ramp's expense management software.