The best expense trackers for business in 2024

Regularly monitoring your business expenses helps you set accurate budgets, plan your tax deductions, and minimize the misappropriation of business finances. That's why easy-to-use expense management software is essential.

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Sure, you may be able to get away with manual expense tracking, especially if you’re a small business owner or a startup. But as you grow and expand, using the best expense management software to track costs automatically will make your life a whole lot easier.

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In this article, we'll introduce you to some of the more popular expense trackers available today, including Zoho Expense, Expensify, SAP Concur, FreshBooks, and our own Ramp.

Top 5 expense trackers for business

Here are our picks for the five best expense trackers for businesses, based on factors that include feature set, pricing, user-friendliness, and others:

1. Ramp

• G2 review: 4.8 out of 5 stars
• Capterra review: 4.9 out of 5 stars
• Pricing:
  • Unlimited free tier, with access to expense tracking and reporting features
  • $15 per user per month for Ramp Plus
  • Contact sales for Ramp Enterprise pricing
• Free trial available? Ramp offers a 30-day trial for Ramp Plus

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Ramp is an all-in-one expense management platform with integrated corporate cards. Its user-friendly web and mobile applications help automate expense tracking with the power of AI. Ramp integrates seamlessly with your tech stack, including popular accounting platforms like Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite, and Sage Intacct. Some of Ramp’s features include:

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• AI-powered receipt capture: Ramp's mobile app lets your employees upload receipts using their smartphone cameras and automatically matches the expense with preset business expense categories
• 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
• Intelligent recommendations: Ramp Intelligence provides actionable insights related to your expenses, like alerting you to overpriced vendors and duplicate subscriptions

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2. Zoho Expense

• G2 review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Capterra review: 4.6 out of 5 stars
• Pricing:
  • $5 per user per month for Standard
  • $9 per user per month for Premium
  • Contact sales for custom pricing
• Free trial available? Zoho offers a 14-day free trial for Standard and Premium

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Zoho Expense is another popular expense tracker for businesses, with applications available on web, mobile, and desktop. Zoho Expense can also integrate seamlessly with Zoho's dedicated accounting software. Its features include:

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• Request advances: Zoho’s platform allows employees to automatically request cash advances ahead of work trips or upcoming expenses
• Delegation: Allows users to delegate admin roles to other employees, giving them the power to approve and reject expenses as well as manage expense reports submitted by other employees
• Budgeting: Zoho lets users create budgets for projects or business units and compare them against real-time or current expenses

3. Expensify

• G2 review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Capterra review: 4.4 out of 5 stars
• Pricing:
  • $5 per user per month for Collect
  • $9 per user per month for Control
• Free trial available? Expensify offers a limited free tier for individuals

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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:

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• 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
• Extensive integrations: Expensify integrates with many popular accounting systems and HR platforms, and offers travel and receipt integrations with common vendors like rideshare companies and airlines.
• One-click receipt scanning: Expensify’s receipt scanner automatically captures expense details and pulls them into an expense report

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Compared to other expense trackers, Expensify is more expensive, with costs as high as $36 per user per month. That’s because Expensify charges a monthly fee for a few of its core expense tracking features, such as accounting sync and multi-approval flows.

4. SAP Concur Expense

• G2 review: 4.0 out of 5 stars
• Capterra review: 4.3 out of 5 stars
• Pricing: All pricing is quote-based
• Free trial available? SAP Concur Expense offers a 15-day trial

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SAP Concur Expense offers businesses customized plans, with pricing based on their unique needs. However, for existing Concur customers, the platform is free. Its features include:

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• Integration with existing systems: SAP Concur has integrations with over 100 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.
• Automated invoice management: Streamline the invoicing process, ensuring that all invoices are processed and paid on time

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

5. FreshBooks

• G2 review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Capterra review: 4.5 out of 5 stars
• Pricing:
  • $19 per month for Lite
  • $33 per month for Plus
  • $60 per month for Premium
  • Additional users are $11 per month for each plan
• Free trial available? FreshBooks offers a 30-day trial

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FreshBooks is another online business expense tracker with a heavy emphasis on invoicing. Unsurprisingly, it’s a popular choice for businesses with extensive invoicing and invoice management needs. FreshBook’s other features include:

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• Bill business expenses: Allows users to mark expenses as billable and automatically convert them into invoices for their clients
• Cloud receipt storage: Stores all of its users’ receipts in the cloud, so it doesn't matter whether they update their expenses on mobile or desktop—all the records will match‍
• Automatic expense categorization: Makes tax filing easier by automatically bucketing expenses into a number of default expense categories

Factors to consider when choosing a business expense tracker

As you’re zeroing in on the best expense tracker for your business, it’s important to keep these factors in mind before making a decision:

Cost-effectiveness

Make sure the pricing structure of the software you’re considering aligns with your budget. Can you save money on user seats? Scrutinize who truly needs access to the tool and who can go without. Could you make do with just the free features? Spare yourself the expense of a paid plan altogether. The idea is to balance affordability with feature set.

Ease of use

It’s important to evaluate the expense tracking tool for user-friendliness before committing to it. Do an online demo to get a sense of usability. A good UI makes it easier to navigate the app and do what you need to do, and training your employees will be much easier. On top of that, your team will be happier to use an app with an intuitive, modern UI. Finally, be sure to choose a tool that has a mobile app for convenience when you’re on the go.

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 allow for the smooth and open transfer of information between teams within your company, and with any external accountants or bookkeepers as well.

Scalability and functionality

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. The tool should also allow you to easily add new users without any performance issues—ideally, at no extra charge. Finally, don’t underestimate the value of automation. As your team grows and makes more frequent transactions, automating approval workflows will save you a ton of time.

Reporting capabilities

Your business expense tracker should offer detailed, customizable reporting capabilities to give you a complete picture of where your business is spending money. This also includes the ability to create budgets, so you can see how your actual spend is tracking against your projections. With real-time visibility into your spending patterns, you’ll be able to adjust spend and identify cost-saving opportunities as needed.

Customer support

Last but not least, make sure to research the reputation of the software’s customer service or support team before making your purchase. When things go wrong, customer service can be the quickest way out of a mess. Look for live chat support as well as phone support.

Best ways to keep track of business expenses

Expense tracking software is your best bet to stay on top of your business finances. But aside from one of these platforms, you can also use:

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

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

How to make a spreadsheet to track business expenses

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

1. Categorize your expenses

First, decide which business expense categories you’d like to track. Somewhere between eight and 15 categories will give you the right level of granularity and visibility without becoming overwhelming. For ideas of what to include, check out our expense category classifier.

2. Set up your sheet

After establishing your categories, create a spreadsheet in Excel or Google Sheets or start from an expense report template. Here are some columns you might want to include, but you can tailor them to your needs as necessary:

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• 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 you can easily select one.
• Amount paid: The cost of the expense
• Running total: A running total that accounts for each expense in your sheet. This allows you to see how your expenses are adding up over the week or month.‍

3. Summarize your expenses

Once you've input 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. You can then visualize this summary using charts within Excel or Sheets to provide a clear picture of where your money is being spent.

Automate expense tracking with Ramp

Ramp gives you all the most important features for expense tracking and then some. Our modern finance platform saves you time by automating many of the most time-consuming parts of tracking business expenses:

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• Easy policy enforcement: Ramp makes enforcing expense policies easy by automating the approval and employee reimbursement processes
• Accelerated reconciliation: Ramp reduces the lengthy reconciliation process by accurately coding, categorizing, and mapping thousands of transactions with 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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Check out an interactive demo and see how Ramp's expense management software saves businesses an average of 5% a year.