Best Expense Tracking Apps for Business Traveling

Have you ever found yourself scrambling through paper receipts, at the last minute, trying to determine which ones you can submit for your reimbursement? What if you could save yourself from experiencing that stress-inducing feeling again? Well, if you use an expense tracking app, you just need to snap some pictures of your receipts with your phone. From there, you’re able to quickly log expenses and send them to your finance team to review, approve, and reimburse you automatically. Depending on which expense tracking app you choose, the best ones can find business expenses on their own.

You can goodbye to manually entering your expenses after each business trip! Andrew Kunesh, a reporter known for covering credit cards and loyalty programs, compiled a list of his favorite expense tracking apps. He researched and tested each app, using the following criteria to select his choices:

• Have an intuitive interface for both field employees and finance.

• Makes the experience easier for employees and finance to fill out and approve expense reports.

• Have a standout feature that differentiates said app from the competition.

Let’s discuss each one of Kunesh’s picks and understand what he liked about them! Small business owners and entrepreneurs out there, this is a great opportunity for you to select the best expense tracking app that will keep you organized. While most of us aren’t traveling much due to the COVID-19 outbreak, it’s still a great idea to plan ahead and select the expense tracker you would like to use.

Expensify:

You can link your Expensify account to common business services including Uber, SaneBox, and Oracle. When you make a purchase, Expensify automatically logs the purchase amount, attaches the receipt, and sends it over to whoever is responsible for approving purchases.

Expensify also integrates directly with QuickBooks and any other financial software you might use to easily balance books at the end of each month. Expensify’s dashboard is great, too, as you’re given easy access to your team’s purchases in real-time so you can approve or deny expenses with a click.

$ → $5 per month for BASIC expense tracking, online reimbursement, and QuickBooks integration.

Zoho Expense:

Do you have a company credit card? You should use Zoho Expense as the tracking app integrates directly with most major corporate credit card issuers in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and automatically pull together your credit card purchases each day. You just need to code the expenses and snap pictures of your receipts using the app.

$ → Free for 3 users and 100 receipt scans. $15 a month for 10 users, plus $2 per additional user, with the STANDARD plan for unlimited receipt storage and scans, along with workflow tools.

MileIQ:

This expense reporting software was created specifically for people who drive for work. Just hop in the car, open the MilelQ mobile app, and start logging your miles with a tap! Once you place your car in park, you’re able to see how much you will receive as reimbursement. You then can export your driving records as an automatically generated expense report that you can give your employer. MileIQ is perfect for small businesses, but it also works great for Uber and Lyft drivers, delivery drivers, and other independent contractors who can use the app to track their miles on the job.

$ → Free for 40 rides per month. $5.99 per month with the PREMIUM plan for unlimited rides.

Abacus:

Struggling to read through every transaction that’s listed on your expense report? Abacus can help with this process with the expense approval workflow. Located in the app’s administration panel, you can set certain expenses to be automatically approved or require manual review.

$ → $9 per month for the STARTER plan for basic expense reporting and automation workflows.

Shoeboxed:

Shoeboxed is perfect for small businesses that accumulate lots of paper receipts that need to be digitized. This expense reporting platform has a great feature called The Magic Envelope, where they send you postage-paid envelopes every month and you fill them with receipts that will be scanned, uploaded, and parsed into Shoeboxed expense reports. Besides old business receipts, you can use Shoeboxed to digitize receipts for personal expense tracking, tracking tax write-offs, and business card management. Scans from Shoeboxed are all human-verified and accepted by the IRS and CRA.

$ → $15 per month for the LITE plan for 50 digitized receipts each month.

Certify:

With Certify, your employees are able to submit expense reports for your finance team to approve for reimbursement. Certify also stands out because this app helps your team make better travel purchases with SpendSmart, their business travel-centric review board.

Once you submit your monthly expense report, Certify asks your employees to fill out an optional survey about their previous travels, quickly reviewing the places they visited. Your team can later view this data and make better decisions when booking travel and off-site meetings.

$ → $8 per month with the NOW plan for core features.

References:

Kunesh, Andrew. “The 7 Best Expense Tracking Apps for Smarter Business Travel.”

Zapier, 13 Nov. 2017.