15 Apps that help startups and freelancers in business expense tracking
If you’re a startup founder or small business owner, I’m willing to wager that you aren’t a fan of accounting and business expense tracking. Am I right?
I’ve seen my boss Vikas (Founder and CEO, Alore CRM) balk and display twenty crazy expressions when he needs to sit for accounting stuff. It’s like someone asked him to cheat on the product team!! (Sorry V, but it’s true! 😛 )
and it’s not just him. The dislike for accounting is like an unspoken bond that binds startup founders globally. Almost all founders I know freak out at the thought of sitting with their accounts department. It’s not just a stressful chore for most but to them it’s like a black hole.
But doesn’t really need to be that way. It’s no more about a geeky accountant with horn rimmed specs and an expressionless face that you imagine it to be. If on one hand, founders and small business entrepreneurs are struggling with this cumbersome chore, on the other hand some are out to solve this exact pain point with business expense tracker apps.
Some offer an expansive solution right from scanning in receipts to clearing the bills from the finance department. Here are 15 of them that you could look at and see what fits your needs!
1. Fyle:
Fyle helps create easy expense reports on website and mobile, credit card reconciliation and facilitates hassle-free processing for your finance team. Employees can track receipts and create expense reports in one click. Fyle also boats of a unique Gmail and Outlook plugin to directly report expenses from e-receipts.
2. Sutiexpense
SutiExpense is an end-to-end cloud-based expense report software solution that automates the expense management process. It helps tracking expenses easier for employees and management and therefore boost productivity.
3. Google Sheets:
Probably a tedious and old method but still used by a lot of people. It helps you to collaborate on data analysis with spreadsheets.
4. Zoho Expense:
A platform which directly helps you to transform the expense reporting & monitoring. Zoho Expense helps you to record your transactions in a snap with the help of its variety of expense management-related operations.
5. Finly.io:
Finly.io is useful in keeping your accounting system up-to date and managing all your business expenses. Through its intelligent and scalable expense management system, it directly allows you to manage your business expenses and funds.
6. WaveApp:
This is one of the most widely used business expense tracking apps. With WaveApp you can easily track your business expenses, directly send your invoices & you can maintain and balance your account books. WaveApp is a free financial software that helps you to grow your small business. Really, it’s free!
7. Expensify:
Expensify is a software which allows you to create expense reports from receipt scanning to reimbursement. It helps in converting every step including in the expense reporting process. It is one of the easiest solutions to understand with its intuitive interface. The fact that it has a desktop application is useful because that means you can access information through multiple devices.
8. Foreceipt:
Foreceipt helps you in managing your expenses by allowing you to transform your bills, invoices, receipts into digital data that can be easily used later on. With the help of its tracking feature, it helps you to track your incomes, taxes and daily expenses from your smartphones and stores the data in google drive.
9. Receiptmate:
Receipt mate helps you to make E-budgeting easier with the help of scanable receipts. Normally it helps you to save your receipts by scanning them, so that you can view them afterward. It has a full integration with Evernote and is super useful to those who are already using Evernote.
10. Shoeboxed:
Through its receipt scanning and expense tracking systems it helps you turn your receipts into data. It also serves the function of organizing the receipt, business cards and can easily allow you to scan them. You can also create expense reports and also track mileage with this app.
11. Certify:
Certify is a Travel, Invoice and expense report management solution. It helps you in managing the expense reports, create automated expense reports and also book your travel. It allows managers to approve/disprove business receipts quickly. It’s pretty affordable with its $8/Month/user pricing.
12. Concur:
Concur is an online platform which helps you in managing and controlling your expenses around business travel. You can also book your business travel by concur and it simplifies and accelerates the account payable process.
13. BizXpense:
This is a mobile app which directly helps you to manage and track your business expenses. It allows you to scan and enter receipt information immediately, eliminating the need of saving paper receipts. It also allows you to track your business trip travel time.
14. Tallie:
This is one of the popular business expense tracking apps. With Tallie you can simplify your whole business expense tracking process from the very start i.e. purchase to accounting and reimbursement. With Tallie you can easily have an internal control and visibility and can manage your expenses through its SaaS solutions. and its pretty affordable too with plans starting at $9/seat!
15. Happay.in:
This is a web-based business expense management software that helps you to bring all your business expenses on a single platform for the management. It also helps you to manage and track your funds online from mobile and desktop devices.
Okay I know I wrote 15 but sharing one more app that’s quite popular ( and hence the mention). I didn’t add it to the main list because it’s solution is more relevant for mid-size to large enterprises. So it’s good to know of it while you’re on a rapid scaling curve. It’s called Coupa and it provides a singular exhaustive solution for expense management. It helps invoicing, sourcing, analytics and offers direct control on your costs and business expenses.
Have a go and explore the tools that suit the specific needs of your business.
To conclude I’d like to share some tips that my colleague — “the accounting guy” shared with me while I researched for the article.
1. Get business expense tracking apps and an accounting software that suits your needs and not what you think is fancy or the competitors have.
2. Keep separate bank accounts for your personal and business expenses and never ever mix the two. It’s a simple thing most know, yet most don’t follow in business.
3. Save all your receipts !! and write down what the receipt is for on the backside. eg. “coffee with Mr Smith — prospect”
4. If you can afford, then please get a dedicated accountant or finance guy in your team. It’s the most undervalued and most fundamental department if you really think of it. Businesses close not because the product or service was bad but because cash was poorly managed.
5. Have periodic reviews and audits. this is something that almost no small business bothers to do yet all successful business do it in practice.
6. Never make payments in cash. Just never ever.
7. Have a ready list of Tax IDs(TINs), registration details, PAN details whatever is necessary about vendors and third-party agencies for an audit (as per the country’s laws). It saves a hell lot of time in the end.
Feel free to drop in a comment and tell us what your favourite business expense tracking apps and tips are. Would love to add to this!!
Originally published at blog.alore.io on June 28, 2018.
