It’s easy to lose track of your business expenses. When you’re out with clients, it’s easy to forget what you spent and where. When you’re traveling for work, it’s hard to keep track of how much you spent on food and transportation. If you’re running an online business, it’s tough to remember what you spend on marketing or website maintenance.
But there’s no reason why you should be losing sleep over how much money is going into your business—or how much money isn’t making its way back out again. There are apps that make tracking your expenses a breeze, so you can focus on growing your company instead of wasting time worrying about whether or not you’re spending too much on new equipment or getting paid enough by clients.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Tracking Business Expenses
The right apps make it easy to manage your expenses on the go.
Effective financial management requires the proper tracking of income and expenses.
There are many software options to help you track all of your spending.
Keeping track of your expenses will help you work within your budget and make strategic investments in your business.
This article is for business owners who want to target their spending and track their expenses over time.
Rent, utilities, equipment, furniture, inventory, licenses, insurance, marketing, staff – small businesses incur all sorts of expenses. It’s essential that you keep careful track of all your spending to make sure you stay on budget, but not every business has access to the best accounting software. Fortunately, thanks to an explosion of quality money-tracking apps, it’s now easier to track your expenses than ever before. We researched dozens of popular expense tracking apps to bring you our top picks for 2021.
TipPro tip: Tracking your expenses is the first step in employing more sophisticated accounting methods, which could help your business grow more effectively.
Personal Capital
Personal Capital is a full-featured investment manager for hire. It tracks and categorizes all the expenses you make on your credit or debit card. The app creates charts indicating your monthly cash flow and breaking down your monthly expenses. It has two versions: the free financial dashboard and the wealth management service. The wealth management option provides an investment management option, which functions as a robo-advisor while providing live support. The free financial dashboard provides budgeting and a cash flow analyzer. The app can also help you with retirement planning and provide an investment checkup.
Pricing: Full access to the financial dashboard is free; wealth management service fees start at 0.89% per year.
Expensify
Available on Android and iOS devices, Expensify is great for making expense reports on the go. A must for frequent business travelers, Expensify allows you to take photos of receipts and manually log expenses. When you take a photo of a receipt in Expensify, the app automatically reads the receipt and translates it into a logged expense. In addition, you can organize your expenses by categories, like mileage, travel and food. Best of all, Expensify is free for individuals and just $5 a month for teams.
Pricing: Individual use is free for up to 25 receipt scans per month; team pricing for unlimited scans starts at $5 per user per month (after a six-week free trial).
SAP Concur
SAP Concur is the perfect business expense reporting app for established (and growing) small and midsize businesses. In addition to the ability to track expenses, SAP Concur has built-in workflows for employee reimbursement, submissions and approvals, invoice tracking, vendor payments, travel booking, and more. The great thing about SAP Concur is that you can build it out however you want, and it charges you accordingly (based on features and number of users). SAP Concur is also a great choice because the company offers a suite of products for small businesses, so you can add more functionality as you need it. The app is free and available on iOS and Android for existing Concur customers.
Pricing: The app is free for existing Concur customers; non-customers should contact Concur for a direct quote.
Wally
Wally is a colorful app with lots of great expense-tracking functionality. You can use Wally on an iOS device, and the basic version of the app is free. Like in other expense-tracking apps, you can take photos of receipts directly in Wally or enter expenses by hand and categorize them accordingly. Wally also tracks your income for you and offers you projected savings for each month. With its focus on personal rather than business finance, Wally is a good fit for people who run microbusinesses or side hustles.
Pricing: The basic version is free; the full premium version (Wally Gold) costs $4.99 per month.
QuickBooks Self-Employed
We already know that QuickBooks is one of the most popular accounting software solutions for entrepreneurs, and the company’s app for expense tracking is also excellent. Compatible with iOS and Android devices, QuickBooks Self-Employed costs $7.50 a month and packs a serious punch in the features department. This app allows you to track business and personal expenses separately. You can automatically track mileage, create and send invoices no matter where you are, estimate taxes quarterly (no math required), and more. You can also pair QuickBooks Self-Employed with TurboTax for just $12 a month and enjoy a super-easy tax filing process. As the name indicates, this app is best for self-employed entrepreneurs or owners of microbusinesses.
Pricing: The app starts at $7.50 per month; you can bundle it with TurboTax for $12 per month.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a comprehensive cloud-based accounting program that starts at $7.50 a month for a single user and five clients. However, if you own a small business, we recommend the $25-monthly plan. This plan allows an unlimited number of clients and an extra staff member, and it offers several useful project management tools. You can access FreshBooks on any iOS or Android device as well as your laptop, making it a good option for entrepreneurs who want a fully functional accounting package that also has mobile expense-tracking abilities.
[Related Read: Best Android Accounting Apps for your Smartphone]
Pricing: The Lite version starts at $7.50 per month (increasing to $15 a month after the first three months); the Premium version starts at $25 per month (increasing to $50 a month after the first three months).
Marcus Insights
When Goldman Sachs’ Clarity Money app shut down in March 2021, its best features were integrated into the company’s Marcus brand. Within the Marcus app or on Marcus.com, you can find a collection of smart tools and trackers known as Marcus Insights. The app has an easy-to-navigate design and supports a wide range of external accounts. You can easily track your expenses at major merchant locations, monitor your cash flow, and see a spending breakdown by category. The Marcus app is available on iOS and Android.
Pricing: The app is free.
Mint
Mint is one the best expense tracker apps known for personal finance tools – and a great option for microbusinesses or side hustles. Mint is free, supports a wide range of banks and lenders, and helps in expense tracking, bills and credit monitoring, and budgeting. It’s available on iOS and Android.
Pricing: Most services are free; premium credit monitoring services are $16.99 per month.
Mvelopes
Mvelopes takes a suggested-spending approach as opposed to analyzing how you have already spent your money. It prevents you from going overboard with your expenses and boasts the ability to help users create a budget in 15 minutes. The app works by having you put cash in various virtual “envelopes,” establishing a budget you cannot exceed during the month. It’s available on iOS and Android.
Pricing: The Basic plan starts at $5.97 per month; the Premier plan typically costs $9.97 per month, with a 30-day free trial.
YNAB
Under YNAB (You Need a Budget), you must account for every dollar they spend and have to work for every dollar you wish to spend. The app works on minimizing debt, as you can only spend what is within your income. It is currently available on iOS and Android.
Pricing: It starts at $11.99 per month, with a 34-day free trial.
What to look for in an expense tracker
Whichever expense tracker you decide to use, you should look for one that can handle the following tasks:
Tracking income and expenses
An expense tracker app should be able to track business expenses and monitor any income. Monitoring spending is important for not only maintaining healthy cash flow but also qualifying for deductions that could reduce your taxable income. It is also highly recommended to separate your business and personal finances to most effectively track each of them.
An expense tracker app should import transactions from your accounts, mobile wallets and credit cards. It should give you a clear image of how much you are making and how much your expenses are. The app should help you determine if expenses are feasible with your income.
Capturing and organizing receipts
A good app should allow you to capture all your receipts when receiving or making payments. Each receipt should be placed under an appropriate category. These receipts are stored in the cloud and can be retrieved anytime. This feature is especially beneficial for employees who travel for business. As such, many receipt-tracking solutions are designed to function well on mobile apps, across various devices and with multiple linked accounts.
Did you know?Did you know? Receipts are critical for employee expense reimbursement, which may be required by law, depending on the role an employee fills in your company.
Organizing tax deductions
An app should categorize the tax required for payment after you key in your income and expenses. Of course, it is always helpful to understand which business tax deductions you can take (and which deductions you should avoid).
Accepting payments and managing invoices
The app should accept debit cards, credit cards, net banking and bankers directly to your invoice. From the app, you should be able to track the status of invoices and credit card bills. The app should automatically match your payments to your invoice and send payment reminders. In addition, you should be able to customize a logo for all your invoices.
[Related Content: Top Invoicing Apps for Businesses]
Running reports
Expense apps should generate and run reports for profit and loss, expenses, income, and balance sheets. You should be able to customize the reports to indicate business needs, as well as to generate budgets and inventory reports.
Tracking sales
Ideally, an expense app should double as an e-commerce solution. The app should connect to your preferred e-commerce application programming interface (API). It should also integrate credit cards to seamlessly track your sales from various payment methods.
Managing vendors and contractors
An expense app should have a feature that allows you to add vendors and contractors and assign them to specific categories.
Providing secure access
An expense management app should allow you to give another party, such as your accountant, secure access to your books. It should also give specific access to certain functions of the expense management software to reduce errors. Secure access allows you to assign work to particular users and increase your team’s productivity without compromising security. You can also create custom permissions for deposits, expense reports, balance sheets and sales transactions to maintain security of sensitive data.
Tracking projects and inventories
An expense management app should be able to track products and the cost of goods; it also should notify you when stock is running low. You should be able to create purchase orders and handle vendors directly in the app.
TipPro tip: Inventory management software can take your inventory tracking to the next level. Integrations with expense trackers and accounting software create an important supply chain asset.
Offering analytics and insight
This feature allows you to create custom reports that are easy to understand with visuals and graphs. You can use the analysis of these reports to make financial decisions. Some of the best budgeting apps come with in-depth analysis tools to determine how well your business is doing. The past and present reports help you forecast future sales and business needs.
Automating workflows
Automated reminders can help you improve your client relationships, cash flow and sales. This saves a lot of time that you would spend tracking bill payments and vendor transactions.
While keeping track of your business purchases can be overwhelming (especially at the onset), expense-tracking apps can make the process easier. Look for solutions that offer various features, including on-the-go and cross-platform functionality, to help you save time and effectively manage your cash flow.
expense apps
Using the best expense tracker apps and software can help you stay on top of your spending. They allow quick and easy tracking of your finances no matter if you’re working from the office, at home or on the move.
THE BEST EXPENSE TRACKER APPS
Click the links below to go to the provider’s website:
- QuickBooks
- Rydoo
- Expensify
- Concur Expense
- Hurdlr
- Zoho Expense
- Pocketguard
If you’re in business, one of the trickiest issues can be managing your accounts effectively. However, using the power of the best expense trackers on the market can streamline how you record your income, expenditure and more.
Even with the use of accounting software, it’s one thing to keep up with your billing and invoicing, but another to manage irregular expenses such as store receipts and travel tickets.
Worse still is that those small expense receipts can become easily misplaced, not least by getting mixed up with your files of normal invoices and end up in the wrong date range, or even thrown away in the trash.
Best expense tracker apps and software options
Luckily, there are a number of software and apps available for managing your expenses, and we’ve picked the best expense tracker apps here.
Some of these are cloud-based, and allow you to use an app on your smartphone or other mobile device to not only enter the amount but also scan the receipt to create a digital image. This makes it much easier to keep a copy and file it away in case it’s needed by your accountant or even someone from your tax office, plus in just using your phone you can do this on the move.
Additionally, the ease by which document scanning can now be done by an app means that you can keep on top of deductible expenses, helping ensure you bank the profit due to you and pay less on taxes.
This becomes an essential concern the more employees a business has, as lost receipts are literally money thrown away. Software that allows businesses to keep a proper record of expenses isn’t just more efficient, it’s also more profitable.
So read on to see our list of the best expense tracker apps and software to help manage your expenses.
We’ve also highlighted the best tax software around today
BEST EXPENSE TRACKER APPS AND SOFTWARE
QuickBooks
QuickBooks has a number of variations on its core theme (Image credit: QuickBooks)
- QuickBooks
Best affordable expense accounting
SPECIFICATIONS
Account linking: YesReceipt recording: YesInvoicing tools: YesMobile/Desktop: Yes
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
VISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Mobile support
+Won’t damage your wallet
REASONS TO AVOID
-Core accounting focus
-Lots to learn
QuickBooks is one of the most popular and effective accounting applications for businesses of all sizes. Available on a variety of platforms, the app aims to keep all aspects of your accounting process running smoothly. There’s a big emphasis on expense tracking here.
There are real-time dashboards so you can keep up-to-date with all your financial transactions as they happen, and you can download bank account data automatically. That way, you won’t have to waste time typing information into spreadsheets.
You can also track invoices to ensure you get paid on time and chase them up when a client’s payment is overdue. The app even provides sales tax tracking compliant with tax standards, and you can capture all your receipts on your mobile device. Perhaps best of all for smaller firms, this is one solution that won’t break the bank.
And it’s getting better all the time. You can also get QuickBooks Self-Employed, QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) and QuickBooks Assistant.
QuickBooks – Get 50% off
QuickBooks – Get 50% off
Save time, track money, and get important insights from one of the best expense tracking packages on the market. Better still, you can currently explore the power of QuickBooks with a free 30-day trial. From there, enjoy savings of up to 50% off the normal price.
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Rydoo
The multi-faceted Rydoo can help with business productivity (Image credit: Rydoo)
- Rydoo
Best simple app for tracking expenses
SPECIFICATIONS
Account linking: YesReceipt recording: YesInvoicing tools: YesMobile/Desktop: Yes
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
VISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Mobile support
+Handy integrations
REASONS TO AVOID
-Won’t be powerful enough for some
-Basic expense tracking
Formerly known as Xpenditure, Rydoo positions itself as paperless expense reporting app for growing business and enterprises. It aims to streamline the way you track expenses, and allow you to do so without having to spend money on an accountant.
The app saves you lots of time in this respect, avoiding manual input and paper-based expense reporting. In terms of capabilities, you can upload receipts via the app or email. Once you’ve done that, it’ll extract the most important data and order all this based on projects and categories.
Within the app, there’s the option to log cash advances and mileages, and you can set up offices, branches and groups to organize how you use the software and to improve your financial policy. For your records, you can generate reports in the form of XML, PDF, CSV and XLS files.
Rydoo – Deals for every kind of business
Rydoo – Deals for every kind of business
Get a great deal on any one of the Rydoo packages, ranging from Starter at $7 per user per month through to Growth for $9 per user per month and on to the beefy Enterprise package. There are Rydoo packages to suit all kinds of business size and you can start with a comprehensive demo to see how it all works. Start a free trial today.
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Expensify
Stay on top of your expenses using the power of Expensify (Image credit: Expensify)
- Expensify
Best automated app for tracking expenses
SPECIFICATIONS
Account linking: YesReceipt recording: YesInvoice tools: YesMobile/Desktop: Yes
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
VISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Automated features
+Smart reporting and integrations
+Free individual plan
REASONS TO AVOID
-Some may prefer manual tracking
-Auto reimbursement functionality
-Receipt scanning
Expensify is an automated business app that aims to manage your expenses in real-time. The app wants to cut out all the hassle in accounting and ensure your books are kept up-to-date, letting you worry about other things.
Through the app, you can scan your receipts and log your outgoings. It’ll then generate reports and submit them to you for approval. And because Expensify analyses your company policies, it knows exactly what to send.
What’s also useful is that the software sports an automatic reimbursement system. The latter will rapidly deliver money to employee bank accounts based on your accounting reports. Because the app is cloud-based and real-time, all changes are remembered. You needn’t worry about losing important financial data.
Expensify – Save up to 50%
Expensify – Save up to 50%
Get up to 50% off Expensify, which is one of the leading lights in the expense tracking software marketplace. Businesses will find the likes of the Collect option, which is priced from $5 per user per month or the Control package from $9 per user per month when you enroll for the Expensify Card a real boon.
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SAP Concur
SAP Concur has a premium set of features and functions (Image credit: SAP)
- Concur Expense
Best enterprise-grade expense tracking app
SPECIFICATIONS
Account linking: YesReceipt recording: YesInvoice tools: YesMobile/Desktop: Yes
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
VISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Streamlines expense process
+Tax compliant
REASONS TO AVOID
-May be too advanced for SMEs
-Lack of integrations
Concur Expense by SAP is a business finance app that covers a number of areas, from invoicing to expense management. Positioned as an ecosystem and open platform, the app will help you stay compliant with regulations and optimize expense performance.
With the expense side of things in mind specifically, there’s an app that lets you take pictures of receipts and submit them to make expense claims. Bosses can quickly manage and approve them with the software, and everything is tightly organized.
You can add as many business bank cards as you want, and there’s also integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) to give you a complete view of your budget and forecasts. The software analyses all your data and ensures it’s fully compliant with tax rules and regulations, plus Concur is protected by corporate-grade security, too.
SAP Concur Expense – Powerful reporting on tap
SAP Concur Expense – Powerful reporting on tap
Say goodbye to manual expense reporting and lost receipts with the power and precision of a SAP Concur Expense account. Test drive the software for free or arrange for a demo to see how it ticks and then tailor a package to suit your business size.
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Hurdlr
Simplify your expense claims using the versatility of Hurdlr (Image credit: Hurdlr)
- Hurdlr
Best integrated tracking app
SPECIFICATIONS
Account linking: YesReceipt recording: YesInvoice tools: YesMobile/Desktop: Yes
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
VISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+Automated tracking
+Integrate with accounts
+Tax filing included
+Free tier
REASONS TO AVOID
-Free tier option is limited
-Quite complex in places
Hurdlr is an expense tracking app that aims to make the whole process simple, automated, and more efficient, helping to increase your tax deductions.
Specifically developed for freelancers, realtors, hosts, drivers & couriers, Hurdlr offers to auto-track mileage as well as every expense, so that you can claim for every deduction due to you.
The software can also provide real-time status updates of your profit before and after tax, on top of tracking your income and expense streams in a single place.
You can also link the app to your financial accounts, and the app can even be used to automatically send your tax filings to your CPA.
Altogether, Hurdlr offers a comprehensive range of features along with expense tracking, and their recent acquisition of Deductr can only help increase their list.
Even better is that there is a free tier available.
Hurdlr – Try it free
Hurdlr – Try it free
Hurdlr automatically tracks all of your mileage, expenses, income streams, and tax deductions in real-time. There are plans to suit all business needs, with Premium from $8.34 a month and Pro for $16.67 a month. Alternatively, there’s a completely free edition or an Enterprise package with many extra features.
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Zoho Expense
Zoho Expense lets you manage expenses and work with their other apps (Image credit: Zoho)
- Zoho Expense
Best app for easy expense tracking
SPECIFICATIONS
Account linking: YesReceipt recording: YesInvoicing tools: YesMobile/Desktop: Yes
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
VISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+UK-specific features
+Works with QuickBooks
REASONS TO AVOID
-Text heavy
-Little data visualisation
Zoho Expense comes from business software specialist Zoho and is an expense tracking app aimed at small to medium sized businesses (SMB).
The application can automatically turn receipts into expense entries and several can be grouped together into a single report. There’s also the possibility to import card transactions and forward expenses from your inbox.
Receipts are stored in the cloud, so you don’t have to worry about receipts fading or getting lost.
For organizations, it’s possible to set policies about spending limits and to monitor an employee’s expenditure or any policy violation. The addition of instant approval makes life easier for both the business and employee.
Finally, there are UK specific features. VAT is automatically calculated and mileage expenses are calculated at HMRC rates.
Zoho Expense – Comprehensive expense management
Zoho Expense – Comprehensive expense management
For over 5 years Zoho Expense has helped tens of thousands of businesses streamline corporate travel, automate expense reporting, gain complete control over spending, and get crucial financial insights to stay two steps ahead. Enjoy a free trial or get a demo to see how it all works.
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Pocketguard
Pocketguard delivers a no-nonsense expense management experience (Image credit: Pocketguard)
- Pocketguard
Best straightforward option for expense tracking
SPECIFICATIONS
Account linking: YesReceipt recording: YesInvoicing tools: YesMobile/Desktop: Yes
TODAY’S BEST DEALS
VISIT SITE
REASONS TO BUY
+A doddle to master
+Great Mac and Android apps
REASONS TO AVOID
-Only for more basic money matters
-Plus edition adds cost
Pocketguard is perfect you’re often in the position where you’re feeling a little bit nervous about just how much you’re spending. This is a financial management app, for both Mac OS and Android, plus there’s a desktop edition too.
However, if you’re looking for a handy quick reference guide to your finances at any time of the day, or night, then the mobile edition of this package is certainly one to try.
It’s available for both the US and Canadian markets and allows you to get all of your incoming and outgoings into one convenient place and subsequently get budgeting much more efficiently thanks to its central In My Pocket star feature.
Pocketguard comes in a basic edition, which is still pretty well stacked, that comes with no cost attached. If you’re suitably smitten with what it does then you may want to boost the usability by plumping for the Pocketguard Plus model.
Pocketguard – Simple expense tracking
Pocketguard – Simple expense tracking
PocketGuard makes it easy to take control of your money, optimize your spending and grow your savings automatically. Better yet, it’s easy to sign up and try the software for yourself. Even in its most basic guise the package has plenty of features, but get the best from Pocketguard by heading for the Plus edition.
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BEST EXPENSE TRACKER APPS AND SOFTWARE: HOW DID WE CHOOSE?
We’ve spent time using the best expense tracker apps and software collection assembled here to see just how well suited it is for business use.
The software has been evaluated for power, performance and reliability. However, we also keep an eye on just how easy expense packages are to use in day-to-day workplace scenarios.
You may well be looking for an expense tracking system that will be used by many different employees, which means that usability is a big part of the package.
On top of that we’ve also taken a look at what levels of support are available with expense tracking software. Ensuring that you’ll have someone on hand to help you through any issues further down the line is always a bonus and in many ways one of the most important aspects to think about.
BEST EXPENSE TRACKER APPS AND SOFTWARE: HOW DO WE TEST?
When testing the best expense tracker apps and software we’ll try each selected package on a compatible mobile device, or laptop, depending on the platform it has been designed for.
First and foremost, we look for ease of use because simplifying the process of managing your finances is the whole point of an expense tracker. We look for versatility, flexibility and how well the package integrates with things like the best tax software.
In addition, being able to use the same data from the best expense tracker apps and software with the best accounts software is vital too. Knowing that you can amalgamate all of your figures, quickly and easily is a large part of the appeal of software like this.
We also evaluate the value for money aspect of the best expense tracker apps, and check that each package delivers everything as expected. The same goes for any desktop editions of the same software.
Conclusion
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