Non-payroll expenditure is a major avenue of income leakage for small businesses. This is because it comes in trickles and can build volume over time and impact the profitability of a business or its ability to stay afloat.
It’s easy to overlook those budget leaks and run into trouble over time. The good news is that technology – spend management software specifically – can alleviate this problem and contribute to an effective spend management system.
Whatever your business size is, when a finance system needs to have clear processes, better visibility, and control of expenditures, then spending management tools become essential. This guide will help you understand the best spend management software.
Keep in mind that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our comparisons and recommendations. We try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.
Table of Contents
What is spend management software?
The term spend management software refers to any tool that simplifies the management of employee expenses. It can be simple receipt scanning tools or fully integrated credit facility management.
It tracks and manages non-payroll business expenses like raw materials, components, marketing, and subscriptions. With spend management software, you can examine spending data across an organization to gain insight into company spending.
What then is spend management itself? Simply put, It is the process of gathering, compiling, monitoring, grouping, and measuring spending. It is designed to improve efficiency, reduce procurement costs, and safeguard compliance. An organization can improve value by holistically managing its spending.
Business spending can be divided into different categories:
- Strategic: C-level executives and focused spenders usually oversee strategic spending. It can be managed through invoices, wire transfers, and purchase orders.
- Operational: A centralized budget for discretionary and operational expenditures is also available, but these are spent by managers and employees daily. Business trips, card purchases, subscriptions, digital ads, events, and office orders fall into this category.
- Employee expenses: A significant portion of expenses are small purchases difficult to manage. Wire transfers, purchase orders, and invoices can all be used as methods to manage the payment. Card payments, expense claims, travel expenses, and more fall into this category.
This article presents seven spend management software solutions for small to medium-size businesses. You’ll learn the strongest features of these solutions as well as their prices to help you decide which one will be most beneficial for your business.
1. Tradogram
Tradeogram is a web-based spend management application that offers complete spend management, purchase order management, and more at a reasonable cost. The program simplifies all aspects of procurement. This includes purchase planning, communication, and collaboration with various stakeholders. It also allows ease in the tracking and controlling of expenditures with 100% visibility.
From start to finish, Tradeogram offers all the tools you need to streamline your entire purchasing process. These features include flexible requests (RFP and RFQ), simple internal requisitions, and automated purchase orders. Custom approval routing, supplier contracts management, detailed delivery tracking, automatic account reconciliation, real-time budgeting, etc. are also available.
Key features
- Multi-level management of branches and departments by grouping users and connecting locations.
- Real-time monitoring and analysis of all company spend levels.
- Secures purchase data by creating custom purchase orders.
- You can track the purchase history of each item and set target costs for items or services that you regularly order.
- Easy access to your items list with import and organization.
- The report builder feature enables you to build reports from a range of data, such as items, categories, purchase orders, and more.
- Keeps track of stock items and sets reorder points
- An email notification is sent to all approvers when action must be taken.
Cons
- The platform is not supported on iPhone/iPad
- No status tracking feature
Pricing
It has three (3) packages. They include; Basic which is free to use but with limited features, Premium for $18, and Enterprise which is a custom solution based on special needs, and the cost is available on request.
2. Bento for Business
Bento for Business is an intuitive platform for managing spend via cards. The financial operating platform of Bento enables small to medium size businesses to issue physical and virtual payment credentials. Companies can control and monitor their expenses and company spending with a high level of transparency.
Its AI-based receipt capture and comprehensive reporting tools make it easy to organize your business’ finances. The system automates expense reporting and exports data to QuickBooks or other accounting software.
Tracking and eliminating unnecessary spending is easy with Bento. Among the ways it does this is by setting daily spend limits, limiting merchant types, disabling international transactions, and setting an auto-on/auto-off feature when a card is misplaced or lost.
Key features
- Merchant categories can be restricted to prevent unauthorized use.
- The spending limit is restricted to workdays only.
- Two card options are available – spend limit cards and fixed value card
- All transactions can be viewed, and users can filter them by date, type, card, tag, category, or search.
- A user may select from two alert types associated with declined transactions and low balances, which are generated automatically.
- A card can be set up to handle different types of expenses, such as fuel, gas, petty cash, work expenses, and so on.
- Expenses are displayed on the dashboard in real-time, organized by card/person and spend category.
Cons
- Not suitable for large enterprises
- Limited accounting software integrations (only Quickbooks)
Pricing
Bento for Business offers four pricing plans and it comes with a 60-day free trial period. The plans include; Starter at $29/month, Team at $69/month, Professional at $149/month, and Enterprise which is a tailored package to suit specific needs.
3. Divvy
Divvy lets businesses manage payments and subscriptions, create strategic budgets, and eliminate expense reports using a secure financial platform with cards. It provides instant insight into organizational spending by integrating real-time tracking into every business transaction.
It automatically captures receipts, generating a log of itemized spending data without manual entry. Team members are provided with real-time insight into their current spending and remaining budget. It also hosts multiple integrations including QuickBooks, Xero, Intacct, Netsuite, and more. This makes exporting data seamless and ensures data synchronization.
Divvy can help you track, report, and prevent employee fraud by automatically recording, reporting, and submitting expenses. It is suitable for all sizes of business including freelancers, and supports Web, Android, and iPhone/iPad platforms.
Key features
- Divvy’s budgeting software synchronizes with employee credit cards automatically.
- You can see real-time spending information across departments, teams, projects, or individuals.
- Admins can approve or deny requests on their phone or online by receiving push notifications
- Pre-spend approval limits are built into budgets
- Card limits are reset monthly so you won’t miss vendor payments or lose money.
- Unique card numbers per vendor
- Managers can freeze or delete individual cards as needed
- Mobile receipt upload available via mobile app
- Two-step approval process and automatic mileage rate update.
Cons
- No invoice management feature
- No currency conversion feature
Pricing
The Divvy software is free to use for managing expenses, budgets, cards, and more. However, the service charge on the spend card ( i.e the charge whenever the card is used) is shared between Divvy and the card issuer.
4. Procurify
Procurify is spend management software that simplifies business spending and empowers forward-thinking organizations for success. The intuitive interface allows users to track, control, and analyze their spending proactively. Insight into spending is provided by real-time data, enabling savings and driving efficiency.
Integrating with many ERP systems, Procurify manages over $20 billion of spending as part of its portfolio. Real-time visibility into how money is flowing out of your organization allows you to make smarter purchases and prepare for audits. You can record conversations, store supporting documents, view spending trends, and gain insights quickly.
With Procurify, you can track your recurring charges every month. Also, you can make recurring purchases to track recurring expenses including monthly software subscriptions.
Key features
- Customize approval flows for your organization.
- Get push notifications to mobile, email, and Slack to improve turnaround times.
- Overcommitted expenditures are reported on graphs in real-time.
- Budgets can be set up by locations, departments, projects, and more.
- Reloadable spending cards to streamline your purchasing process.
- The purchase order is automatically generated with custom branding and fields.
- Real-time budget tracking
- Mobile access to insights and analytics
Cons
- Few integrations available
- No search and filter feature
Pricing
It has three (3) packages available and is tailored to specific business needs. They include; Pioneer, Voyager, and Enterprise. All prices are available on request.
5. Airbase
The Airbase Spend Management Software is a user-friendly and cloud-based product that provides three solutions in one for all non-payroll spend. It streamlines billing, corporate card usage, and expense reimbursements. A real-time reporting system, approval workflows, and accounting automation support all of this.
Businesses can simplify their spend requests and approval processes, reduce excess costs, and combat fraud by using Airbase. Using a custom approval routing workflow, supervisors can issue physical or virtual corporate cards to their employees. Also, employees can submit recurring and one-time requests, attach or describe documents, and include files.
The solution standardizes practices, eliminates reconciliations, provides a complete audit trail, and forms a single source of truth for all expenditures. Typical users include teams with accounting and finance responsibility, budget owners, employees, leaders, and vendors. Airbase supports teams located remotely, international teams, office-based teams, and domestic and international vendors.
Key features
- Spending data from multiple sources can be tracked in real-time
- Invoice information is stored in one place, and email correspondence is added to the information automatically.
- Automatically calculate, execute, and track straight-line amortization schedules for virtual cards and bill payments.
- Offers virtual and physical spend cards with automatic audit trail upon generation.
- Virtual cards and purchases are approved before implementation.
- All approval requests are automatically routed to the appropriate approver(s) via email and Slack to ensure rapid processing.
- Payments to employee accounts are automated, so confusion over payroll tax is avoided.
- Multiple third-party integrations are available.
Cons
- No categorization and grouping feature.
- Limited customer support options.
Pricing
It has three paid pricing packages and a free one with limited features. They include; Free, Growth, Premium, and Suite. The costs per plan are available on request on the site.
6. Spendesk
Spendesk is a comprehensive solution for managing spending. All your business spending is under control with company cards, expense reimbursements, invoice management, and automated accounting — using just one software tool. This platform is designed for both finance teams and employees.
Control over spending is achieved by authorizing pre-payments and creating unique virtual cards that reduce risk. Expense reports are created 100% digitally in seconds and managers can approve them even faster. Unique features in Spendesk include automated receipt capture, real-time reconciliation, report generation, and more. Allowances for mileage and per diem can be calculated automatically by simply entering trip details into the platform.
Managers can also track real-time spending, payments, and approvals from a central window. Budgets are integrated into your spending process so that budget management is automated and effortless.
Key features
- Receipt reconciliation, expense account allocation, and VAT extraction are automated.
- Real-time insights and reports are available.
- Individual spending limits and workflows for team approval are set up to let budget owners keep control over their spending.
- Tracking of requests, approvals, reviews, and exports in a complete audit trail.
- Secure businesses against internal and external fraud and abuse through single-use virtual cards.
- The dashboard displays online and offline transactions in real-time.
- Spendesk provides accurate and pre-filled accounting data.
- Enable and disable the cash withdrawal feature.
- Multi Language support
Cons
- No Quickbooks integration.
- No categorization and grouping feature.
Pricing
A 30-day free demo is available for all packages and no credit card is required. It has 3 pricing plans namely; Starters, Essentials, and Scale. Also, the cost per plan is available on request.
7. SpendMap
SpendMap provides affordable, easy-to-use spend management software systems that simplify the procurement process and enable organizations to better control their expenses. With SpendMap, things like requisition and approval processes, purchase orders, expense reports, invoice approvals, and inventory control are automated.
It comes in two platforms; Cloud-based, and on-premise installation. Whether you have a large team, multiple locations, or a complex purchase order process, SpendMap offers a powerful yet affordable solution to help simplify your entire purchasing process and better control spending.
The system provides modular functionality that can be expanded as your needs grow, so you can start small and scale up over time.
Key Features
- Two options are available for installation- cloud-based and on-premise
- SpendMap automates purchasing processes.
- Automated email notifications to line managers/approvers
- Full audit trail available
- Approvals can be done on any internet-enabled device
- Easy Integrations with eCommerce stores with PunchOut feature
- Easily convert approved requisitions into PO ( purchase order) with no extra data entry.
- Instant stock value calculations for month-end and year-end reports.
- The fixed asset management tool is available
Cons
- No Ad-hoc reporting feature
- No accounting integration is available
Pricing
It has a forever-free plan but with limited features. The cloud-based solution starts at $20/user/month while the on-premises solution starts at $350/per user as a one-time fee. Plans have a 7-day trial
- Conclusion
Effectively and efficiently managing your non-payroll and recurring spending is a sure way of charting a profitable course for your business. It enables you to focus on the more important aspects of your business – your core competency. Utilizing any of the above spend management software can have a marked impact on your business. Choose the one that meets your needs and take it for a spin to see its impact first hand.
ITrackingd eliminating unnecessary spending is easy with Bento. port your employee roster and order cards for your whole team with just a couple of clicks
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