Intro
If you are a growing business managing expenses across a global workforce or projects, controlling your company's costs and maintaining visibility over them is essential. Finding the right tools to help your company manage spend is imperative to your company's efficiency and success.
A top-of-mind priority as a finance leader is to optimise your company's spending and cash flow. You must manage company spending, including marketing, employee claims, software subscriptions, and business expenses. You will require real-time visibility and control over your company's expenses and advanced accounting integrations to aid with financial reporting. These tasks can be tedious and time-consuming without the right tools. The right expense management software will allow finance leaders to manage their expenses end-to-end, giving them control and real-time visibility over their company's expenses across various categories.
This article will discuss some of the best expense management software providers in 2023, highlighting their key benefits and factors to consider.
What is expense management software?
In simple terms, expense management software is a tool which helps your business manage any spending within the company. There are various types of company spending, which can come in the form of marketing and advertising spend, employee expenses, software subscription, and any non-payroll-related costs.
By having visibility over your spending, your business can better track and manage finances, allowing for planning and forecasting of future spend and efficient management of cash flows.
Characteristics of a good expense management solution
Integration to your company’s accounting software
A good expense management software should have integrations with popular accounting software such as Xero, Quickbooks and Netsuite. For example, Aspire can automatically sync transaction statements and send attachments to your accounting software. It takes one click to reconcile financial statements so that finance teams can close books in record time.
Control of spend with multi-layer approvals
Traditionally, budget approvals were a long-drawn process which had to go through multiple approvers before reaching the finance manager/CFO to give the green light. With a good expense management solution, the process should ideally be customisable, with the flexibility to set budgets for different teams and appoint separate approvers (team manager, regional head) to facilitate the spending process.
Real-time visibility of spend
A finance leader needs to know how much their company has spent at any point in time. A good expense management solution should have a real-time dashboard that provides this information so that finance teams can get insights and forecast spending more efficiently.
Receipt collection
Most businesses spend significant time storing and processing documents like receipts and invoices. A good expense management solution should remove the manual component of this process, allowing you to capture and store these documents quickly and easily. For employees to get reimbursed, they have to upload receipts of their expenses into the system.
Transaction fees for each expense
If you have a global workforce making multiple FX payments, hefty FX fees can quickly accumulate, resulting in unnecessary costs borne by the company. When considering which expense management solution to use, transaction fees and FX markup should be a primary consideration.
Flexible pricing
Companies of different sizes will have different numbers of employees and different levels of team spending. When choosing an expense management software that fits your company’s needs, pricing will be one of the top considerations as your team grows.
Integrated business account
If the expense management solution is integrated with a business account, this would be seamless as your business cash flow is in one place, and all expenses can be deducted directly from your account balance without the finance leader having to do a manual top-up, as would be the case in a wallet system.
Comparing expense management software providers
Aspire
Aspire is a fintech company headquartered in Singapore with a presence throughout Southeast Asia. It’s backed by world-class venture capitalists, including Lightspeed, Sequoia, Tencent, and Paypal Ventures, to name a few. Aspire is also trusted by businesses worldwide, including Endowus, Tech in Asia, Love Bonito, Glints, Grain, Y Combinator and more.
Key Benefits:
- Advanced integration with Xero, Netsuite, SAP etc.
- Multi-level approval flows
- Control spending with Budgets
- Automated receipt collection
- Best FX rates, up to 3x cheaper than banks
- Credit limit for card payments (subject to eligibility)
Aspire is currently the only player in the market to offer an expense management solution integrated with a business account. This means that your business can receive money and spend all-in-one, which makes managing your company’s expenses much more seamless, compared to other providers where you must manually top-up funds into a wallet to spend. Finance leaders can also achieve real-time visibility and control of their company’s spend with our automated hourly bank feed to sync transactions directly. On top of that, our competitive FX rates and zero markups make us a top choice for local companies with international employees. Click the link below to get started with our expense management solution today!
Expensify
Expensify is a fintech company headquartered in the US. They provide a payment application to help businesses worldwide simplify how they manage money.
Key Benefits:
- Customisable pricing starting from S$12/employee/month
- Create budgets for projects/teams
- Multi-level approval flows
- Automated receipt collection
Areas to note:
- One limitation of Expensify is that it requires companies to have an existing business account to be connected to their software.
- This means that all business expenses must go through an external bank account, an additional step that will add time to the process.
- Additionally, there is no feature to reimburse international employees in the currency of their choice. Expensify reimburse international employees in USD, which they must convert into their desired currency before sending it to their local bank account. This translates to FX fees that have to be borne by the employee.
- Expensify is one of the pricier options in the market. If you have a team of 100 - that’s a monthly subscription of S$1200, not forgetting any prevailing transaction fees.
Volopay
Volopay is a fintech company headquartered in Singapore. They provide a business management solution to streamline expense workflows for businesses in Southeast Asia.
Key Benefits:
- Create budgets for projects/teams
- Multi-level approval flows
- Automated receipt collection
Areas to note:
- Volopay operates on a multi-currency wallet system on top of its expense management software. This means that the finance leaders of companies have to ensure that there are always sufficient funds in their digital wallet to reimburse employees. This is an additional step that adds time to the process.
- Volopay also charges a 0.5% markup and up to a S$15 fee for international transfers. This can add up quickly with frequent international transfers, impacting your company’s bottom line.
Spenmo
Spenmo is a fintech company headquartered in Singapore. They provide an all-in-one software for businesses to manage their finances.
Key Benefits:
- Customisable pricing starting from S$99/month for 50 users
- Create budgets for projects/teams
- Multi-level approval flows
- Auto receipt reminders
Areas to note:
- Like Volopay, Spenmo operates on a multi-currency wallet system on top of its expense management software. This means that the finance leaders of companies have to ensure that there are always sufficient funds in their digital wallet to reimburse employees. This is an additional step that adds time to the process.
- Spenmo also charges a S$0.50 fee for local transfers and an undisclosed markup for international transfers. This can add up quickly with frequent international transfers, affecting your bottom line.
- Additionally, Spenmo only has direct integrations with Xero and Jurnal, which may be a disadvantage for companies using other accounting software like Quickbooks or Netsuite.
Conclusion
Choosing the most appropriate expense management software solution for your business needs is crucial for managing and optimising your company's finances. With the different providers in the market, it can be challenging to decide when the offerings are similar.
It is essential to consider the nuances in the features' functionality to choose the best software to meet your company's finance needs. For example, if having an integrated business account on top of expense management software is important to ensure ease of employee reimbursements, Aspire's software will be the right choice for your business.
Other features such as customisable approval flows, spend analytics, preferential transaction fees, and flexible pricing can also move the needle in helping your business operate more efficiently from a finance standpoint. Click the link below to learn more about Aspire's expense management solution today!
Frequently Asked Questions
