What is spend management software?
Benefits of using spend management software
- Increased efficiency: Through automation and data analysis, spend management systems simplify the process of tracking, managing, and controlling spending, which enables businesses to boost their overall efficiency.
- Improves all areas of the business: Better spend management processes benefit all areas of the business. For example, integrating spend management platforms with a modern travel management platform such as TravelPerk helps finance managers better streamline and control travel expenses and enforce company travel policy.
- Reduced costs: Spend management solutions give finance managers better visibility into spending patterns to help them identify and reduce redundant costs.
- Enhanced spending visibility: These tools provide detailed reports and analytics to give financial managers granular insights into business expenditures, enabling them to make more informed decisions.
- Automated tasks: Finance managers benefit from automations such as approval workflows, expense reviews, and reconciliation, which frees up time for them to focus on optimizing spend in other areas.
- Improved compliance: Spend management software can build businesses’ specific policies into the software to ensure that spending remains in compliance.
The 7 best spend management software solutions
- Key features and ease of use
- Customer ratings on software review sites, G2 and Capterra
- Each solution’s most rated features
- Pricing options
- Languages supported by the solution
1. Airbase
Airbase noteworthy features
- Airbase offers both physical and virtual cards and organizations can earn unlimited cash back across all categories of spend when making purchases.
- The platform supports international multi-subsidiary support and purchase orders with automated 3-way matching.
- Airbase uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to scan invoices and create bills.
- Users can automatically create, execute, and track a straight-line amortization schedule for both virtual card and bill payment transactions.
- When employees scan receipts, Airbase scans and populates the expense details, submits the report for approval, and sends the reimbursement directly to employees’ bank accounts.
- The platform enables approvers to set mandatory fields, a time window for submission, and budget limits.
How customers rate Airbase
Airbase’s most rated features
- Approval workflow: 5/5
- Budgeting/forecasting: 5/5
- Expense tracking: 5/5
- Spend analysis: 5/5
- Spend control: 5/5
- Supplier management: 5/5
- Receipt management: 4.8/5
Airbase pricing
Languages supported by Airbase
2. BILL Spend & Expense (Formerly Divvy)
BILL Spend & Expense noteworthy features
- Approvers can set spending limits and merchant controls which are directly tied to employee cards to prevent overspending or spending out of policy.
- Users can customize BILL Spend & Expense to mirror their chart of accounts by integrating it with accounting software.
- BILL Spend & Expense syncs automatically with employee credit cards to provide real-time visibility into spend by department, team, project, and individual budget.
- The tool’s mobile receipt upload and push notifications feature enables quick employee reimbursements.
- BILL Spend & Expense’s Payments Services feature is a free vendor payment solution designed to streamline the accounts payables process by handling payment processing and remittance.
How customers rate BILL Spend & Expense
BILL Spend & Expense’s most rated features
- Expense tracking: 4.8/5
- Receipt management: 4.8/5
- Spend control: 4.7/5
- Budgeting/Forecasting: 4.4/5
- Approval workflow: 4.3/5
- Spend analysis: 4.1/5
BILL Spend & Expense pricing
Languages supported by BILL Spend & Expense
3. Ramp
Ramp noteworthy features
- Ramp digitizes approval policies and spend guidelines, enables users to pre-approve expenses, and flags out-of-policy items for automatic review.
- The platform facilitates fast receipt collection via integrations with Gmail, Lyft, and Amazon Business.
- Ramp offers virtual and physical cards with unlimited 1.5% cash back on purchases.
- The tool’s accounting automations help businesses manage vendor data, bill payment details, and category tracking.
- Ramp syncs general ledger category mappings and automatically syncs events to NetSuite, Sage, QuickBooks, or Xero to remove multiple entries.
How customers rate Ramp
Ramp’s most rated features
- Expense tracking: 5/5
- Approval process control: 5/5
- Audit trail: 5/5
- Mobile receipt upload: 5/5
- Workflow management: 5/5
- Reimbursement management: 4.7/5
- Budgeting/forecasting: 4/5
- Receipt management: 4/5
Ramp pricing
Languages supported by Ramp
4. Spendesk
Spendesk noteworthy features
- Budgets are integrated into businesses’ spending processes for automated spend control.
- The Spendesk mobile app enables employees to instantly claim reimbursements for business-related expenses with photos of receipts.
- Spendesk offers physical and virtual cards with adjustable and pre-defined budgets.
- Accounts payable processes are optimized by linking purchase orders and supplier invoices to team approvals, budgets, payments, and accounting.
- Spendesk’s consolidated reporting feature helps finance teams and managers tag transactions with cost centers, projects, and labels and gain better visibility into the procurement process.
How customers rate Spendesk
Spendesk’s most rated features
- Spend control: 5/5
- Receipt management: 4.5/5
- Approval process control: 4.5/5
- Mobile receipt upload: 4.4/5
- Expense tracking: 4.3/5
- Corporate card: 3.5/5
- Reimbursement management: 3/5
Spendesk pricing
- Starter: For up to seven users, including one approver. This plan is aimed at entrepreneurs and small to mid-sized businesses looking to manage day-to-day expenses.
- Essentials: For unlimited users and approvers. This plan is designed for small to mid-sized businesses that want to control their spend management process in one place.
- Scale: For unlimited users and approvers. This plan is for larger businesses that require more control, flexibility, and automation in their enterprise spend management processes.
Languages supported by Spendesk
5. Emburse
Emburse noteworthy features
- Businesses can create virtual and physical cards with specific spend management rules.
- The tool scans receipts and populates receipt data using optical character recognition.
- Users can create and submit expense forms and managers can approve expenses from both smartphone and desktop devices.
- The platform automates accounts payable and purchasing workflows.
- Emburse’s dashboards provide insights into spending data to help finance managers optimize cash flow, identify unusual trends, and set improved budgets.
How customers rate Emburse
Emburse’s most rated features
- Spend control: 5/5
- Time and expense tracking: 4.9/5
- Audit trail: 4.8/5
- Mobile receipt upload: 4.8/5
- Receipt management: 4.8/5
- Expense tracking: 4.6/5
- Approval process control: 4.6/5
- Reimbursement management: 4.4/5
Emburse pricing
- Certify Now!: This plan is aimed at small businesses with 1-25 employees and costs $12 per user/month.
- Professional: This plan is designed for businesses with 25-200 employees and offers full-service implementation in under 30 days. Instead of a monthly subscription model, users are charged a monthly service fee on a custom quote basis.
- Enterprise: For businesses with over 200 employees, users can expect annual fixed pricing on a custom quote basis.
Languages supported by Emburse
6. PayEm
PayEm noteworthy features
- OCR technology for reading invoices with 95% accuracy.
- Corporate physical and virtual cards with control tools.
- Customizable intake forms for enhanced employee experience.
- Comprehensive budget management tools for better control and informed financial decisions.
- Simplified approval process through Slack integration for faster request and approval.
- Full suite of AP automation and procurement features to reduce manual work and accelerate workflows.
- A mobile application.
- Detailed financial insights, customizable workflows, and integrations with other tools, including TravelPerk.
How customers rate PayEm
PayEm’s most rated features
PayEm pricing
Languages supported by PayEm
7. Teampay
Teampay noteworthy features
- The tool automates the collection and reconciliation of purchase data and captures an audit trail of all spending conversations in one place.
- Teampay supports automated invoice processing and purchase order matching, routing for approval and payment, and uses OCR technology to automatically scan invoice data.
- Teampay provides both physical and virtual cards and supports employee expense management by ensuring every transaction complies with company policy.
- The platform’s proprietary Purchase Assistant chatbot integrates with Slack and Microsoft teams, guides employees through the purchasing process, and collects approvals upfront.
- Teampay centralizes all updated spend data in real time and provides report dashboards for instant visibility into company spending.