Best Expense Tracker for Small Businesses

The best expense tracker apps on the market help your business track spending, whether you’re working from home, from the office, or on the go. One of the biggest challenges of running your own business is trying to keep track of each account. However, a business expense tracker can help simplify how you record your business’s spending and income.

Even using accounting software, it’s one thing to try and keep up with your invoicing and billing, but it’s another thing entirely to manage irregular expenses like travel tickets or store receipts. To add another layer of complexity to the process, you have to track all of those small expense receipts that can easily get lost or mixed into your normal invoices or files, thrown in the trash, or end up in the incorrect date range pile.

Lucky for you, there are several expense trackers available to help you manage your expenses, and we’ve picked out several of the best options. Some of our choices are cloud-based and come with an expense tracker app that you can use on your iOS or Android device and scan the receipt to create a digital image. It can also help you stay on top of your business’s deductible expenses so you pay less on taxes and benefit your business’s bottom line.

Defining a Business Expense Tracker

Also called a money manager or an expense manager, a business expense tracker is an application or software that helps you keep accurate records of your cash flow, both in and out. This is a powerful tool for your business because it’s easy to overspend, which can be disastrous for your business.

For example, many people live on a fixed income, and it’s not uncommon for these people to find at the end of the month that they don’t have enough money left to meet their needs. Now, this could be a problem due to low salary, but poor money management skills also factor in. The same thing can happen to your business if you’re not careful.

Having a comprehensive expense tracker can help you keep track of how much money you spend every day and what you spend money on. At the end of the month, you’ll be able to look back and get a clear picture of where all of your business’s money is going. This is one of the easiest ways to control your spending and bring order to your business’s finances.

For a better understanding of business expenses, check our article.

Different Types of Expense Trackers

There are several different types of expense trackers on the market today. Some are free while some are paid. There are even banks that offer expense trackers to their customers to help them with their finances. It’s important to decide which type of tracker you want before you start comparing products.

Depending on the size of your business, you may choose to stay away from complex platforms that have a very steep learning curve. On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re looking for something that has a host of features to handle all of your business’s finances and expenses seamlessly, a simple app will be useless. You can divide trackers into two categories:

• Simple – These simpler expense trackers are quick, and they allow you to track your personal expenses. They’re not ideal for business use.
• Complex – A complex expense tracker allows you to easily manage several users accounts, and you can integrate it with your accounting team. They’re specially designed for businesses or people who have a decent amount of money and want to keep track of multiple expense accounts.

How an Expense Tracker App can Benefit Your Small Business

There are several ways that the right business expense tracker can benefit your small business. Knowing what the biggest benefits are will help you decide whether or not you want to invest in one of these items for yourself.

1. Better Money Management

Having a lack of cash flow can make your business fail. As a small business owner, it should be a priority to stay on top of your monthly budget because it’s essential for your success. Knowing where your money is going using an expense tracker app offers a better way to manage your budget.

Recording your daily expenses can ensure that you are in the know about your finances all year long instead of just during tax season. Knowing exactly where all of your money is going and tracking how much you’re spending can help you improve your general spending habits. You’ll also have a much clearer idea of where you can allocate any leftover money to create a positive impact on your business.

2. Tax Season Preparation

Tax season can be a very stressful time for anyone, but small business owners can feel the pressure even more. Keeping a daily expense record can help you avoid sorting through mounds of papers, your desk drawers, and your vehicle for receipts. Also, you should know what expenses your business has that are tax-deductible to ensure you’re not missing out on any money. The most popular deductible expenses for a small business include:

• Bank fees and interest
• Business meals
• Education
• Home office expenses
• Office supplies
• Telephone and internet expenses
• Travel expenses to attend client meetings

3. Reimburse Your Employees with Expense Tracking

It’s common for employees of small businesses to spend money on meals, travel expenses, and other purposes that come with normal business operations. Having a streamlined business expense tracker that reports individual employee spending will help you reimburse them quickly and easily. Routine expense tracking gives you a clear picture of your business’s operational costs. You’ll also be able to keep your team happy by reimbursing them for traveling for the business.

4. Easier Business Forecasting

When you keep accurate expense tracking records, it’s easier for you to calculate your business’s profitability using a simple equation. All you have to do is take your revenue and subtract your expenses. This gives any potential investors a much better idea of the business’s profitability by mapping out a clear idea of exactly how well the business is doing, financially. You won’t have to try and make an educated guess about any part of your finances when you track your expenses on a daily basis. When you use a business expense tracker, you can give stakeholders a full picture when it comes to your business strategy and forecasting.

5 Best Expense Trackers for Small Businesses

If you’re ready to incorporate an expense tracker into your business, it’s only fair that you know what is available on the current market. This is why we rounded up the best expense trackers for small businesses, and you can browse through them and see which ones work best for your business.

1. Billdu

You can’t be surprised why Billdu is ranked no. 1 in our best expense trackers list. It is a comprehensive expense tracker for small businesses, and it has both a PC version and an expense tracker app for iOS and Android devices. You can easily create new expenses from a centralized hub, as well as recurring expenses. As a bonus, Billdu allows you to sort your expenses into categories to make them easier to monitor if you ever need them.

Each main category breaks down into smaller subcategories for easier organization, and you can create as many as you’d like. The platform also allows you to create invoices, estimates, pro forma invoices, purchase orders, delivery notes, credit notes, recurring invoices, an online store, and much more.

Pricing: Free and paid tiers starting at $3.99 per month

Credit: Billdu.com

2. Quickbooks

This is a more complex and immersive software that will take time to learn, but you can use it to handle all of your finances. Listed #2 in the best expense tracker list, Quickbooks will run payroll, track bills, accept online payments, and allow you to manage your taxes all from one platform. You and your team can all scan your receipts using your phone and load them into the mobile app before creating expense reports to make them easy to track.

It’ll also keep a tally of any sales taxes you paid on each purchase so that amount will subtract from any amount of sales tax you may owe. However, since this app is so immersive, it does require more effort, time, and general practice to get comfortable with it.

Pricing: Paid tiers starting at $12.50 per month

3. Freshbooks

If you’re trying to avoid daunting spreadsheets, this expense tracker can help. One of the best expense trackers available, Freshbooks allows you to input any business expense quickly and easily on your smartphone or through the desktop app. You get a very user-friendly interface with basic reporting capabilities that allow you to see where your profits and losses stand at a quick look.

It can sync to your business’s bank account each day to automatically pull and catalog your most recent expenses from your bank account or credit card. All you have to do is reconcile them when it pulls them and add pictures of any receipts.

Pricing: Paid tiers starting at $15 per month with Bench clients getting a month free

4. Expensify

If you regularly have meetings in different parts of the country or work remotely, this expense tracker can help with those post-trip expense tracking nightmares. It allows you to stop worrying about tracking your receipts as you travel. All you have to do is take pictures of the receipts with your phone, submit them, and forget them. It can also take on mileage tracking, and it’ll export receipts from Airbnb and Uber automatically. You can also track your expenses on your company card per trip. It’ll automatically convert any currency and integrate it with your specific accounting software.

Pricing: Paid tiers starting at $4.99 a month with a free trial

5. Bench

Bench can take expense tracking off your hands, and it’s an expense tracker that can take care of all of your bookkeeping for you. This includes categorizing, reviewing, and importing your business expenses every month. You can easily upload images of each of your receipts and store them right on the platform, and there is no storage limit. So, if you ever need to refer back to a prior expense, it’s right at your fingertips.

You’ll get financial reports each month so you can see where your money is going and keep a close eye on your cash flow. When tax time rolls around, they’ll work with you to deliver everything you need to file in a timely manner. They can also set you up with an accountant team if you need it.

Pricing: Tiered pricing starting at $249 per month with a free trial

6. Fyle

If your accountants still rely on broken bank feeds and manually upload credit card statements for reconciliations, Fyle can change how you work. Fyle’s real-time credit card feeds bring card transaction data into your expense management system as soon as your card is swiped. Employees get instant notifications of credit card transactions via text message. They can reply to this message with a picture of the receipt, which Fyle will automatically match. What initially took days can now be done in less than two minutes with Fyle!

Best Expense Tracker Considerations

Now that we’ve compared a few expense trackers, you have to know what important considerations you want to keep in mind when you start comparing apps. Doing so will help you narrow down your choices until you pick out the best one.

Consideration One – Receipt Scanner

Receipts can be a huge hassle to keep an eye on, especially when you consider how many you can generate from running your daily operations. This is especially true as your business grows, and you want a way to digitize your receipts to store them in a secure platform. Having a receipt scanner or the option to take pictures of your receipts and import them into your software is a huge bonus with your expense tracker app. Make sure that it’s easy to use and that it works with iOS and Android devices.

Consideration Two – Accountant Connection

Your accountant is a huge part of your business, and you want to keep them in the loop all year-round to ensure your business is doing okay financially. Any expense tracker you have should allow you to invite your accountant to it so they can organize and see all of your expenses as they come in. Doing so allows them to create a running total of your business’s deductions, expenses, and more. You shouldn’t have to pay more for this service, but not all apps allow this without paying more. Double-check that any expense tracker app you choose allows you to give your accountant or accounting team unrestricted access.

Consideration Three – Intuitive

A business expense tracker should be intuitive and user-friendly. You don’t necessarily have a lot of extra time to deal with a steep learning curve when it comes to your expense tracker, and some can be very complicated to learn. Also, most options get more complicated as they offer more features. However, platforms like Billdu manage to stay very user-friendly while offering a host of features like expense tracking, invoice creation, online store creation, appointments, and more. Everything links back to a centralized hub that you can scan at a glance.

Consideration Four – Transparent Pricing

You want all of the pricing on your business expense tracker to be transparent to help ensure you get all of the items you need without having to pay more for it. For example, some apps have pricing tiers to them, but you will have to pay more for certain features inside that tier if you want to take advantage of them. Ideally, any tracker you choose will list out everything you get for what you pay, and there won’t be any surprise expenses to worry about.

Also, you shouldn’t have to pay more than the pricing tier lists as long as you stay inside the outlined member and account requirements for that specific tier.

Why Choose Billdu as Your Small Business Expense Tracker

Even though we listed out several different expense trackers for small businesses, we believe that Billdu will surpass your expectations. No matter if you have a small, medium, or large business, we offer the flexibility and user-friendliness you need to ensure you can get the app up and running very quickly from your desktop or smartphone.

1. More Than an Expense Tracker

Ideally, you want to get software that can do more than track expenses. It should be able to create and track invoices, monitor your cash flow in and out, accept payments, use different currencies and languages, and much more. Billdu can perform all of these functions, and everything will show up on the dashboard to allow you to monitor them at a glance. You can list and organize your clients with their contact information, create and monitor appointments, and much more.

2. Connect to Your Accountant

Billdu lets you invite your accountant to the platform whenever you like. They can monitor your expenses, cash flow, invoices, and prepare your business for tax time. Also, it’s a great way to ensure you get all of the deductions you need come tax time because your accountant can create a running tally all year long. It’s secure, safe, and very easy for your accountant to use. This can help make your business much healthier financially and spot problems early.

3. Clear Pricing

You never have to worry about having to pay more than you budgeted to gain access to certain features with Billdu. We clearly list all of the services or products you get at a particular price tier, and we don’t hide additional prices on our services. What you see is what you get. This can help you budget better for your expense tracker because you know exactly what you’ll get for what you pay each month. We also make it easy to switch coverage tiers as your business grows and changes.

4. Responsive Support

If you ever have any questions with your business expense tracker, Billdu has a responsive support team along with self-help portals to ensure that you can get the answers to your problems quickly and easily. The support team speaks English and German, and you can reach out to them any time, day or night, using the helpful email link.

Try a Free Trial From Billdu Today

If you’re looking for a comprehensive expense tracker for your business, we invite you to try Billdu’s free trial. You can experience for yourself how this powerful software can seamlessly integrate into your business and keep your financial health at the forefront.