5 best expense management software in 2023 in Australia
Companies around the world are shifting away from manual expense reporting processes and choosing expense management systems instead. But with so many options in the market, choosing the right software for you can be difficult.
To make the right decision, some of the best expense management software for small businesses in Australia have been listed below.
How does expense management software work?
An expense management software essentially centralizes all the expense tracking and controlling processes onto a real-time collaborative digital platform using the internet. This makes communication, coordination, and compliance with tasks related to expense management extremely easy.
5 best expense management software for small businesses
Budgetly
Budgetly is a local expense management product in Australia. It is a good expense management software that starts at USD 59/month. The downside to this platform is that it does not provide the ability to manage reimbursements or upload receipts through your mobile.
ELMO Software
This is another local expense management product in Australia that focuses on specific policy building for managing your expenses. No specific pricing has been given for this platform on their website.
Avaza
Avaza is an expense management product that also has project management and collaboration features to help businesses. A downside to this service is that they do not provide corporate cards and there is no proper way to enforce spending limits.
Crunchr
For businesses that solely need a simple receipt management app, Crunchr is the way to go. Unfortunately, this platform’s simple nature is also its downfall as it does not provide approval controls or a mobile receipt upload feature making it a less suitable expense management tool for most businesses.
Locomote
This is a great travel management and booking software for businesses. This software is suitable for companies who have a lot of travel requirements. The downside is that it does not have a reimbursement management system or corporate cards.
Which features to consider when selecting expense management software?
The best expense management software for small businesses will at least have the following features:
1. Seamless expense reporting process
If your company chooses to follow a process of reimbursements, then Volopay allows users to instantly create reimbursement claims using our mobile app or the web app.
You can even move away from this process if you choose to opt for Volopay corporate cards that can be issued to each employee. You also get to create unlimited virtual cards to manage all online expenses.
2. Real-time expense tracking
Instead of waiting for weekly or monthly updates on expense reports from all employees, using Volopay, you’ll be able to get a real-time update of all expenses that people are making throughout the organization.
3. Automated workflows
For making payments to vendors, you can easily set up approval workflows to ensure compliance with the expense policies of your companies. Volopay lets you set up to 5 levels of approvers depending on a custom expense range.
This allows you to assign the necessary managers for expenses as the degree of payment increases.
4. Integrated corporate credit card management platform
The best expense-tracking software for small businesses comes with the option to let its users issue corporate cards for their employees.
Not only does it remove the need for reimbursements but also allows the finance and accounting team to control budgets in a better way using the custom spending limits on cards.
Another great thing is that these controls can be adjusted whenever needed.
5. Digital audit trails
Every accounting team knows how important it is to maintain an audit trail for all transactions in their ledger.
Using an expense management system, the hassle of maintaining one is removed as all the actions taken on a transaction are automatically recorded in the digital ledger.
6. Advanced data analytics, insights, reports
Another useful element of an expense management system is its ability to create specific reports as per your requirements, give data analytics for you to derive insights, and sometimes also give insightful data directly when a certain behavior or spending pattern is observed by the system.
7. Easy expense approval process
Rather than communicating over email and waiting a day or two for confirmation or rejection, an expense management system allows for instant approval notification to necessary approvers so that there is no delay in business operations due to slow approval processes.
For small and petty expenses, you can also assign smaller budgets to employee corporate cards and avoid having to approve every small payment.
8. Easy reimbursement system
The biggest benefit of using expense management software for reimbursement is that you can immediately submit an expense claim after you make it rather than waiting till the end of the week or month to submit your expense claims.
This reduces the need for employees to constantly carry around a bunch of receipts.
9. Compatible with any accounting software
Lastly, the expense management platform you choose should be able to integrate easily with your existing accounting software. You should be able to easily export and sync all the expense data into your accounting tool without much hassle.
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Manage your business expenses efficiently with Volopay
Volopay is an all-in-one expense management software for businesses. It is a centralized system to help manage the budget for teams and employees across the organization.
Here are some of the core benefits of using Volopay to manage your business expenses:
• Real-time tracking: Track all expenses as they happen. This helps in resolving any issue immediately rather than waiting an entire month to spot compliance issues.
• Complete visibility: A central system to manage all expenses gives the senior management and finance executives the visibility they need in order to make crucial financial decisions.
• Custom controls: Be it spending through corporate cards or sending money via Volopay’s Bill Pay feature, you can ensure compliance by setting spending limits for each card and creating custom approval policies for Bill Pay transfers.
• Corporate cards: Using Volopay you can issue unlimited virtual cards to manage all online payments and issue a physical card for each employee that needs one.
• Multicurrency business account: Whether you have domestic or international vendors, you can easily pay them through Volopay thanks to the platform’s multicurrency feature. It allows you to hold money in 60+ currencies and pay in over 100 countries. This helps you avoid the FX fees that can add up to a lot of money over time.
• Vendor management: Volopay lets you store all important payment details about your vendors in one place so that you can easily create recurring payments rather than having to manually enter their details each time you want to make a payment to them.
• Accounting integration: Any expense management software for small businesses should have the ability to integrate with accounting tools. Volopay has native integrations with Xero, Netsuite, Quickbooks, MYOB, Deskera, and Tally. We also have the Universal CSV feature that allows you to integrate with other accounting tools.
Interesting read: Guide to employee savings scheme in Australia in 2022
FAQ's
Instead of making your employees create long expense reports at the end of the month, a company using Volopay can simply let its employees use our mobile app to instantly create a reimbursement claim, add the necessary info, and attach the relevant receipts.
If your company uses Volopay corporate cards or our money transfer feature to make payments, then all these transactions are automatically recorded in ledgers within our system with all the necessary details. This automated expense reporting helps employees and finance & accounting teams save a lot of time.
Since Volopay is a completely online platform, the need to maintain a physical paper trail is completely eliminated. All the tracking, approval, rejection, and management of expenses are done within the platform itself.
Yes, any purchase you make using Volopay virtual cards is instantly recorded and reflected on your dashboard. Real-time tracking of expenses across the organization helps the finance and accounting team maintain visibility over budget utilization.