Best travel and expense management software in India
Business travel plays a vital role in the growth and success of organizations. It allows companies to explore new markets, build client relationships, and attend conferences and meetings.
However, managing travel expenses can be a daunting task for businesses, leading to various challenges. This is where travel expense software applications for organizations come into the picture.
Effective travel and expense management is crucial to ensure cost control, accurate reporting, and streamlined processes. To address these challenges, businesses in India are turning to travel and expense management software, which simplifies the entire process and provides enhanced visibility, efficiency, and control over travel expenses.
What is travel and expense management software?
Travel and expense management software is a specialized solution designed to streamline and automate the process of managing travel expenses for businesses. It combines expense reporting, receipt management, travel booking, and reimbursement functionalities into a single platform.
This software empowers organizations to capture, track, and manage travel-related expenses efficiently, thereby reducing manual efforts, improving accuracy, and ensuring compliance with expense policies.
Supercharge your travel expense management process with our comprehensive article on travel and expense automation to discover how automation can save you time, reduce errors, and boost productivity.
Common challenges in managing business travel expenses
1. Lack of visibility into expenses
One of the significant challenges faced by businesses is the lack of visibility into travel expenses. Manual processes and disparate systems make it difficult to track and analyze expenses in real-time. This can lead to overspending, inaccuracies, and difficulties in budget planning.
Travel and expense management software provide comprehensive dashboards and reports that offer a holistic view of travel expenses, enabling businesses to make informed decisions and identify areas for cost optimization.
2. Manual expense reporting and reconciliation
Traditional paper-based expense reporting is time-consuming and error-prone. Employees often struggle with manual data entry, searching for receipts, and reconciling expenses with corporate policies.
Travel and expense management software automate these processes, allowing employees to capture expenses digitally, attach receipts, and automatically categorize expenses. This eliminates the need for manual reconciliation, saves time, and ensures accurate reporting.
3. Receipt management and documentation
Managing and storing paper receipts can be a cumbersome task for businesses. Receipts can get lost, damaged, or misplaced, making it challenging to provide supporting documentation during audits or reimbursement claims.
Travel and expense management software offer features like mobile receipt scanning, OCR (optical character recognition) technology, and cloud storage, enabling employees to capture and store digital receipts securely. This ensures easy access to receipts when needed and simplifies the documentation process.
4. A complex expense approval process
The traditional expense approval process often involves multiple layers of manual review and time-consuming back-and-forth between employees and managers. This can cause delays in reimbursement and create frustration for employees.
Travel and expense management software streamline the approval workflow by automating routing, notifications, and reminders. Managers can review and approve expenses digitally, reducing processing time and ensuring timely reimbursements.
5. Expense fraud
Expense fraud is a significant concern for businesses, leading to financial losses and unethical practices. Manual expense management processes are susceptible to fraudulent activities, such as submitting false receipts or inflated expenses.
Travel and expense management software mitigate this risk by implementing robust expense policies, automated expense validation, and advanced fraud detection algorithms. This helps organizations identify suspicious patterns, enforce compliance, and minimize fraudulent activities.
6. Difficulty accessing funds
When employees are on business trips, they often face challenges related to accessing funds for travel expenses. Delayed reimbursements or limited access to corporate credit cards can impact their ability to make necessary payments promptly.
Travel and expense management software address this issue by integrating with corporate banking systems, allowing employees to request and receive funds in a timely manner. This ensures smooth cash flow during business trips and enhances employee satisfaction.
7. Lack of freedom in choosing travel options
In traditional expense management approaches, employees may have limited freedom in choosing travel options, such as flights, accommodation, or transportation. This can result in higher costs, inconvenience, and dissatisfaction among employees.
Travel and expense management software provide integrated travel booking capabilities, enabling employees to compare prices, choose preferred options, and make bookings within travel policy guidelines. This enhances flexibility, improves employee experience, and reduces travel expenses.
Unlock the secrets to overcoming expense management challenges. Read our insightful article on expense management challenges and see how you can eliminate all the challenges and streamline your travel expense management process for greater efficiency and cost control.
Take control of your travel expenses
7 Best travel expense management software
1. Volopay
Fees & pricing
Volopay’s all-in-one subscription plan that includes AP automation, as well as our corporate cards. You can get in touch with our team to know our pricing plan.
G2 rating
On the G2 platform, Volopay has an average rating of 4.3 out of 5.
Key features
You can issue physical and virtual corporate cards for your employees. This helps them manage their travel expenses without the need to make reimbursements. Real-time expense tracking and custom spending controls ensure that there is no overspending.
Pros & cons
Finance teams get to control cards by setting custom spending limits on each card through the web app or the mobile app. Volopay may not be a full-fledged travel management portal, but it has an integration with TruTrip to make travel bookings and arrangements simple for employees and the admins to approve them.
2. SAP Concur
Fees & pricing
SAP Concur offers flexible pricing options tailored to the specific needs of businesses. Pricing details can be obtained through their website or by contacting their sales team.
G2 rating
On the G2 platform, SAP Concur has an average rating of 4 out of 5.
Key features
SAP Concur provides end-to-end travel and expense management solutions, including travel booking, expense reporting, receipt scanning, policy compliance, approval workflows, and travel reimbursement processes. It integrates with various systems and offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities.
Pros & cons
SAP Concur offers a user-friendly interface, seamless integration with popular ERP systems, and a mobile app for on-the-go expense management. It provides enhanced visibility, and policy enforcement, and streamlines the entire expense management process.
Some users find the system complex to configure and require additional training for optimal utilization. Certain advanced features may come at an additional cost.
3. Expensify
Fees & pricing
Expensify offers pricing plans based on the number of users and the specific needs of the organization such as whether you want to make collecting financial information easy or also enforce financial controls.
G2 rating
Expensify has an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 on the G2 platform.
Key features
Expensify simplifies expense management through features like receipt scanning, automated expense categorization, mileage tracking, real-time expense reporting, and policy enforcement. It integrates with accounting software and offers features for corporate card management and reimbursement.
Pros & cons
Expensify offers a simple and intuitive user interface, a robust mobile app, and seamless integrations with popular accounting systems. Its SmartScan feature for receipt scanning is highly efficient, saving time and effort.
The pricing plan can be complex and a little misleading for businesses. Some users have reported occasional synchronization issues with accounting software, and certain advanced features may require additional configuration or setup.
4. Zoho expenses
Fees & pricing
Zoho Expenses offers different pricing plans based on the number of users(minimum 3 users required for most of their subscription plans) and features required. Pricing details can be found on their website.
G2 rating
Zoho expense has an average rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars on G2.
Key features
Zoho Expenses provides features for receipt scanning, expense tracking, policy compliance, approval workflows, and reimbursement management. It integrates with Zoho's suite of applications and offers comprehensive reporting and analytics.
Pros & cons
Zoho Expenses offers a user-friendly interface, cost-effectiveness, and seamless integration with other Zoho products. It provides customizable expense policies and supports multiple currencies and languages.
Some users have mentioned limitations in customization options, and the reporting functionality may not be as advanced compared to other solutions.
5. TravelPerk
Fees & pricing
TravelPerk offers customized pricing based on the specific needs of businesses. You can visit their website to see the complete pricing details or contact their sales team.
G2 rating
TravelPerk has an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars on G2.
Key features
TravelPerk combines travel booking capabilities with expense management features, offering a unified platform for managing travel and expenses. It provides options for flight, hotel, and transportation bookings, expense tracking, policy enforcement, and integrations with accounting systems.
Pros & cons
TravelPerk offers a user-friendly travel booking interface, flexibility in choosing travel options, and seamless integration with popular accounting systems.
Some users have reported occasional glitches in the booking process.
6. Fyle
Fees & pricing
Fyle offers pricing plans based on the number of users and features required. Detailed pricing information can be obtained through their website.
G2 rating
Fyle has an average rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars on G2.
Key features
Fyle provides features for receipt scanning, automated expense categorization, policy compliance, approval workflows, and reimbursement management. It integrates with accounting software and offers advanced analytics for expense data.
Pros & cons
Fyle offers a user-friendly interface, efficient receipt scanning capabilities, and seamless integration with popular accounting systems.
Some users have reported occasional delays in receipt processing, and certain advanced features may require additional configuration or setup. The per-user pricing structure can also be expensive for businesses.
7. Finly
Fees & pricing
Finly offers customized pricing plans based on the organization's requirements. Pricing details must be obtained by contacting their sales team.
G2 rating
Finly has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on G2.
Key features
Finly provides features for expense management, budgeting, approval workflows, reimbursement processes, and policy compliance. It offers integrations with accounting systems and supports multi-level approval hierarchies.
Pros & cons
Finly offers a user-friendly interface, automation of manual processes, and seamless integration with popular accounting systems.
Some users have mentioned limitations in customization options, and certain advanced features may require additional configuration or setup.
Why is Volopay the best expense management software
Volopay is a comprehensive travel and expense management software that allows businesses to manage all their expenses through modern tools like corporate cards and a robust system filled with automation capabilities to streamline travel expense management.
● Book travel and accommodation through our integration with the TruTrip platform.
● Make offline travel expenses with corporate travel cards.
● Easily sync all expense data to your accounting software with native integrations
● Easily submit receipts, track expenses, and manage controls through our mobile app
Streamline your corporate travel process
FAQs on travel and expense management software
There are many options available in the market, but if you are looking for a comprehensive solution to manage all types of business expenses then Volopay is the best option.
A travel and expense management system is an online platform that helps an organization book, track, and manage all corporate travel-related expenses.
Corporate travel expenses can be easily reimbursed through an expense management system like Volopay by submitting expense claims using our mobile app. If you don’t want to deal with reimbursements, your company can also issue corporate cards.
The process of making, managing, and controlling expenses related to business travel is known as travel expense processing. Companies often use an expense management system to handle all their corporate travel needs.