“Have I paid that vendor yet?” you ask yourself as you sort through the dozens of invoices you’ve received this month. Definitely not the way you wanted to spend your Friday afternoon.
As your small business grows, manually managing accounts payable (AP) processes becomes more challenging, time-consuming and error-prone.
Enter accounts payable software. These platforms can automate processes like invoice management and payment processing while syncing to your accounting software to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
This article offers an overview of the six best accounts payable software solutions for small businesses so you can find just the right platform for your needs. We’ll also give you a list of the features you should look for when choosing a platform, plus tips for how to make your decision.*
Financial admin eating up too much of your time? We can take it off your plate
Automate your accounts payable processes with Juni and free up your day for more impactful work.
*The information about all the platforms discussed in this article was collected between 9 January 2024 and 11 January 2024. This article was written and approved by Juni and is intended as marketing material.
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Whenever you’re researching software, whether that be an accounts payable solution or inventory management platform, you need to be clear on what functionalities your business needs. So before we get into our list, here are some features you should prioritise when selecting accounts payable software:
Let’s take an in-depth look at our list of software. For each platform, we’ll list its features (as well as its limitations), explain how pricing works and point out what kind of business it’s best fit for.
Juni’s platform for ecommerce entrepreneurs comes with automated accounts payable features that can help you run simpler, tighter and more accurate financial admin. With Juni, it takes just seconds to auto-collect, pay and even finance your invoices.
By collecting and scanning your invoices automatically, then pre-filling all the important payment details, Juni saves you time and reduces the risk of human error. You can also automatically import your receipts and invoices with your dedicated Juni inbox for effortless spend management, plus match receipts to transactions.
What’s more, if you need to reduce pressure on your cash flow cycles, Juni offers financing options for certain types of payments, giving you up to 120 days to pay.*
The platform goes beyond accounts payable features, also offering business accounts and cards, features to optimise cash flow management, powerful accounting automations, fast transfers and storefront integrations.
Most suitable for: Ecommerce entrepreneurs and small businesses
Juni has two plan options:
You can try our Scale plan for free for the first 30 days.
Based in Copenhagen, Pleo is a business spending solution with built-in AP automation software. Pleo’s invoice management features make it easy to capture, process, approve, pay and bookkeep invoices in a central location. With over 50 supported currencies, Pleo users can seamlessly pay vendors across the world.
Most suitable for: Companies that need to pay invoices in several currencies
Pleo has three plan options:
Spendesk is a spend management platform with accounts payable features like invoice automation and approval workflows, giving you greater control over the invoicing lifecycle and your AP processes. By using Spendesk, you can minimise (or eliminate) manual data entry for your invoicing processes, plus get real-time insights into your spending patterns.
Most suitable for: SaaS, tech and fintech companies
Spendesk doesn’t list its pricing options, so you’ll have to reach out to sales to get a quote
Sage Intacct’s cloud-based invoicing software helps small business owners and finance teams automate invoice management with the power of AI. For example, simply upload or email an invoice, and the software will automatically extract details and populate fields for your approval. The platform can also detect duplicate invoices, helping you stay in control of your expenses and avoid costly errors.
Most suitable for: Businesses that need powerful analytics tools
Sage Intacct has three plans for its accounts payable software. All plans come with three months free:
While SAP Concur isn’t specifically designed for small businesses, it’s still a good fit for solopreneurs and SMBs looking to automate their AP processes. The platform automates invoicing processes, meaning you can pay suppliers quickly without constantly having to double-check invoices and complete transactions yourself.
Most suitable for: Businesses with immediate plans to scale
SAP Concur doesn’t list its pricing options, so you’ll have to reach out to sales to get a quote.
Visma is the parent organisation for a number of accounting and invoicing solutions across Europe. It has designated products for 15 different EU countries, such as Visma eKonomi, its designated Swedish accounting platform. Visma eKonomi has basic AP features for paying vendors, but it has a range of other accounting features that can help you streamline your financial admin as a whole.
Most suitable for: Small businesses in Sweden
Visma platform prices range depending on which country you operate in and the Visma product you select. Visma eEkonomi has three plans that come with supplier invoicing features:
You can have all the software comparison guides in the world available to you, but if you aren’t intentional about your decision, you may end up choosing software that falls short for your needs. Here are a few steps you can take to help you make the right decision when selecting an accounts payable platform for your small business.
By digitising the traditionally paper-intensive process of handling invoices and payments, AP software is not only more efficient than manual processes, but also minimises the possibility of errors, like a missed or incorrect payment. Having more visibility over invoices, due dates and your general spending patterns can help you maintain tighter control over your financial operations.
But to get the most out of a platform, you need to make sure you’re choosing the right one for your needs. For example, if you run an online storefront, you’ll want to choose a solution like Juni that has the specific needs of ecommerce entrepreneurs in mind.
By choosing a software solution that’s a good fit for you, you’ll make your business more agile, resilient and competitive. Meanwhile, you’ll get back more time in the day to focus on what you most love about running your company, whether that’s marketing your product, interacting with customers or finding ways to scale.
Financial admin eating up too much of your time? We can take it off your plate
Automate your accounts payable processes with Juni and free up your day for more impactful work.
*Juni Invoices is available for EU-based companies only. Media financing is available for companies registered in NL, SE, DE, FR, ES, IT, FI and NO, upon eligibility. Fees and terms and conditions apply. Click here for more details.
Accounts payable automation software helps businesses manage and track the money they owe to suppliers, vendors and other parties. Essentially, this type of software helps business owners and finance departments handle their payment processes by recording invoices, tracking due dates and organising information.
While you can manually manage your accounts payable process, this approach can be time-consuming and error-prone. A better way to keep track of accounts payable is by using specialised accounts payable software that tracks and pays your invoices for you.
You can automate accounts payable processes by using specialised software. These platforms handle a number of tasks, including:
"Only six more to go," you tell yourself as you upload yet another receipt to your accounting software. We all know the pain of searching for receipts across emails and platforms and trying to match them to expenses.
This becomes even more challenging the larger your business becomes and the more vendors you have to pay. You can avoid most of that frustration and wasted time with the right spend management software.
But not all spend management platforms will be a good fit for your business. For example, digital commerce companies need solutions that take into account sector-specific expenses like ad receipts and multiple platform payments, while small businesses need tools that simplify their financial admin, not complicate it.
This article takes a look at the six best spend management software solutions so you can find just the right platform for your needs. We’ll also give you a list of the features you should look for when choosing a platform, plus tips for how to make your decision.*
Spend less time on spend management
With real-time spend overviews, receipt matching automation and powerful integrations, Juni will make you forget what a hassle managing your expenses used to be.
*The information about all the platforms discussed in this article was collected between 17 January 2024 and 19 January 2024. This article was written and approved by Juni and is intended as marketing material.
Before taking a closer look at the tools on our list, here are six features your spend management software (also known as expense management software) should come with:
Bonus: Look out for spend management platforms that come with built-in accounts payable and invoice automation features, which will help you centralise your financial admin and save time.
Now, let's explore the solutions on our list in depth. For each platform, we’ll list its key features (as well as its limitations), explain how pricing works and point out what kind of business it’s best fit for.
Juni helps businesses in digital commerce manage their cash flow, track their expenses and optimise their profits with features that are specifically designed with ecommerce companies in mind.
While it’s not specifically expense management software, you can use the platform for your spend management needs. Juni's goal is to give everyone in digital commerce, from the CFO to the accounting team to marketing managers, everything they need to focus on business growth.
Juni’s expense management features are especially valuable for users who have multiple receipts coming from different media buying channels and online transactions. With Meta and Google Ads integrations, plus powerful receipt matching, expense management suddenly becomes easy. On top of that, you can also manage your unpaid invoices and accounts payable processes within Juni, bringing your financial admin under one roof.
All of this comes with easy access to media and inventory financing for up to 2 million EUR, helping you free up your cash flow and grow your business.*
*Juni Invoices is available for EU-based companies only. Media financing is available for companies registered in NL, SE, DE, FR, ES, IT, FI and NO, upon eligibility. Fees and terms and conditions apply. Click here for more details.
Most suitable for: SMBs and mid-market companies in digital commerce
Juni has two plan options:
SAP Concur helps you streamline processes to deliver efficiency savings, with a focus on eliminating manual data entry, lost receipts and unclaimed VAT refunds. As such, it’s best suited to larger organisations. The platform helps you reduce the risk of human error and compliance issues with automations, plus the software can identify potential mistakes and discrepancies in real-time.
Most suitable for: Larger and enterprise organisations
SAP Concur doesn’t list its pricing options, so you’ll have to reach out to sales to get a quote.
Zoho Expense is the business expense tracking app from the Zoho suite of business tools, which means it integrates with Zoho’s other financial management apps. It’s a reasonably priced platform suited to handling all aspects of expense management and reporting for SMBs. Zoho Expense automatically records expenses from receipts, simplifying and automating the expense reporting process.
Most suitable for: People already using other Zoho products (namely Zoho Books)
Zoho Expense has three plans for its spend management software:
Expensify is a spend management solution for keeping track of business expenses on the go. Most of the expense management functionality can be done on your phone, while a series of handy integrations help to automate and streamline processes around uploading and allocating receipts. Plus, it’s easy for employees to create and submit expense reports for quick reimbursement.
Most suitable for: Small businesses with lots of employee expenses
Expensify has two plans:
One of the many features of smart accounting software QuickBooks is its built-in expense management tool. There are obvious advantages to expenses being handled via your accounting platform, like how easy it is to claim business expenses for tax purposes. And when you connect your bank to the platform, QuickBooks automatically matches and organises your receipts to transactions.
Most suitable for: Businesses who want more comprehensive accounting tools built into their spend management software
Quickbooks has five plans:
Fortnox is a cloud-based accounting software platform based in Sweden that helps businesses manage their accounting and bookkeeping processes, as well as other financial admin like spend management. Users can take photos of receipts and instantly upload them via a mobile app, and the platform automatically fills in date, amount and VAT.
Most suitable for: Businesses that operate in Sweden
Fortnox has three plans:
The information in this guide can help you make your decision, but ultimately, you need to factor in considerations about your business and its needs when choosing a platform. Here are three things you can do to ensure you’re choosing an ideal solution.
As you’ll notice from the list above, different software solutions are more suitable for different business industries and sizes. For example, Juni is spend management software built with the needs of ecommerce companies in mind. So when researching a platform, pay close attention to what type of business (big or small, ecommerce or SaaS) it’s best suited for.
While it shouldn’t be the only factor that guides your decision, you can’t ignore pricing when choosing a solution. You need to find a healthy balance between a platform you can afford (and doesn't go over budget) that still gives you all the key features and functionalities you need to run smarter, more efficient financial admin.
You may be a small business now, but if you have plans of scaling in the future, you want to make sure your expense management solution can scale with you. Juni, for example, caters to both SMBs as well as mid-market companies, meaning we can provide the solutions you need from the time your business is founder-led to when it has 100+ employees.
While you can never remove expense management from your to-do list, you can find a platform that does most of the work for you. The best spend management software is one that not only simplifies financial operations but also contributes to strategic decision-making and the long-term financial health of your organisation.
To find a platform that does all that, you need to make sure you’re making your selection with the unique needs of your business in mind. For example, if you operate in digital commerce, you want to choose a solution like Juni that comes with ecommerce-specific capabilities, like features designed specifically for media buying and online transactions.
So take your time finding the right platform—doing so can lead to significant time savings and valuable insights into spending patterns, helping you improve the overall financial health and success of your business.
Spend less time on spend management
With real-time spend overviews, receipt matching automation and powerful integrations, Juni will make you forget what a hassle managing your expenses used to be.
Spend management software is a platform or tool that helps businesses manage and control their expenses. This type of solution usually includes features for receipt management, expense reporting and approval workflows. Plus, these platforms often integrate with accounting software, as well as sync with banks and credit cards.
There are a number of benefits to using spend management software to control your expenses, including:
The price of expense management software varies depending on the size of your business and what industry you operate in, as this will impact which platform you choose. Prices range from as low as £7 per month to almost £100, and some spend management systems also offer free plans to certain users.
Let’s face it: manually managing expenses can feel like a never-ending battle against a mountain of receipts and invoices. Automation can be a source of relief and a path to more efficient workflows, improved productivity and happier employees. You’re also more likely to be compliant with expense policies and detect fraudulent activity more quickly.
Below, we’ll cover the essential steps to ditch outdated manual uploading, chasing paper receipts, blocked cards and zero spend oversight.
Expense management automation is the use of digital tools and software to simplify the process of tracking, reporting and reimbursing employee expenses. It replaces manual methods of expense management such as spreadsheets and paper receipts with digital systems that track and process expenses automatically.
Replacing manual processes with automation makes finance teams more efficient, reduces human error and increases productivity.
Finance teams no longer have to spend hours chasing invoices and matching receipts, trying to stay on top of employee spending. It can all be done in one place with automated expense management.
Also, with the integration of multiple digital solutions you can address other key issues in your operations. For example, you can:
Automating your expense management processes solves multiple issues that are common to modern businesses.
For example, piles of paper receipts, lost invoices and tired, frustrated employees are but a few of the challenges that make manually tracking expenses time-consuming and inefficient.
Add to that errors in data entry from hard-to-read receipts and inaccurate expense reports and you’ve got a process that takes up way too much time. Plus, it drags your finance team away from more important tasks such as budgeting for the next quarter.
Manual expense management also means that finance reports often can’t be delivered until the end of each month, which makes a complete picture of employee spending almost impossible. Managers can’t approve budgets or expense reports until employees have already been waiting weeks for reimbursement.
After all that work, it’s still difficult to know if all your data is correct, if you’ve been compliant with employee expense policies or avoided fraudulent activity.
Next, we look at how to implement automation across your business so you can reduce costs, avoid shadow spend, and operate more efficiently.
Below we’ll take you through the steps you can take to automate your expense management processes.
Conduct a thorough assessment of your current expense management processes. Some questions to ask during this review are:
Include any team that has access to company funds in this process. Each team member will have a different perspective on what is lacking in your current expense management process and will help you create a complete picture of what they need to be more efficient.
Blocked cards, low spending limits, and media teams buying from different accounts — sound familiar? Digital commerce teams need an automated solution that’s flexible enough to keep track of ad spend, inventory spend and vendor expenses across multiple currencies.
Imagine your marketing team is trying to launch a new ad campaign and their card is denied. Meanwhile, you know there's excessive spend across your product and R&D teams, even though you've implemented strict guidelines on limits and approvals. But not only are you unable to identify where your cash is haemorrhaging from, it’s impossible to know if you’re about to hit a spending limit that will prevent you from making any big payments over the next week.
By integrating an expense management software like Juni, you’ll be able to manage payments across multiple accounts and currencies in one dashboard, get a real-time overview of expenses, and centralise your operations and spend controls.
If your business growth depends on liquidity, you can also tap into Juni's multiple financing and cash flow solutions, so you can strategise further into the future as you invest more in media buying, UX tools. You might run an ecommerce business that relies heavily on cash flow to purchase inventory, forcing your finance team to plan carefully. Juni allows EEA customers to finance their inventory invoices with fees as low as 3%, freeing up capital and boosting growth as a result.
A clear and well-crafted employee expense policy lets teams work more efficiently with the freedom to make decisions about spending within the boundaries you set.
Your policy should include the following:
Identify the most common expenses your employees incur. For example, if your team uses software like an email marketing tool, you can list recommended software and set a maximum monthly budget. With Juni, you can implement custom limits and permissions with as many cards as your team needs.
Your policy should be standardised and easily accessible by all employees. Make sure it’s kept up-to-date as your business grows and keep the language simple and free of technical jargon.
Skip the manual data entry and paper receipts by implementing automated receipt and invoice workflows. Automation reduces the chances of data entry errors, speeds up the reconciliation process and increases compliance with employee expense policies.
Your employees can take a quick snap of their receipts within the Juni app or forward them into a dedicated inbox and Juni will take care of the rest. If you’re missing an invoice, simply send a reminder to your team from a centralised platform. Juni scans invoices and pre-fills payment information so you can settle everything in a few clicks. You’ll also avoid late payment fees and manually uploading invoices with the ability to forward all invoices to a dedicated Juni inbox.
Automating your receipt and invoice workflows will allow you to do the same for your approvals processes. Once an employee uploads their receipts, customisable automations allow businesses to set up rules and approvals that match your operational needs.
Identify the appropriate personnel in the approvals chain and assign approvals automatically to them. You can cut out employee reimbursements entirely since the approvals process happens almost instantaneously.
Regular monitoring and reviews of your processes help identify spending patterns, gaps in compliance and provide insights that allow you to make data-driven decisions. As your business grows so too will the need to review and refine your processes to accommodate for higher spending, bigger budgets and more employees who need access to company funds.
Juni offers a range of tools and integrations designed to optimise expense management, making it easier for your team to streamline financial processes, reduce manual effort and enhance cash flow.
More accurate accounts, faster month-ends thanks to integrations with accounting software like Fortnox and automatic approvals processes mean fewer data entry errors associated with manual expense management.
For example, Juni lets you centralise media spend and reconciliation, eliminating the need to log into Meta, pay invoices there and then upload them into whatever tool you use. Instead, Juni automatically pulls Meta invoices and you can choose to pay them immediately or get financing to pay them later.
All your financial information is available in one dashboard, centralising all your spend management capabilities. Businesses can understand their expenses in different categories and different time periods saving significant amounts of time on manually tracking and monitoring spend across departments.
Less repetition, more predictability and no more bottlenecks. Set up customisable approvals processes that make reconciliations almost instantaneous. Your employees don’t have to wait for their receipts to be manually uploaded, with the Juni app they can scan their receipts and upload them directly themselves for approval. Less time spent tracking down receipts means more time to get to the end of that to-do list you’ve been staring at for a week.
You can also earn cashback on all eligible spend with Juni. Rates are tailored to your pricing plan and no action is needed to earn cashback. It will be automatically added to your account once the cashback period has ended.
Juni offers capital and lending that frees up cash flow for modern businesses that have limited cash tied up in inventory or media buying.¹
Flexible credit lines on cards can be spent on ad campaigns with fixed monthly fees at low as 3%. With Juni Capital you’ve got more time to settle your invoices and more negotiation room with your suppliers.²
Before they partnered with Juni, Savvy Moves faced two challenges: manual accounting processes and no centralised financial oversight. They spent hours manually matching receipts and had no good way to manage their spend.
So the team used Juni to enhance their cash flow visibility, reduce errors in the receipt matching process and save 20 hours per quarter on financial admin.
“We chose Juni to enhance our cash flow visibility, consolidate money in and money out with a single dashboard, and reduce the reliance on manual accounting processes,” says Rémon de Muijnck, Co-Founder of Savvy Moves.
Read the case study
Automating your expense management processes can revolutionise how your finance team operates. A tool like Juni helps eliminate manual errors, gain real-time visibility over your spending and create smoother workflows. Your employees will be happier too because they don’t have to spend hours on tedious manual receipt matching.
Juni offers solutions for modern businesses by helping you manage expenses seamlessly, control costs with low FX fees, and unlock additional cash flow through financing options.
Juni helps finance teams automate their expense management by offering real-time visibility into employee spending, automatic receipt matching and customising approvals workflows.
Look for a software that offers real-time spend oversight, receipt matching, integrations with accounting software and virtual cards with customisable spending limits.
Yes. Juni integrates with accounting software like Fortnox, Dataev and Netsuite as well as storefronts such as Shopify, Amazon and Meta. Get a centralised view of all your stores with real-time data and insights all in one dashboard.
1. Credit cards are available for companies registered in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Cyprus, and UK, upon eligibility. Fees and terms and conditions apply.
2. Invoice credit is available for companies registered in Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, upon eligibility. Fees and terms and conditions apply.
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