“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.
Companies in digital commerce often feel they have to choose between growing their brand and generating demand.
Of course you want to generate demand for your product, but to do so, people need to know about your brand. But to grow your brand presence, you need to make enough sales to have the capital to run ad campaigns and establish yourself as a strong player in the market. So which approach do you prioritise?
Well, we think you can do both.
That’s where hybrid marketing comes into play. In this article, we’ll explain what hybrid marketing is, why your ecommerce business can benefit from it, how to build out a hybrid ecommerce marketing strategy and which KPIs you need to track to measure success.
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Hybrid marketing combines branding and demand generation to build a more holistic approach to marketing. While you need to bring in sales to grow, you should also be consistently working on building your brand and a loyal customer base.
Stephen O’Rowe, Juni’s Head of Demand Generation, emphasises that “branding influences buying decisions by reflecting a company's values and identity, both consciously and subconsciously. Demand marketing focuses on specific campaigns to quickly generate interest in your products or services.”
He gives the example of a hybrid marketing social media campaign that directly sells a product while incorporating storytelling about its manufacturing. This enhances your demand gen results and strengthens your brand identity simultaneously.
Just because you have a strong brand doesn’t mean your product will start flying off the shelves. And generating demand takes strategic, dedicated effort to bring in consistent sales.
According to Stephen, “Neither branding alone nor a sole focus on demand is sufficient for sustained sales and revenue growth.” That’s why, he says, “a hybrid approach works best.” With hybrid marketing, you can still bring in conversions in the short term without sacrificing your long-term strategy for building up your brand.
In other words, by growing your brand in conjunction with generating demand, you can ensure you have money coming in to sustain your business while setting yourself up for future growth and stability.
Whether you have big goals of becoming a household name or shorter-term objectives of optimising your online ads, effective hybrid marketing starts with understanding your customer. We’re not just talking about knowing what type of person is interested in your product, but deeply understanding their pains, preferences, desires and habits.
According to Stephen, you should “engage with, survey and analyse your customers whenever possible. Guiding someone from initial awareness to becoming a loyal customer is a complex journey.”
He underlines that “by understanding the use cases and motivations of your top customers, you can identify numerous opportunities and tests to enhance their purchasing experience. Don't leave it to guesswork, simply speak to them.”
So while ICP and buyer persona research is important when developing your product, it’s not a one-and-done task. You should be engaging with your customer base constantly, gathering insights on what makes them connect with your brand and motivates them to buy (or prevents them from reaching checkout). Then, you can use these insights to develop and iterate on your hybrid marketing strategy.
According to serial ecom entrepreneur Nick Shackelford, your product always comes first. That’s right: Even before your brand.
In his words, “It needs to taste great, it needs to feel great, and it needs to be made well… Those are the areas of product before brand.” He also warns ecommerce businesses about pumping too much money into building their brand before they’ve developed a strong product.
How does this tie into hybrid ecommerce marketing? No matter how strong your brand is, the demand generation side of this approach to marketing will never be successful if your product doesn’t wow consumers. So first things first—invest in developing a product that buyers won’t be able to resist. This will make the demand gen side of things much easier down the line.
Before combining your branding and demand gen efforts, you need to make sure your approach to performance marketing is on the right track. You can do that a few ways:
A solid ad is just the first step to increasing sales—you also need to make sure your landing page’s copy hits just the right points to captivate customers. Read our guide on copywriting for next level landing pages.
A big component of hybrid marketing is integrating your brand values and tone of voice into your paid ads. So from your social media posts to Shopify storefront listing, your brand voice should be consistent across all platforms.
A company that does this well is IKEA. The Swedish furniture brand has a relatable, recognisable and clever tone of voice that’s consistent with its casual, affordable, no-nonsense furnishings. One example: A Valentine’s Day coupon for a cot with the offer, “Free for babies born 9 months from today.”
More often than not, you’d be able to recognize that IKEA’s behind an ad without ever having to see the brand’s logo on it. That’s thanks to the brand’s consistent, unique messaging, along with its trademark bold colours and clever copy.
According to Hubspot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report, 75% of marketers believe personalised experiences drive sales and repeat business. So while someone may convert from a paid ad, you need to do more to turn them into a loyal, repeat customer.
Beyond pricing and quality, consumers are drawn to brands that they feel connected to, and there are a number of ways you can foster this sense of connection. For example, give your customers more value by sending recommended products based on what they previously purchased or looked at or providing them with content that directly addresses their needs.
So if you’re an online business that sells international wines, don’t just stop at that first sale and assume you have a customer for life—follow up with personalised pairing tips, curated recommendations for their next purchase and a guide to this year’s emerging wine regions.
Measuring the success of your hybrid marketing efforts can be tricky. You’re not just tracking sheer sales, but also brand growth and loyalty. Here are some metrics you can use to measure your efforts, so you can modify as necessary and deliver more impact with your marketing budget.
With hybrid ecommerce marketing, you can grow your brand while simultaneously bringing in sales—every digital commerce company’s dream. But to do so, you need to:
A big part of hybrid ecommerce marketing is ads, and we know you need sufficient resources to run your campaigns. With Juni, you can access more capital for your marketing spend through credit lines made for media buying and financing for media invoices*.
Get up to 20 million EUR in easy, flexible financing to pay off all your marketing expenses, like Google, Meta and Klaviyo, and see returns on your campaigns before you pay for them.
Plus, you can track your Microsoft, Google and Meta campaigns' performance with Juni while accessing sales data from Shopify and Amazon—all in one convenient view.
*Juni Capital for cards is available for companies registered in UK, NL, SE, DE, FR, ES, IT, NO and FI, upon eligibility. Juni Capital for invoices 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.
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