“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.
Picture two scenarios: In the first, customers are going crazy over one of your products, which is flying off the shelves. Revenue is great and customers are happy.
Now picture another scenario: Demand is high for that same product, but you don’t have it in stock, and your suppliers can’t assure you when your next shipment will be delivered. Frustrated customers turn to competitors to make their purchases, and you miss out on sales.
As an ecommerce business, inventory can be one of your biggest assets, as well as a potential liability. That’s why it’s so important to take a strategic approach to inventory management, following best practices and using the right tools.
This article covers everything you need to know about ecommerce inventory optimisation, including:
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The information about all the tools discussed in this article was collected between 11 March 2024 and 13 March 2024. This article was written and approved by Juni and is intended as marketing material.
Building out an inventory management strategy is no easy feat—with so many moving parts, like supplier relations, replenishment times, seasonality, fluctuations in demand and manual error, optimising inventory takes extensive knowledge and expertise.
But you don’t have years to get your approach to inventory management right—your business needs effective stock management now. For more immediate guidance, follow these seven best practices and inventory management techniques.
Your inventory starts with your suppliers, which is why it’s so important to take your time finding the right ones and fostering good relationships with them. In one of his podcast episodes, Oman Zenhom of The $100 MBA Show recounts his experience selecting suppliers for his ecommerce business.
He states that he spent about six months trying over a dozen suppliers to find “the right materials, the right product, the right quality, and the right system.”
Once he landed on the right suppliers, he explains that he was intentional about building meaningful relationships with them, investing time and money into fostering trust. Doing this, according to him, makes a difference “because people will actually prioritise you based on relationships, and this is the bloodline of an ecommerce business.”
He also mentions the importance of diversifying your suppliers instead of just relying on one or two. Doing this “bolsters supply chain resilience, shielding against disruptions like natural disasters or labour strikes that could affect a single source.” This ensures a consistent flow of stock if one of your suppliers is facing production and order fulfilment delays or quality issues.
In order to keep track of your inventory, understand trends in demand and optimise stock, you need to use the right method (or methods) for your business.
JIT, FIFO, ABC, EOQ…the list of acronyms for inventory management methods goes on and on. Here are brief explanations of a few of the most common approaches for ecommerce businesses:
When you use an inventory management system like the ones mentioned above, it will be easier to predict demand based on historical data and purchase inventory strategically. This includes factoring in how seasonality, like Black Friday sales or Christmas shopping, will impact your inventory buying behaviours.
To do so, you have to calculate various factors, including:
The longer you operate, the easier this is to do. But keep in mind that, in the beginning, you’ll have little data to work with. In this case, it’s better to order a little too much than not enough—having safety stock helps you avoid running out (and losing what could become loyal customers).
“A lot of brands order the smallest amount possible. It’s not their fault, they just don’t have a partner to enable financing. It’s the most expensive part. So, what we did was get a lot of credit, as well as a partner that was able to finance this inventory. Those are the two areas that saved us at the start.”
-Nick Shackelford, serial ecommerce entrepreneur
In inventory management, anything you can automate, the better. Automated systems mean less human error, which becomes more and more of a risk as your business grows and you expand to more warehouses.
By implementing a scanning system, you can keep track of products as they arrive to your warehouse, are moved or altered in any way and finally when you ship them out to customers. A good scanning system won’t be free, but it’s an investment that can help you prevent costly errors.
Additionally, a scanning system will help you track stock in real time and get accurate data about your existing inventory and historical demand, preventing you both from overstocking and being caught without stock.
Even if everything seems to be going smoothly, take the time to audit your operations and ensure you’re not leaving money on the table anywhere. You should run audits at least twice a year to evaluate your operations and compare your inventory management process against competitors and industry standards.
Take a look at every step in your supply chain, evaluating lead times, the frequency of backorder situations, and overall costs. Also, be sure to take a look at possible issues, like return rates—this could uncover an underlying problem resulting in your customers receiving an incorrect or defective product.
No matter how well you predict demand, you won’t be able to buy inventory if you don’t have enough money on hand to do so. That’s where managing cash flow comes into the picture—you never want to be stuck in a situation where a product is on backorder but you don’t have the capital to pay for a new shipment.
Be proactive with cash flow forecasting to ensure you have enough runway to ramp up orders to suppliers before times of high demand, and plan ahead when creating your budget.
If you’re looking to optimise your cash flow management, consider adding Juni to your finance tech stack. The platform provides valuable insights into your spending patterns, giving you greater visibility over trends in cash flow.
What’s more, Juni gives you access to financing on both cards and invoices*, helping you extend your runway and use your capital however your business needs it most, whether that’s replenishing inventory levels or running ad campaigns.
Even if you can develop sophisticated manual systems yourself, there’s no replacement for specialised software to help you optimise your inventory management. So take a look at five platforms designed specifically to help ecommerce businesses streamline stock management.
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Linnworks is designed for ecommerce sellers, helping them manage multiple sales channels, keep track of stock across multiple warehouses and automate inventory forecasting. The platform integrates with platforms like Amazon, BigCommerce, Shopify and Etsy and comes with other helpful features like:
inFlow Inventory helps ecommerce businesses optimise stock by providing real-time inventory and order information in one place. The tool helps you stay on top of restocking, ensuring you never run out of an in-demand product, and tracks stock across multiple warehouse locations. Other key features of the platform include:
Veeqo integrates with all major ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento and WooCommerce, as well as marketplaces like Amazon and Etsy. The software automatically updates and tracks stock levels, plus comes with shipping capabilities like label creation, order management and order scanning/packing. Other features include:
Zoho Inventory helps ecommerce businesses automate inventory management with features like centralised cloud-based stock control, automatic re-ordering and batch and expiry date tracking. It connects seamlessly to other Zoho products to help with informed business decision-making and comes with additional features like:
Sellercloud is an ecommerce growth platform with comprehensive inventory management tools, including a centralised catalogue, full life cycle inventory tracking, and predictive purchasing and restocking. The platform integrates with an extensive list of channels, as well as ecommerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce. Other noteworthy features include:
If you have any ambitions to scale your ecommerce business, efficiently managing inventory is a need, not a want. To summarise, these best practices can help you do that:
Every business will take a unique approach and need distinct tools, but what remains a common theme, whether you’re a small startup or an established mid-market company, is the importance of properly managing cash flow.
Juni helps companies in digital commerce do just that—by providing you increased visibility over your finances, in-depth insights for better decision-making and flexible financing* to extend your runway.
*Juni Capital for cards is available for companies registered in UK, NL, SE, DE, FR, ES, IT, NO and FI, upon eligibility. 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.
Inventory optimisation is a strategy that helps businesses balance stock levels in line with demand. It involves analysing data and forecasting sales to ensure there's enough inventory to meet customer needs without overstocking, which ties up capital and increases storage costs.
Best practices for inventory optimisation include:
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