“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.
Behind any successful commerce business is an effective inventory management strategy. For finance teams, that means having the right tools and workflows in place to streamline inventory cycles and continually optimise. In this article, we give a refresher on how inventory cycles work, why they’re such a big deal, and how strategic solutions like Juni Capital for invoices help you maintain optimal stock levels, improve cash flow and strengthen supplier relationships.
An inventory cycle refers to the process a business undergoes from purchasing stock to selling products and replenishing inventory. This cycle includes several stages: ordering, receiving, storing, selling and restocking. It’s essential to keep this cycle running smoothly, so you can ensure products are available to meet customer demand without overstocking or understocking.
Too much stock means you’ve got excessive capital tied up in inventory, as well as higher storage costs. Understocking, on the other hand, leads to missed sales, dissatisfied customers and potential drops in cash flow. To avoid risks like these, it’s important to take a holistic approach to optimising all stages of your inventory cycle.
There are several strategies you can use to keep your inventory cycle on track. Here are some of the most popular and effective approaches:
Accurate forecasting helps you predict demand and plan inventory purchases accordingly. This is especially important if your business sells seasonal products where demand fluctuates significantly. By leveraging historical sales data, market trends and predictive analytics, you can anticipate future demand more accurately and adjust your inventory levels. Learn all about inventory forecasting for seasonal ecommerce businesses in our recent article on the subject.
Techniques such as just-in-time (JIT), economic order quantity (EOQ) and ABC analysis can also help your business optimise its inventory levels.
Just-in-time (JIT): With this approach, you minimise holding costs and reduce waste by ordering inventory only when it is needed. While JIT can significantly improve efficiency, it requires a highly responsive supply chain and accurate demand forecasting to avoid stockouts.
Economic order quantity (EOQ): EOQ is a formula that you can use to determine the optimal order quantity to minimise total inventory costs, including ordering and holding costs. This method helps you balance the trade-off between order frequency and inventory carrying costs.
To calculate your EOQ, use this simple formula: EOQ=(√2DS)/H
Where:
ABC analysis: ABC analysis classifies inventory items into three categories: A (high-value items with low sales frequency), B (moderate-value items with moderate sales frequency) and C (low-value items with high sales frequency). By categorising your inventory in this way, you can focus management and resources on the items that matter most to your business.
If you’re a finance professional working in commerce, you probably have first-hand experience with some of the challenges related to managing inventory cycles. Here are a few common factors you may run into:
To avoid understocking and overstocking, it’s essential to have a clear view of your inventory needs. That requires accurate data and analysis, which may not always be readily available – especially if you’re working for a business with a large product range or complex supply chains.
To maintain accuracy and real-time visibility over your inventory, it’s helpful to use reliable inventory management software. Recently, we did a deep dive into the 7 best inventory management tools for ecommerce retailers to help you find the best solution for your business.
Seasonal demand fluctuations make inventory planning much more difficult. If you’re working in a seasonal market, your business will need to stock up before peak seasons and manage excess inventory during off-peak times. Managing these fluctuations requires precise forecasting and flexible inventory strategies.
The outlay of spend before selling inventory ties up working capital, which disrupts your business’s cash flow and limits its growth opportunities. This is especially challenging if you’re working for a business with long cash conversion cycles (in other words, a long period of time passes between the moment you pay for stock from your suppliers and the moment you sell that stock and receive payment from your customers).
Unless your business’s cash flow is in good shape, it’s hard to maintain good relationships with suppliers, which also has an impact on your inventory management and costs. With a healthy cashflow, you’re in a much better position to negotiate more favourable terms, pricing and payment conditions with suppliers. Suppliers may offer discounts for early payments, but if your cash flow is poor, you might be unable to take advantage of these opportunities.
While inventory management software can help overcome the challenge of poor accuracy and visibility, it takes cash flow management to overcome the other issues described above. That’s where financing solutions like Juni Capital come into play, offering a wide range of advantages, including:
Juni Capital provides flexible financing options designed specifically to help commerce businesses manage their cash flow effectively. Businesses in the EEA can finance their inventory invoices on terms of up to 120 days with fees as low as 3%. This means that the money you spend on inventory can be quickly reinvested into your business without waiting for stock to sell. That level of financial flexibility creates many advantages and growth opportunities for businesses looking to scale rapidly or manage seasonal demand fluctuations.
Flexible invoice financing from Juni Capital also helps you bridge liquidity gaps, so your business has more cash on hand to maintain smooth operations. This enables you to invest more in growth opportunities, take advantage of bulk purchasing discounts and improve overall profit margins. With access to immediate funds, your business can avoid cash flow bottlenecks and manage inventory investments more strategically.
Juni Capital offers customised financing solutions that you can adapt specifically to your business’s inventory management challenges. Our prices are fully transparent and predictable, so you can accurately forecast costs and make informed decisions.
Access to flexible financing also helps you negotiate better terms with your suppliers. With adequate cash on hand, you can leverage early payment discounts and build stronger, more reliable supplier relationships. By paying suppliers on time, you can also ensure priority during high-demand periods, which helps you avoid inventory issues during critical peak season periods.
Juni Capital’s cash flow management platform offers automated accounts payable features that help you streamline financial management processes. That means you have more time to focus on strategic initiatives instead of repetitive administrative tasks. At the same time, you enhance efficiency and reduce the risk of errors.
To give you a better idea of how Juni Capital helps businesses handle inventory-related challenges, let’s look at a success story from Boxbollen, a fast-growing playtech startup. The company operates in a very seasonal market, which means they face liquidity challenges due to significant demand fluctuations throughout the financial year.
By leveraging Juni Capital, they are now able to finance key expenses like ad spending during peak seasons without straining their cash flow. This allows them to meet customer demand promptly and maximise their sales potential. Thanks to Juni Capital, Boxbollen also has more financial flexibility to negotiate better terms with their suppliers, so they can take advantage of early payment discounts and strengthen their chain.
No matter which markets your commerce business operates in, efficient inventory cycle management is always a key factor for success. Juni Invoice credit offers a comprehensive solution to address common inventory management challenges, providing financial flexibility, improving cash flow and strengthening supplier relationships. By leveraging our flexible, transparent financing options, you are better positioned to optimise your inventory cycles, meet customer demand and keep ahead of your competitors. As a result, you’re better equipped to keep growing your business and ensure long-term success.
Ready to turn your inventory cycle management into a strategic driver for growth? Contact Juni to learn more and get started today.
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