“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.
Ensuring creditors are happy, debtors pay on time and creating capital for growth while mitigating risk can be time-consuming. Especially considering nearly 40% of invoices contain errors and 64%* of businesses experience late payments.
That's where treasury management comes in.
In this article, you'll learn how treasury management streamlines your business — and how it extends beyond accounting, bookkeeping, and investment. We'll also cover software you can use to manage treasury and assets effectively — and take control of your spend.
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*https://tispayments.com/seven-key-findings-from-the-2023-2024-treasury-technology-survey/#top
Effective treasury management means overseeing and optimising your company's financial assets and cash flow while protecting it from financial risk.
By prioritising this area of your business and using the right tools for the job — like Juni — you can ensure operational stability, support strategic objectives and plan for the future.
There are several key components to treasury asset management, each contributing to the overall financial health and efficiency of your organisation:
Maintaining liquidity is essential for meeting immediate and unexpected financial needs. Among treasury management best practices, managing liquid assets rates quite high. It ensures your company can quickly access cash without incurring significant losses or disruptions.
For your company to function and meet customer demand, cash flow forecasting is essential. For example, a company that makes greeting cards will see seasonal spikes. They may have to spend a lot on supplies in September, but won’t see any return on investment (ROI) until December, when profits boom. If they fail to forecast cash flow, and secure working capital to meet overheads for the intermediary months, the business might not make it to the peak holiday season.
Identifying and mitigating risks such as interest rate fluctuations, volatile currency exchange rates and credit risks are all key to protecting your organisation’s finances. By employing hedging strategies, using financial derivatives and diversifying investments, you can protect your business from the adverse impact of events beyond your control.
Once you’ve finished celebrating any surplus cash, deciding what to do with it can be challenging. Evaluating investment opportunities, balancing risk and return and aligning investments with the company’s overall financial strategy and risk tolerance are key factors in this process.
With these core elements of treasury management in mind, it’s important to address them with action. There are different approaches you can take to optimise your treasury management. Here are some core principles you need to consider for business success.
There are plenty of benefits to robust cash flow forecasting including ongoing financial stability, risk mitigation and investor confidence. Cash flow forecasting tools can aggregate your historical business performance and cash flow, upcoming orders, industry trends, economic climate — and much more — to give a surprisingly accurate picture of what lies ahead.
Accounting software solutions such as Xero, QuickBooks or Zoho Books all boast features designed specifically for cash flow management. And, if you’re managing your company’s spending through a financial services solution like Juni, with Open Banking now prevalent, you can sync directly, or integrate your whole Fintech ecosystem to get the clearest financial picture possible.
By investing in and implementing effective cash flow reporting, you can enhance your financial management capabilities, make better-informed decisions, adapt accordingly and ensure long-term sustainability and growth.
Take a look at how digital agency, Savvy Moves, streamlined their spend management with Juni, reaping the benefits of cash flow forecasting and more in this case study.
While liquidity is primarily measured in readily available cash, it can include easily convertible assets such as shares or bonds. Maintaining business liquidity is essential for making sure your organisation meets its short-term obligations and continues its operations smoothly.
Liquidity risk can result in fractured relationships with suppliers, avoidable interest payments and failure to meet customer demand — damaging your brand and business prospects.
Popular accounting software can help you manage accounts receivable and payable, so you have a clear picture of your real-time and forecast balances. This will let you know just how liquid your business is.
Maintaining a cash reserve, where possible, provides a safety net against late payments and unexpected expenses while optimising inventory levels can keep your company’s balance healthy. Implementing just-in-time inventory practices avoids over-stocking, reducing the amount of cash tied up in supplies while ensuring you can meet customer demand.
Managing expenses and taking advantage of short-term financing solutions can make a world of difference to the liquidity of your business. Driving expenditure through Juni virtual cards is an ideal solution for expense management and short-term financing. More than a low-fee approach with cashback rewards, you can see and manage exactly how cardholders spend company money, applying individual limits as needed.
Diversification helps reduce the impact of any single investment's poor performance on your overall portfolio. As with any decision that could have a significant impact on your business, your first step should be to seek expert advice. That doesn’t mean entering the conversation uninformed, or without any idea of how you want to invest.
However you invest, periodically review and adjust your investment portfolio to maintain your desired level of diversification. Rebalancing ensures your portfolio remains aligned with your risk tolerance and financial goals.
Investment, misjudging growth, and long-term borrowing all present liabilities. However, financial risks can arise from a variety of other sources. Market volatility, interest rate changes, currency fluctuations, and internal mismanagement of funds can all take their toll on your bottom line. Address these risks proactively and you can protect your company from potential financial losses and uncertainties.
Liquidity management, fund hedging, and investment diversification all play a part in risk management, but there are more actions you can take. As the proverb says, “Prevention is better than a cure” and that’s true for mitigating risk. Continuous assessment and monitoring of financial risks will make that difference. Using tools such as risk matrices and models can help identify potential threats and allow for timely interventions. Meanwhile, robust insurance policies can lessen the blow if the worst does happen.
Stop the risks coming from within by establishing strong internal controls and governance practices to prevent fraud, inefficiencies, errors, and financial mismanagement. This includes implementing checks and balances, regular audits, and clear financial reporting procedures.
And, for events outside of your control, conduct stress testing and scenario analysis to evaluate how different financial conditions could impact your business. This will help you prepare contingency plans and make your company more resilient to financial shocks.
Spend your time exploring investment opportunities, finding new areas for business growth, and keeping customers and creditors happy — while routine processes take care of themselves.
With your ecommerce outlets, accounting software, financial services, and banks all talking to each other, you can cut out the likelihood of manual inputting errors. And, by sharing vital information about your cash flow, business performance, and upcoming transactions, you get a clear, real-time view of your financial health.
Use accounting and bookkeeping software to balance your books in real-time. Then,
broaden your ecommerce and fintech ecosystem with a financial services provider like Juni to reap even more benefits from automation. Simplify the reconciliation process with automatic transaction matching between bank statements and recorded expenses and revenue.
“Juni automatically matches the right Google Ads invoices to the right payments. This saves our financial department time. All the features that the Juni platform offers are really helpful to streamline our business.”
— Sven Braam, Founding Partner at Sneleentaxi
Another area where Juni’s automation can make your life easier is with automated budgeting tools and spend management. Set spending limits. Track cardholder adherence. Ensure financial discipline without going through fistfuls of receipts and statements.
Automation made a big difference to women’s supplement brand, Protein, starting with expense management. Find out how in this case study.
A fantastic business model is no use if you’re not allowed to trade, or have been rendered insolvent by penalties, fines, or debilitating legal fees. Nor is it attractive to investors or lenders if cursory research reveals that you’ve been sanctioned for non-compliance.
And it’s common sense. Compliance processes often streamline operations and improve financial reporting accuracy. This can lead to better decision-making and a clearer understanding of your company’s financial health. Plus, adhering to regulations ensures your financial practices are sound and sustainable.
The first step to financial compliance is to stay informed. Keep up to date with relevant laws and regulations that apply to your industry and region by subscribing to industry newsletters, joining professional organisations, and consulting legal experts regularly.
Engage with the regulators too. They will, more often than not, want to give you plenty of time to prepare for regulatory changes and save themselves a headache. They’ll also offer guidance on which platforms are best equipped to comply.
Internally, create and maintain clear policies and procedures regarding financial operations and compliance. Provide training for all new employees, ensure the entire workforce has access to relevant documentation, and inform them of any changes.
By prioritising financial compliance and regulatory adherence, your company can safeguard its operations, build credibility, and create a solid foundation for sustainable growth.
Being busy doesn’t always mean you’re being productive, and being productive doesn’t always mean you’re performing well.
Set and monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure you’re meeting business objectives. From brand presence to business growth and, of course, profit. Take a data-driven approach to decision-making and you’ll be able to identify, and correct, processes and practices that are holding your business back.
Once you’ve set your KPIs, these three ways to monitor performance, outside of financial reporting, can make a big difference to your business.
Use the insights gained from performance monitoring to adjust your strategies and tactics. Be flexible and willing to pivot to improve outcomes and achieve your business goals.
Staying apprised of income, investments, cash flow, and credit agreements might seem like a lot.
However, effective treasury management keeps your business solvent and functioning at its best. That's why a platform like Juni can help you forecast cash flow to ease decision-making, raise profit, mitigate risks, and pave the way for growth.
See how ANI Jewels partnered with Juni to manage their ad campaign costs and ended up streamlining their entire financial admin, making it 3x faster, in this case study.
Treasury management involves managing a company's liquidity, investments, and financial risks to ensure efficient and effective operations. Its functions include managing cash flow, risk, funding, and investment, as well as financial reporting and compliance.
Treasury asset management is a subset of treasury management that focuses specifically on investing surplus cash, managing investment portfolios, and liquidity management.
Asset management is a broader term that applies to anything your company owns. While it does refer to investments including stocks and bonds, it can also refer to the physical ownership of real estate or depreciating assets such as office equipment and company cars.
Cash management is a subset of treasury management with a more focused and tactical approach. It specifically deals with the processes involved in managing the company's cash flow, such as cash flow forecasting, accounts payable and receivable,
Cash management is a subset of treasury management with a more focused and tactical approach. It specifically deals with the processes involved in managing the company's cash flow, such as cash flow forecasting, accounts payable and receivable,
bank account management, and short-term borrowing, lending, or investing.
Cash flow management, risk management, funding management, investment management and financial reporting and compliance all fall under the umbrella of treasury management.
