Best Expense Management Software in the UK

From company cards and travel claims to receipts, reimbursements and recurring subscriptions, business expenses have a way of quickly and quietly piling up. This is where the right expense management software can help.

For a UK business, that means finding a system that fits the way your people spend, captures the evidence finance needs and connects cleanly with your accounting workflow.

This guide compares four expense management software options by their features, fees, benefits and limitations to help you make an informed decision on expense management software that could suit your business needs.

Discover Wise Business 🔎

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Note: Wise Business offers a free Essential plan for basic spending and transferring. If you need to receive money, set up direct debits, or generate invoices, you'll pay a one-time £50 setup fee to unlock the Advanced features.

Provider features, fees, eligibility checks, protections, and timelines mentioned in this article may vary by customer, business type, application outcome, and country. Check the provider’s website and terms and conditions for the most accurate and up-to-date information.

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Expense management software at a glance

Expensify

Expensify expense management features

According to All Expensify Product Features:

• Receipt capture through photos, forwarded emails, uploads and text messages, with expense details scanned automatically¹
• Expense creation, submission, approval and reimbursement, with reports synced to accounting software¹
• Bring-your-own-card connections and automatic corporate-card reconciliation, matching, coding and categorising transactions¹
• Expense rules, approval controls and policy checks to flag prohibited or out-of-policy spend¹
• Global reimbursement for employees or independent contractors in their local currency¹
• Mileage tracking, travel reimbursement, budgets, virtual cards and real-time visibility of expenses¹
• Accounting connections and mobile tools for submitting receipts, approving reports and reviewing spend¹

Expensify fees

The Expensify Help page directs customers to Expensify’s subscription pricing and explains that localised pricing can apply in GBP, EUR, AUD and NZD. It does not state a single UK monthly price, so check the current subscription options, tax treatment and any card-related terms before budgeting².

SAP Concur

SAP Concur expense management features

According to Spend Management Software for Travel, Expense, Invoice:

• Concur Expense supports receipt capture and report generation³
• Employees can manage expenses and reports across devices, while finance teams get visibility for reporting and follow-up³
• The platform can bring travel, expenses and accounts payable into a connected workflow³
• SAP Concur lists more than 300 pre-built connectors and custom integrations for connecting expense workflows with other systems³
• Concur’s wider travel and invoice coverage may help larger organisations link employee spending with travel booking and supplier-payment processes³

SAP Concur fees

According to Request a Concur Pricing Quote, SAP Concur uses a subscription-style pricing model and asks businesses to request a quote rather than publishing a standard UK price⁴.

Workday

Workday expense management features

According to Expense Reporting and Tracking Software:

• Workday Expenses supports mobile expense entry and approval, global receipt scanning, audit controls, embedded reporting and analytics, reimbursement and expense-risk reporting⁵
• Employees can email receipts or scan them from a device, with receipt data interpreted to help create expenses and reports⁵
• Employees can submit expenses through Slack or Microsoft Teams, which may reduce friction for teams already working in those tools⁵
• Expense data can be combined with financial and people data to give finance a broader view of organisational spending⁵
• Risk scoring, approval thresholds and spend authorisations can help managers prioritise reviews and investigate out-of-policy spend⁵
• Dashboards can help finance teams analyse travel spending and identify opportunities to negotiate rates or discounts⁵

Workday fees

Workday's Expense Reporting and Tracking Software page directs prospective customers towards a demo and contact route rather than stating a standard UK price. A separate Workday Adaptive Planning Pricing & Packaging page gives quote-based pricing for Adaptive Planning, but it is not an expense-management price list. For Workday Expenses, request a quote that covers the modules, users, integrations and implementation work your organisation needs^5,6.

Zoho Expense

Zoho Expense expense management features

According to Expense management features:

• Receipt capture, expense creation, expense reports and automated expense-report workflows⁷
• Multi-currency expense tracking with live exchange rates for foreign transactions⁷
• Corporate-card feeds, automatic expense creation, receipt matching and real-time reconciliation⁷
• Employee reimbursements that can sync with payroll, ERP or accounting systems, with reimbursement-status notifications⁷
• Mileage tracking, per diem management, purchase requests, budgets and policy controls⁷
• Custom approval workflows, expense rules, audits, audit trails, dashboards and analytics⁷
• Integrations with Zoho Books, QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Accounting and ERP systems such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics and NetSuite⁷

Zoho Expense fees

The Zoho Expense page offers a 14-day free trial and a free sign-up route, but it does not provide a complete UK price table for every plan or feature. Confirm the current plan, user allowance, card-feed availability, integrations and any paid travel or reimbursement features before choosing⁸.

Manage international team spending with Wise Business

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💡 Wise Business can help you manage international team spending with business debit cards, pre-set spending limits, spending alerts and custom team permissions.

Team members can use expense cards, while you can create approval processes, freeze cards and track spending in one place through Wise Business.

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Wise Business offers a free Essential plan for basic spending and transferring. If you need to receive money, set up direct debits, or generate invoices, you'll pay a one-time £50 setup fee to unlock the Advanced features.

With Wise Business, you can:

• 🌍 Send money to 70+ countries and pay overseas invoices at the mid-market exchange rate with low, transparent fees and no hidden exchange rate markups (product availability varies by region)
• 📥 Receive payments in 24 currencies and counting
• 💵 Get local account details for 8+ currencies, including USD and EUR, to let your customers pay in a currency they know and trust - convenience for them and peace of mind for you
• 💰 Hold money in 40+ currencies
• 🔁 Convert currencies anytime at the mid-market exchange rate with low, transparent fees
• ⚡ Use the batch payments tool to create and send up to 1,000 payments in a single transfer
• 👥 Run payroll and make international payments for up to 1,000 employees all over the world - including paying suppliers using local payment methods like ACH, SEPA, and Faster Payments
• 💳 Get business debit cards with 0.5% cashback for you and your team to keep track of team expenses and spend all over the world, with real-time visibility and categorisation. See full cashback terms and conditions
• 🏢 Manage cash in 55+ currencies across international offices from a single business account and move money between business accounts in seconds (exact speeds can vary depending on individual circumstances and may not be the same for all transactions)
• 🧾 Connect and sync every business transaction to your favourite accounting software, including Xero, Quickbooks, and more
• 🔐 Create your own payment approvals process to manage your team better with customised access for different team members, roles and permissions
• 📑 Create custom professional invoices and schedule invoice payments for future dates
• 📈 Earn variable returns on GBP, USD and EUR with Wise Interest (Capital at risk, growth not guaranteed. Your money is at risk if governments default or interest rates go negative. Rates vary by country and currency. Rates are variable. Visit Wise Interest to find out more)
• 🔗 Create payment links and QR codes to get paid easily (Card payment acceptance for new Wise Business customers is currently unavailable. Payment methods subject to eligibility and availability.)
• ⚙️ Automate payouts with the Wise API (comes with 24/7 customer support, a sandbox account to test integrations, API tokens, and clear documents on how to implement and make the most of our API)

Make the wise choice when selecting a business account for your domestic and global needs.

Be Smart, Get Wise.

Register for Wise Business ✍️

**Investments are not guaranteed, and your capital is at risk.

Wise is an Electronic Money Institution (EMI), so features like Interest and Stocks may be covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS). For standard cash balances, we safeguard your funds to meet regulatory obligations.

In the UK, Interest and Stocks are provided by Wise Assets, the trading name of Wise Assets UK Ltd, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA number 839689).

We do not provide investment advice, and taxes may apply. If unsure, seek qualified financial advice. Full fund information is available on our website.

FAQs

What should expense management software do?

Expense management software brings the process of recording, checking, approving and reconciling business spending into one workflow. A useful system should help your finance team:

• Issue cards with limits and permissions
• Capture receipts automatically
• Approve or reject spend before it happens
• Reimburse employees and contractors
• Track mileage and travel expenses
• Manage recurring subscriptions and vendor cards
• Export clean data to accounting software
• Control departmental or multi-entity budgets
• Reduce missing receipts and out-of-policy spend
• See where money is leaving the business

Receipt capture alone is not enough. The useful test is whether the software connects the receipt to the card transaction, routes it through the right approval process and leaves finance with data that is ready to reconcile.

How do you choose expense management software?

Start with the route your money takes today. Map company-card purchases, employee reimbursements, travel claims, recurring subscriptions, supplier invoices and overseas spend. Then compare each provider against the workflows that create the most manual work.

What pricing traps should you check for?

Before choosing, ask each provider to price your actual workflow. Include:

• Additional users
• Physical and virtual cards
• Foreign-currency spending and conversion
• Reimbursements and mileage
• Accounting integrations
• Travel or invoice modules
• Implementation and support
• Card replacement and other operational charges

The lowest advertised subscription may not be the lowest cost once the business adds employees, entities, cards and integrations. Ask for a worked example based on your expected monthly users and transactions.

What should be on your expense software implementation checklist?

• Refresh the expense policy before configuring the software
• Decide who can receive cards and what limits apply by role
• Create approval rules before issuing cards
• Connect accounting software and test VAT or category coding
• Test receipt capture on real paper and digital receipts
• Move recurring subscriptions to controlled cards where appropriate
• Set up reimbursement and mileage workflows
• Train employees and managers on approvals
• Review spend reports, missing receipts and policy breaches monthly

Start with one team, test the workflow and then expand. A pilot makes it easier to correct categories, limits and approval paths before every employee depends on the system.

What expense management mistakes should you avoid?

• Buying software before agreeing the policy it needs to enforce
• Issuing cards without limits or ownership
• Ignoring foreign-currency and international card costs
• Choosing a tool without testing accounting export
• Making receipt submission difficult for employees
• Comparing headline subscription prices without modelling users, cards and integrations
• Treating every purchase as an employee expense when supplier invoices or accounts-payable workflows need a different route

Is expense management software worth it for a small business?

It can be worthwhile when receipts, reimbursements, subscriptions or shared-card administration are already taking time every month. A founder-led business with occasional spending may be able to start with a business account, clear policy and basic bookkeeping, then add dedicated software as the number of spenders grows.

Should every employee get a company card?

No. Issue cards according to role and purchasing need, then set limits and receipt requirements. A controlled card programme is easier to manage when finance can see who owns each card and what type of spend it is intended to cover.

What is the difference between expense management and accounts payable?

Expense management usually covers employee spending, cards, receipts and reimbursements. Accounts payable focuses on supplier invoices and payments. Some platforms connect both workflows, but they still require different approval, evidence and settlement processes.

How important are accounting integrations?

They are important when finance wants to avoid exporting, reformatting and re-keying transactions at month end. Check that the integration supports the categories, tax treatment, entities and approval data your business actually uses.

How should finance roll out a new system?

Start with one team and a small set of real transactions. Test a domestic card purchase, an overseas transaction, an employee reimbursement, a missing receipt and an accounting export. Use the results to adjust policies and approval rules before expanding the rollout.

Sources

1. All Expensify Product Features
2. Expensify Help
3. Spend Management Software for Travel, Expense, Invoice
4. Request a Concur Pricing Quote
5. Expense Reporting and Tracking Software
6. Workday Adaptive Planning Pricing & Packaging
7. Expense management features
8. Zoho Expense

Sources last checked on 5 August 2026