Bill.com vs. Expensify: Expense Management for SMEs

Hey there!

Small and midsize businesses know better than anyone how quickly expenses can get out of control. You’re probably losing a little sleep over how you can reimburse employees faster and more efficiently while watching the bottom line. It’s not really that fun to figure out, right?

Well, that’s exactly why we need to discuss two expense management platforms that may be a game changer for your business. Let’s delve into this together because we’ve done the hard work of figuring out how your employees can submit expenses and track mileage without requiring too much effort on your part.

We’ll explore how Bill.com and Expensify can take the headache out of managing receipts and offer you some pretty smart insights into where your money is going. We’re aiming to make tedious tasks disappear, help you stay on budget and give your employees the power to submit their own expense reports.

Are you ready to chat?

Bill.com vs. Expensify: At a Glance

Bill.com

BILL is a cloud-based expense management, accounts payable and accounts receivable platform for small and midsize enterprises. BILL is passionate about offering SMEs integrated and easy-to-use solutions. But a few years ago, they noticed that something was missing. Their platform couldn’t offer expense management, forcing their customers to purchase additional software. To end this problem, they acquired Divvy and today they offer BILL Spend and Expense.

Not only can you benefit from expense automation but you can also use this super easy functionality for free.

Expensify

Expensify understands that every company has expenses to manage. Whether it’s Uber charges or travel expenses from the sales team’s business trip. There’s alot going on sometimes, and trying to tie up all the bits-and-pieces from receipts can be frustrating.

Expensify has specifically designed its cloud-based platform to be user-friendly, intuitive and to have time-saving features courtesy of AI technology. What started as a way to provide funding to needy people in San Francisco quickly evolved into a successful expense management platform when the founder pitched it to investors. Turns out expense management was bugging everyone. Expensify rolled out what was the first receipt-scanning technology in the industry and today it remains a solid option for SMEs.

Bill.com vs. Expensify: Side-by-side comparison

Detailed Comparison of Key Features

Expense reports

Bill.com

The old way of doing expense management is challenging. There are miscategorized transactions, incomplete expense reports and chasing paper receipts. But BILL Spend and Expense does automatic receipt matching, rule-based categorization and automated expense reports. When you scan a receipt, BILL’s AI capabilities will extract data and automatically populate expense reports. For instance, the technology can identify the merchant, date, and dollar amount.

Receipts are digitized, and employees can submit reports via their mobile phones anytime, anywhere. No more hanging onto receipts until they get back to the office. This kind of on-time expense management allows small businesses to manage cash flow better. Staggered reimbursements are a winner for the finances.

Expensify
Expensify offers to turn the admin load of pouring over incomplete expense reports into a non-issue. SmartScan automatically extracts data from receipts using image recognition technology. Users can take a photo of a receipt, and SmartScan will identify the merchant, date, and amount and then create an expense entry. This reduces manual entry and increases accuracy. You’ll be able to create, submit, review and approve expense reports and process reimbursements in minutes. All the tedious calculations are left to the software, saving you time and eliminating errors.

Credit cards can be linked to Expensify, so you can import your business expenses automatically.

Customizable approval workflows

Bill.com
BILL approval workflows allow you to configure rules within the expense management workflow that route expenses to different levels of approvers, set up according to your company’s structure. The benefit of workflow automation is the time you save on doing this manually. The system automatically notifies the approver and provides a digital audit trail of who approved certain expenses. No one is ever left out of the loop and that makes the auditor very happy, as tighter internal controls prevent unauthorized and fraudulent transactions.

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Expensify
Expensify allows you to create approval workflows that match your company’s structure. You can set multiple users on different approval levels and customisable approval limits for each person. If an approver should only approve a specific category of expense, you can set that up as well and the system will ensure that each approver is notified and reminders sent.

Bill.com – Additional Features

Expense Tracking
Since expenses flow automatically into Bill.com via expense reports and automated capture of credit card records, business owners and finance teams have accurate and real-time tracking of spending from any device. You can get a bird’s eye view from the dashboard or pull more detailed reports based on certain expense categories or per employee.

Link virtual cards to control spending
Virtual cards are a favorite with users. With BILL, you maintain ultimate control with real-time views of expenses. Employees can’t overspend, virtual cards keep recurring subscriptions in check, and cards can be frozen and created instantly. That’s fraud and overcharge protection in one amazing package. You can see how much is being spent in real-time as the spending is synced with BILL. You’ll always be on top of spending and if anything gets out of control you’ll stop it before it becomes a bigger problem.

Expensify- Additional Features

Next day reimbursement
With the Expensify streamlined reimbursement process, the days of waiting weeks to get reimbursed are over. Employees can get their money back in as little as one business day. This encourages employees to submit expenses immediately after they’re incurred, which helps the accounting department close books on time each month.

Travel reimbursement
Expensify allows you to seamlessly manage travel reimbursements where employees have used their own credit card or company card. It also allows you to record mileage on the mobile app and track travel expenses for company employees in real-time.

Who is it For?

Bill.com
BILL is ideal for small and midsize businesses. If your company allows employees to spend their own money on office expenses and travel, or you have provided a company credit card, then you want to use BILL for expense management. The whole process becomes simpler and faster with very little input needed from the bookkeeper or finance team.

Expensify
Expensify makes expense management easy for companies of all sizes, from individuals tracking personal expenses to companies with complex approval workflow or integration requirements.

Claim to Fame

Bill.com
BILL integrates with popular accounting software but also gives you numerous additional benefits such as rewards for managing your expenses and keeping your card limits within budget. Their partnership with TravelPerk allows you to utilise airline and hotel bookings and automatically allocate a budget to those expenses.

Expensify
Expensify has been busy in recent years upgrading the functionality of the system. They’ve expanded their operation globally and since becoming a public company in 2021 have collaborated with various partners to bring you a better and more integrated system. They now offer rewards and have a growing travel partner network.

Conclusion

Thanks for your time. We’re glad you were open to this chat about expense management software. Before you go, let’s summarize the discussion.

If you want to fully automate your expense management process, get instant credit card recons, set budgets for employees and allocate virtual cards that you can manage in real-time then BILL is your choice. The fact that BILL is free and has no annual subscription fee is a big bonus. Reviewers loved how easy it was to use the system and how much time and money they saved. Most negative reviews online are about the changeover between the Divvy platform and BILL. However, these problems seem to have been resolved and BILL has excellent and comprehensive feedback about its expense management platform.

Expensify is great for small businesses that want a powerful and effective expense management system without complications. This doesn’t mean that the technology behind the scenes isn’t impressive and since they were the first to introduce the scanning of receipts via a mobile phone, they’ve had a lot of time and practice. Reviewers like how easy it is to set up and use and how quickly they can reimburse their employees. It appears that Expensify is not always the favorite alternative to Bill.com for many reviewers, who feel that some of the newer platforms have better features and offer more integrations.

Wondering if there’s something else you could try?

Everyone loves more options, don’t they? And speaking of newer platforms with powerful functionality, have you heard of Envoice? Developed by an Estonian-based company, Envoice brings powerful AI and machine-learning capabilities to expense management. Easily integrated with QuickBooks, Sage, Xero, MS Dynamics 365, ERPLY Books or Briox Envoice offers a mobile app and comprehensive expense reports that are populated using sophisticated data extraction technology.

All pre-accounting work becomes an easy and effective function with Envoice. There are many more features that go well beyond expense management and you can have it all for $7 a month, for unlimited users. Curious? Why not take a look? 4000+ companies have already signed up.

Envoice full features