Expensify vs QuickBooks Online: Which is Best for Your Business in 2024?

If you’re running a small business, you know how important managing your finances is. But with the extensive number of financial management tools available in the market, you might find it hard to find one that’s reputable and can easily be used by your accountant for daily expense reporting tasks.

This guide will compare Expensify vs QuickBooks, two of today’s best expense management software. We will cover their key features and additional tools, which are easier to use, as well as their pricing. We’ll also discuss their claim to fame and which software suits your daily financial management process.

Read on to learn more.

Expensify vs QuickBooks Online: An Overview

Expensify

Expensify is a robust expense tracking software for small and medium-sized businesses. It focuses on automating expense management tasks like receipt capture, reimbursement management, and approval workflows. It has tools for spend management and expense report creation, helping you track all your business expenses and maximize your savings.

QuickBooks Online

quickbooks.intuit.com

Quickbooks Online is comprehensive accounting software for businesses of all sizes. It has tools for managing your overall financial operations, including accounts receivable and accounts payable tools, expense management features, and robust financial reports. It also automates accounting processes, such as receipt scanning and expense tracking for tax preparation.

Expensify vs QuickBooks Online: Side-by-Side Comparison

Key Features

Expense Management

Expensify
Expensify is a premier expense management software that allows you to track employee expenses and process reimbursements faster. It has robust reconciliation features allow you to review unsubmitted expenses and compare statement amounts. Employees can submit receipts of their billable expenses through SmartScan.

QuickBooks
QuickBooks has tools to simplify expense management tasks, including receipt tracking and tax management. You can manage cash flow through built-in profit-and-loss statements and cash flow reports. It can automatically import and sort your expenses using machine learning, or you can create custom rules for the tool to follow.

Financial Reporting

Expensify
Expensify allows you to create customized reports to see how much your company spends on various categories, providing you with spending and expense data for financial planning. The platform can show real-time insights into your business’s spending trends for budget forecasting. Expensify supports over 20 reports, including aged approval reports, category spend reports, and mileage reports.

QuickBooks
As an all-around accounting platform, QuickBooks provides multiple built-in reports, such as balance sheets, general ledger reports, and trial balance reports. It has robust data visualization tools, allowing you to create customizable financial reports. The platform can also run tax reports, like 1099 contractor and transaction summaries.

Expensify – Additional Features

Spend Management
Besides effectively managing expenses, Expensify has corporate credit card management tools, such as the Expensify Visa Commercial Card. You can make payments directly on the platform via Bill Pay and create customized spending reports based on employee expenses to track cash flow. It also simplifies credit card reconciliation by importing all card expenses on the software.

Receipt Scanning
Expensify’s dedicated mobile application includes SmartScan, one of its receipt scanning features. Using optical character recognition (OCR), it can identify the receipt’s merchant, amount, currency, and date of purchase. Upon submitting a receipt, the app creates an expense report, allowing your employees to process and claim reimbursement immediately.

Note: Expensify doesn’t support automatic receipt data sorting into specific categories. If you want a more robust expense management solution, consider an add-on like Envoice. It uses receipt scanning technologies, like Human-in-the-loop review and corrections with ExactExtract if needed for 99.9% accuracy. Register for a free trial today.

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Global Reimbursements
If you have employees overseas, you can use Expensify’s global reimbursement feature. It simplifies employee reimbursement through seamless cross-border payments, allowing them to receive the amount in their local currency. The software supports withdrawals from 24 countries with bank accounts in major currencies (USD, AUD, CAD, GBP, and EUR) and deposits to over 195 countries globally.

QuickBooks – Additional Features

Inventory Management
QuickBooks Online has effective stock inventory management tools that automatically update your inventory, letting you see what’s selling fast and what products to reorder. You can run reports to check a summary of the best-selling items, tax, and sales. You can also easily track your orders from each supplier and have their contact info in one place.

QuickBooks Time
QuickBooks Time is the software’s primary employee time-tracking solution. It lets you manage multiple timesheets, check who’s working, and approve time even on your phone via the QuickBooks Workforce app. You can track job progress, create schedules, and set up recurring alerts in an activity feed.

Bank Feed Integration
You can use QuickBooks Online’s bank feed feature to fully view your finances. It lets you connect your bank accounts so your debit or credit card transactions are automatically synced to the platform. The software applies smart sorting to your credit card statements, automatically categorizing each transaction.

Ease of Use

Expensify
Expensify has an intuitive and feature-packed interface. Its Inbox dashboard has a Concierge bot that helps you set up data needed for the expense management process, like bank reconciliation, receipt scanning, approvals, and more. The Expenses dashboard allows you to manage expenses efficiently and create automated reports. It also supports auto-sync, which automatically imports transactions and data to other accounting software.

QuickBooks
QuickBooks has a user-friendly interface containing multiple data visualization tools to help users understand financial trends without accounting expertise. Its robust dashboard lets you access various tools for all your accounting needs. You can easily create expense reports and manage cash flow through income and expense reports and profit-and-loss statements.

Invoicing

Expensify
Expensify has excellent invoice templates you can customize using customer data and send for payment via Stripe. Its auto-import feature automatically collects and inputs invoice data based on your pricing and services provided. The platform can also calculate fees, such as taxes and discounts.

QuickBooks
As a powerful accounting software, QuickBooks Online can create professional invoices. It offers a variety of customizable templates, can process recurring invoices, and generates invoices using approved estimates with one click. You can also set up a payment button on the invoice, allowing for a seamless payment process.

Integrations

Expensify
Expensify supports integrations with different types of software, including ERP, accounting and finance, HR, tax compliance, and practice management. The platform supports apps like QuickBooks, Oracle NetSuite, Xero, Sage, Taxback International, Revel Systems, ANZ, etc. It also integrates with Tripcatcher and TravelPerk to manage travel expenses.

QuickBooks
QuickBooks supports a wide range of integrations, mainly with expense management tools, eCommerce platforms, CRM software, project management tools, and more. This allows you to sync data between these apps, eliminating the need to use different software for tasks. Among its supported apps are Shopify, WooCommerce, PayPal, SOS Inventory, and Etsy.

Pricing

Expensify
Expensify has the following pricing plans per user: Collect ($5 per month) and Control ($9 per month). Both plans include receipt scanning tools, corporate credit card feeds, invoicing, and more. The platform also offers a free account, which lets you access the Expensify Card, limited expense tracking features, and up to 25 SmartScan monthly credits.

Note: While Expensify may seem cheap, they charge per user on both plans. If you want an expense management tool where you can add your team while keeping company data secure, try Envoice. It lets you add multiple user accounts at no additional cost. Sign up now for a free trial.

QuickBooks
QuickBooks has four pricing plans: Simple Start ($30 monthly), Essentials ($60 monthly), Plus ($90 monthly), and Advanced ($200 monthly). They offer a 70% discount for the first three months of your subscription and a 30-day free trial. Add-ons like QuickBooks Payroll and QuickBooks Live are priced differently than QuickBooks Online.

Who is it For?

Expensify
Expensify is ideal for SMBs and freelancers who want an effective expense management tool. It lets you track billable and non-billable expenses for tax time, create custom reports, and scan receipts through SmartScan. You can also process reimbursements seamlessly and establish approval workflows to mark expenses for review.

QuickBooks
QuickBooks is an excellent software for startups and medium and large businesses looking for a complete accounting solution. It offers tools for bookkeeping, real-time expense tracking, financial reporting, invoicing, and bank reconciliation. It also automates various accounting tasks, effectively reducing mistakes from manual data entry.

Claim to Fame

Expensify
Expensify excels as an effective expense tracking software compared to other accounting tools. It suits startups, small businesses, and freelancers who want to track their business expenses and create invoices that clients can settle through electronic payments, even if they’re not on the platform. Employees can also greatly benefit from its SmartScan and reimbursement management features.

QuickBooks
QuickBooks Online is one of the most cost-efficient tools for small business accounting. It boasts a complete set of accounting tools, like A/P and A/R features, setting up recurring invoices, managing bills, and creating customizable financial reports. It also has different add-ons depending on your business needs and supports robust third-party integrations.

Conclusion

If you’re a small business owner or a freelancer who needs an effective expense tracking and spend management solution, Expensify is the right tool for you. It has robust features like SmartScan, bank reconciliation, tax tracking, invoicing, etc. It also has tools for expense reporting, quick reimbursement processing, and approval workflows.

QuickBooks is an excellent choice for scaling businesses that need a comprehensive accounting tool. It has robust features for financial reporting, invoicing, expense management, budgeting, and more. Since it’s one of the most popular accounting software, your accountant can seamlessly use its features for your business’s daily financial operations.

However, if you want a more powerful expense management alternative to Expensify, we highly recommend Envoice. It streamlines your bookkeeping process, tracks business expenses, and has robust workflow automation features. It also integrates with popular accounting platforms like QuickBooks, Sage Accounting, and Xero.

Curious about how Envoice can make your expense-tracking tasks more efficient? Explore its core features now and streamline your pre-accounting processes today!