Top 5 Expensify Alternatives with AP Automation

What is Expense Software with AP Automation?

The global expense management software market has reached over $3 billion and is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of 12.4% until 2027. There is a high demand for intelligent expense management tools, particularly those that also offer accounts payable automation. This type of technology offers all types of accounting functionalities, from approval workflows and expense reporting to AI invoice processing, policy compliance, real-time tracking, vendor management, in-depth analytics, and much more.

Combining robust expense management with AP automation platforms will enhance compliance, reduce costs, and provide better visibility into financial operations. Here, we take a quick look at the best alternatives to the popular expense management platform, Expensify, including key features, pricing, and serviceable markets.

The Best Expensify Competitors with AP Automation 

When seeking Expensify alternatives, it’s important to consider solutions that offer both AP automation and comprehensive expense management features. Several providers offer powerful tools to streamline financial workflows, enhance policy compliance, and improve overall efficiency. Here are some of the best Expensify competitors that excel in AP automation, ensuring seamless management of both processes.

Tipalti

Tipalti is a cloud-based financial automation platform that streamlines business expenses and AP processes. The suite of solutions covers everything from procurement and expenses to global tax compliance, automated invoice management, a self-service supplier portal, smart reconciliation, and more. The system seamlessly integrates with many popular ERP solutions, like QuickBooks Online, Sage, Xero, Acumatica and Oracle NetSuite.

Key Features

• Intuitive procurement and mobile expenses with PO management and budget visibility
• Accelerated monthly close with automatic reconciliation and robust ERP integrations
• Invoice processing with OCR technology and custom approval workflows
• International payments with multi-currency support and various payment methods
• Real-time reporting, international tax compliance, and automated reconciliation

Serviceable Market

Tipalti caters to many businesses and is particularly useful for those with complex, high-volume, and multi-currency transactions. Whether you’re a retail business looking to scale globally or a law firm that needs efficient payment processing, the expense management automation software is versatile.

Pricing

Tipalti offers a subscription-based pricing model that is custom-built for a business’s specific needs and scale. The pricing model includes:

• A monthly subscription (base fee)
• Charges per transaction (varies on payment method and currency)
• A one-time fee for onboarding and integration

Tailored pricing plans can be arranged for larger enterprises or businesses with niche requests.

Concur

SAP Concur is a comprehensive expense and AP automation solution best suited for larger companies. It integrates expense management, travel booking, and invoice processing into a single user interface, providing a seamless experience for managing spend control. The system automates expense capture and approval workflows, enforces policy compliance, and provides real-time visibility into corporate spending.

Key Features

• Automated expense report creation and submission with integrated travel booking
• End-to-end travel management and expense integration
• Invoice management with data capture, three-way matching, and approval workflows
• Built-in policy enforcement with audit capabilities
• Mobile app to capture receipts and manage expenses on the go

Serviceable Market

Concur is a SaaS that primarily serves large enterprises and multinational corporations. The system offers scalable solutions designed to manage complex organizational needs.

Pricing

Pricing for Concur is custom. The cost varies based on the size of the company and specific needs. It typically involves a subscription model with per-user fees and additional costs for advanced features.

Ramp

Ramp is an easy-to-use expense management and AP automation platform emphasizing simplicity and efficiency. It offers corporate cards (with spending limits), expense tracking, and bill payment features built to streamline financial processes. Ramp also provides AI-driven insights to identify cost-saving opportunities and integrates seamlessly with popular accounting software.

Key Features

• Automatic fraud alerts and flags for non-compliant expenses
• Automated receipt capture, categorization, and approval workflows
• Simplified bill payments with automated matching and approvals
• AI-driven insights to identify and realize greater cost savings
• Seamless integration with accounting software and other financial tools

Serviceable Market

The Ramp expenses solution caters to everyone and will enhance efficiency for businesses of all sizes. It works best for mid-sized companies looking for a modern, scalable expense management solution.

Pricing

Ramp offers a straightforward pricing model with no subscription fees. The brand earns money through interchange fees on transactions made with its corporate cards. There is also a Ramp Plus plan, which costs $15/user per month.

Brex 

Brex is a financial services platform that offers expense management, corporate cards, and AP automation solutions tailored for startups and tech-savvy brands. The system gives you real-time control over global spending, streamlining workflows and empowering employees to close the books faster.

Key Features

• Automatic categorization, receipt matching, and expense approval workflows
• Customizable corporate cards with high credit limits
• Automated bill payments and smart vendor management
• Competitive rewards and cash-back on spending categories
• Universal dashboard with real-time visibility into spend and cash flow

Serviceable Market

Brex serves everyone, from freelancers to startups, tech companies, and high-growth organizations that need flexible, innovative financial solutions.

Pricing

Brex offers a fee-free model for corporate cards, earning revenue through interchange fees. Other financial services may incur costs based on usage.

BILL Spend & Expense (fka Divvy)

BILL Spend & Expense, formerly known as Divvy, provides a comprehensive spend management platform focused on smaller businesses. It combines corporate cards, expense tracking, and AP automation for an all-in-one financial solution. The platform also provides real-time visibility into spending and streamlines bill payments with approval workflows.

Key Features

• Track out-of-pocket expenses and manage expense reimbursements in one spot
• Simple tools for creating and managing budgets that help control spend
• Automated receipt capture, categorization, and policy compliance
• Streamlined bill payment with fast and flexible business credit
• Detailed spending reports and analytics for better financial oversight

Serviceable Market

BILL Spend & Expense targets small to mid-sized businesses, providing tools that are easy to implement and scale as an organization grows.

Pricing

BILL Spend & Expense offers a free-to-use model for its basic features, earning revenue through interchange fees on its corporate cards. Advanced features and additional services may come with a fee.

Tipalti vs Expensify

Tipalti and Expensify both serve distinct needs in expense and AP management. Tipalti excels in automating expenses and global payables, including invoice management, supplier onboarding, and multi-currency payments. Expensify focuses on streamlining expense reporting and employee reimbursements. Choosing between these two powerhouse systems will depend on your specific requirements and the needs of the finance team.

What Does Tipalti Do?

Tipalti is an end-to-end expense and AP automation solution that addresses everything from intuitive intake and PO management to self-service supplier onboarding, invoice processing, employee expenses, global payments, compliance, reconciliation, and more. Expect comprehensive features for tax and regulatory compliance, self-billing, supplier payment status communications, fraud detection, and reporting capabilities.

Tipalti’s advanced global features include multi-entity AP, multi-FX (intercompany bank transfers), and FX-hedging. The system effortlessly syncs with subsidiary GLs, ensuring current payables data and accelerating financial close by more than 25%.

Tipalti Capabilities Overview

Tipalti automates expenses, PO and supplier management, invoice processing, payments, reconciliation, and more. By leveraging advanced technology, the solution helps companies improve efficiency, ensure compliance, reduce manual workload, and effectively scale their financial operations. Key capabilities include:

Intelligent Expense Management

Automated expense policies minimize fraud, ensure compliance, and enhance the overall customer experience. Tipalti provides a mobile app for quick and easy expense reports by employees and approvals by managers. A business can automatically reconcile expense transactions to gain visibility and make global reimbursements.

Intuitive Procurement

Tipalti streamlines business purchases, reducing processing times and working to curb spend. User-friendly, intuitive requisition templates improve adoption and accuracy. The system integrates with Jira and Slack to speed up the approval process and provides a contract interface to search contracts and terms thoroughly.

Fast Invoice Processing

Tipalti extracts data from invoices using optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning (ML), reducing the need for manual data entry. Customizable approvals enable businesses to match workflows with specific needs, ensuring timely and accurate invoice approvals. Two-way and three-way PO matching automatically matches invoices with purchase orders and delivery receipts to prevent discrepancies and potential fraud.

Enhanced Global Payments

Tipalti supports payments in 120+ currencies across 190 countries, enabling seamless global transactions. The system entertains a variety of payment methods, including ACH, wire transfers, PayPal, prepaid debit cards, checks, and more. Tipalti also enables companies to schedule payments, which will optimize cash flow and ensure timely disbursements.

Self-Service Supplier Portal

Companies can access a self-service supplier portal where vendors can submit essential data, manage their profiles, track payment status, and communicate with AP teams. This helps to provide real-time visibility into payment status, cash flow, and financial health through detailed reporting and analytics.

International Tax Compliance

Tipalti has automated tax filing for 1099 and 1042-S forms, ensuring compliance with IRS requirements. It supports VAT compliance in multiple jurisdictions and countries, helping companies manage global tax obligations effectively. The solution also ensures adherence to international regulatory standards such as GDPR, OFAC, and AML, safeguarding against financial and legal risks.

Additional Features

• API access for custom integrations and enhanced connectivity with other systems
• Automated reconciliation with bank statements and accounting records
• Data encryption to protect sensitive financial data and ensure secure transmissions
• Compliance monitoring with regulatory requirements, reducing the risk of penalties
• ERP integrations and other accounting tools like QuickBooks, Xero, and MS Dynamics

Tipalti Price Range

Tipalti offers custom pricing. The cost is typically based on your company’s size, the number of transactions processed, and the required features and modules. The pricing model includes a combination of monthly subscription fees and transaction fees. 

For an exact quote, companies can contact Tipalti and request a personalized demo. Prices start from a few hundred dollars monthly for small businesses and scale up for larger enterprises.

What Does Expensify Do?

Expensify is intelligent expense management software designed to simplify the tracking, reporting, and reimbursing of business expenses. It caters to organizations of all sizes, providing a user-friendly platform that integrates seamlessly with a myriad of top ERPs and apps.

Expensify Capabilities Overview

Expensify offers a wide range of capabilities to help businesses manage their expenses efficiently. Some of these include:

Automatic Expense Tracking

Expensify offers a free receipt-scanning app. An employee uses SmartScan to snap a picture, which automatically identifies the receipt’s merchant, date, and amount (in over 150 currencies). The system will then automatically generate an expense report, which can be easily submitted with the click of a button.

Streamlined Approval Workflows

A business can create customizable approval workflows that ensure business expenses are always reviewed and approved y the right people before reimbursement.

Unified Travel Management

Expensify allows a business to manage all bookings in one place, whether it is a flight, hotel, or car. You can search a global database of travel at competitive prices, create specific travel booking rules, and use the Expensify credit card for cash back. If you compare other popular travel systems, like Expensify vs. Concur, it becomes more apparent how robust these features are.

Real-Time Expense Reporting

The Expensify solution automates expense report creation, submission, and approval. Users can capture receipts using the SmartScan mobile app, and the system will automatically extract and categorize the data. You can also import general ledger (GL) codes to tag expenses with multiple levels of detail, saving countless hours of manual reconciliation.

Popular Integrations

The Expensify platform seamlessly integrates with major accounting and ERP systems, including QuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite, and more, to synchronize expense data and unify accounting workflows.

Additional Features

• Per diem calculations and management for employee travel expenses
• Mileage tracking allows users to log mileage for business trips and calculates reimbursements
• Multi-currency support with automatic currency conversion
• Sync tax rates or set custom tax names, codes, and defaults for every expense policy
• Detailed analytics and reporting tools to gain greater insights into spending patterns

Price Range

Expensify offers flexible pricing plans to accommodate different business needs. The basic plan is free for individual users. The cost for plans starts at $4.99/month, per user, and goes up depending on the features required. This includes extras like policy enforcement, approval workflows, integrations, and tailored solutions.

Features of Tipalti vs. Expensify

Knowing Which Solution is Best for Your Business

Choosing between Tipalti and Expensify depends on specific needs and the complexity of your financial processes. Both systems offer unique features that cater to different aspects of expense and AP management. Here’s a quick comparison of scenarios to help you decide which one works best.

When comparing systems, always consider factors like ease of use, customer support, and cost of ownership to make the most informed decision.

When to Choose Tipalti

You need a comprehensive, end-to-end system for expense management and AP automation

The Tipalti platform provides a unified solution for managing AP, procurement, expenses, and global remittance. The connected suite of solutions addresses a myriad of expense and accounting challenges, from mobile management to automatic reconciliation, invoice processing, global tax compliance, and more. The platform offers more value than Expensify, particularly in managing all spend in one platform with a leading mid-market AP solution. The mature solution offers a modern UX, with a global infrastructure that supports multiple entities, currency management, and reimbursements.

You need a solution with fast processing that accelerates global reimbursements and monthly close

Tipalti streamlines expense reporting by automatically grouping individual expenses on submission for batch processing (removing a step from Expensify). The system will help you accelerate monthly close with automated reconciliation via robust and diverse ERP integrations. Expense-based transactions and reimbursements are automatically captured and processed just like any other Tipalti-supported payment method.

In contrast, Expensify may delay reimbursement payments to employees. The company may hold funds exceeding $100, and Expensify terms state that the company is permitted to retain reimbursement payments for up to 48 hours. Reimbursements over a certain threshold may even take 3-5 business days. Tipalti offers faster, global reimbursements with in-house payments that have a broad country and currency reach. The system holds MTLs and e-money licenses, offers a variety of payment methods, has advanced FX management, multi-entity capabilities, and much more. Tipalti also offers comprehensive, KPMG-approved tax compliance, including digital form capture and content management, tax prep reports, and withholdings calculations.

You need focused customer support and smart supplier management

Tipalti has US-based phone and email support with a 98% rate of customer satisfaction. The solution provides a white-label, self-service supplier portal with 26,000+ validation rules to reduce payment errors by up to 66%. Tipalti’s robust supplier management capabilities can streamline onboarding, manage tax forms, and ensure compliance.

In comparison, Expensify support is chat-based, and you will have to fill out a ticket. It is not personalized, and no one is assigned to your customer account. Customer support is mostly DIY.

When to Choose Expensify

You need freemium pricing with a few capabilities

Expensify offers free options with significantly fewer capabilities than Tipalti. The system does not charge an implementation fee and is almost entirely self-service. This can work out well for freelancers or a start-up that doesn’t need a lot of capabilities. However, as your business grows, you may run into problems with limited functionality.

Additionally, Expensify counts the same active user multiple times in one month if that user has activity across multiple policies (aligned with departments, geographies, and entities). Tipalti only counts that user one time. So, this may change the free pricing for some companies.

You require niche travel and expense processing tools

If a company has significant travel expenses and requires integration with travel booking systems, Expensify’s travel management features are beneficial. The integrated system combines travel itineraries with expenses for a comprehensive view of travel spending, making it easier to manage and report travel-related costs.

You run a business that requires frequent travel and mileage tracking

If employees frequently travel for business, you need a solution that simplifies the reporting of travel expenses, including flight, hotel, and meal costs. Expensify is a great tool if you require features to track mileage and time for reimbursable expenses. The system boasts built-in features for extracting precise travel data.

However, if you need to use this data to make global payments, Tipalti may be the solution you need. Otherwise, you’ll just be stuck with a lot of information and limited options of what to do with it.

What Customers Are Saying

With Tipalti Expenses, our expense management process, from submission to reimbursement, is streamlined and automated.

Min Hui Chow, Regional Administrative Manager, ACAMS

Since integrating with Tipalti, we have strengthened our financial controls. Once we approve the bill, it automatically pushes through. We see our expenses reflect in our financials in real-time—our CEO knows exactly how much he is spending.

Shawna Stewart, Staff Accountant, Brooklinen

With Tipalti, we’re able to scale with automation. It’s nice to have everything in one place. I can simply send vendors Tipalti invites, and they onboard themselves.

Myles Dolatre, Accounting Manager, Influential

Summing It Up

Selecting the right expense management and AP automation solution can significantly impact financial operations, compliance, and overall efficiency. While Expensify and Tipalti each offer smart features, the best choice depends on your niche needs and the complexity of your financial processes.

Expensify is ideal for organizations looking for a user-friendly expense management tool with strong travel management capabilities. This makes it a great option for smaller businesses or those with frequent travel expenses. Its straightforward interface, automated receipt scanning, and integration with popular accounting software make it a practical choice for managing smaller employee expenses and reimbursements.

On the other hand, Tipalti excels in automating end-to-end financial processes, from expense management to global payables. It’s designed for companies with complex AP needs, offering comprehensive features like multi-currency support, global tax compliance, and advanced fraud detection. Tipalti is particularly suited for businesses experiencing rapid growth or managing high transaction volumes across multiple entities.

Ultimately, understanding your company’s unique requirements will help determine which platform best aligns with organizational goals. Whether you prioritize ease of use and travel management or need a scalable solution for global payables and compliance, Expensify and Tipalti provide powerful tools to enhance your financial operations.Ready to transform your financial processes? Book a Demo