What should I look for in an expense management system?

Real-time business expense tracking provides updated insights into company spending, enabling finance teams to catch issues early and adjust budgets before small problems escalate into big ones. With real-time tracking, every card swipe, invoice, or receipt gets logged immediately, giving you a live view of spending as it happens. Modern expense platforms make this possible by syncing directly with business credit cards and banking feeds to automatically pull in transactions and categorize them instantly.

This immediate insight into spending means you don’t have to wait until month-end to see where money went. With expense management tools that offer real-time tracking, companies gain the ability to make informed decisions based on current data rather than reacting to outdated information. The approach also reduces manual work and errors since data gets captured automatically rather than re-entered by employees who might forget details or misplace receipts.

What startups should look for

For startups, every dollar saved can extend their runway. Real-time tracking helps small teams stay on top of tight budgets and immediately correct any overspending before it jeopardizes cash flow. When you're operating with limited resources, catching a recurring software subscription that's no longer needed or spotting an unusually high travel expense can make a meaningful difference to your burn rate.

What enterprises should look for

Enterprises with multiple departments and projects can benefit from company-wide visibility that real-time tracking provides. Leadership can monitor numerous budgets simultaneously and prevent departmental overruns from snowballing into significant costs. With hundreds or thousands of employees making purchases across different locations and business units, having current data means finance leaders can intervene quickly when they see spending patterns that need attention.

Expense reconciliation involves matching expense records, including receipts, reports, and submissions, with actual transactions from corporate card statements and bank feeds. Automated expense reporting speeds up this process by matching expenses to records instantly, drastically reducing errors and workload and catching any mismatches or missing documentation.

This automation delivers three key benefits. First, month-end close happens much faster when software automates what might take finance teams days of manual work. Second, automated matching eliminates the human errors that occur when manually cross-referencing numbers across different documents and platforms. Lastly, you’ll free finance staff from tedious paperwork so they can focus on strategic analysis and decision-making.

Companies that implement expense reconciliation automation can accelerate expense reviews and approvals by up to 4x, according to Brex*. This efficiency translates directly to cost savings, as finance teams can redirect their time toward higher-value activities that drive business growth.

What startups should look for

Automated reconciliation reduces the administrative burden on small finance teams without requiring additional personnel. For cash-conscious startups, this keeps books accurate and the month-end close efficient without adding headcount. It also reduces the risk of accounting errors that could create problems during fundraising or tax season.

What enterprises should look for

Large organizations benefit from a platform that can handle high volumes of expenses across many employees and departments without creating bottlenecks during month-end close. Even with hundreds of expense reports submitted simultaneously, automation solutions can process and match them efficiently. For enterprises, reconciliation automation also enforces consistency in how expenses get recorded across different business units, which is very important for compliance auditing and multi-entity accounting.

The best expense platforms have corporate credit cards for employees that provide both virtual and physical corporate cards, giving employees convenient ways to pay while finance teams retain control and real-time visibility over every transaction. Physical corporate cards function as traditional cards issued to employees for travel, meals, and other on-site spending needs, while virtual corporate cards are digital card numbers that can be issued instantly for specific projects or vendors. Integrated corporate cards create seamless expense management because every card purchase gets automatically tracked and logged in the platform, eliminating the need for separate expense reports.

Virtual cards offer particular advantages for controlling expenses. Finance teams can instantly issue or cancel them, set preset spending limits, and even restrict usage to specific merchants or expense categories. This granular control helps prevent overspending and ensures purchases align with company policies. Virtual cards also enhance security since there's no physical card to lose or steal, and you avoid the fraud risk of sharing one company card among multiple employees.

Physical cards are important for situations requiring card swipes, like travel expenses, client dinners, or vendors that don't accept digital payments. Employees can pay directly with company funds instead of using personal cards and waiting for expense reimbursement.

What startups should look for

Startups can take advantage of both physical and virtual cards with embedded spend controls. For instance, a startup can issue a virtual card for a marketing trial with a $500 limit, ensuring they never accidentally exceed budget on experimental spending. This approach also projects professionalism and builds trust with employees who appreciate not having to front their own money for business expenses.

What enterprises should look for

Managing hundreds or thousands of corporate cards is possible with the right platform. Enterprise finance teams can set differentiated policies like per-team or per-project limits, instantly issue or deactivate cards as staff join or leave, and support global teams with local-currency cards that reduce FX markups. Enterprises also benefit from advanced security features, including remotely disabling cards or blocking unauthorized merchant categories, that protect against misuse across large organizations.

With the right expense management system, you can embed spend policies directly into the platform, ensuring that policy enforcement and controls happen automatically. A well-designed program lets administrators set up custom rules, such as spending limits, allowed expense categories, required receipt thresholds, and approval hierarchies, that are consistently enforced. When employees submit expenses that violate these policies, they get flagged for review or rejected.

This automated approach can nearly eliminate non-compliant spending and potential fraud. Since these controls can be embedded right into physical and virtual corporate cards, expense policies are enforced proactively, so out-of-policy spending is blocked even before it happens.

These platforms can also automatically request photo receipts for certain expenses or allow you to create approval workflows that route expenses to the appropriate person based on amount or department. These internal controls in accounting protect company finances and keep employees accountable and aware of spending guidelines.

What startups should look for

Built-in controls help startups stay financially disciplined, which can be crucial when resources are limited. Even a small team benefits from automated limits that prevent accidental overspending, like ensuring an enthusiastic team member doesn't exceed budget on a client dinner or conference registration. These controls ensure every expense is necessary and within guidelines without requiring constant manual oversight.

What enterprises should look for

Robust controls become non-negotiable at scale. With large teams submitting hundreds of expense reports, automations are the only practical way to enforce policies consistently. Enterprise platforms can handle complex policy layers while automatically approving low-risk expenses and escalating higher-risk ones for review. This improves compliance across the organization and prevents costly violations or fraud that could otherwise go unnoticed.

The best expense management software connects seamlessly with the accounting software your company already uses, such as QuickBooks and Xero or ERPs like NetSuite. With these integrations, approved expenses are automatically pushed into your accounting system with proper codes and categories, so finance teams avoid re-entering data or managing CSV file imports.

The connection between these platforms eliminates data entry errors that can occur when manually transferring information and saves time every month. Bi-directional syncing ensures approved expenses appear in your general ledger immediately, keeping financial statements current and accurate.

Integration also accelerates the month-end closing processes. Instead of scrambling to match expense reports to accounting entries or manually keying in data at the end of the month, seamless ERP integration does it for you throughout the month. Companies that implement automated accounting processes can accelerate their close by up to 3x, according to Brex*.

Ultimately, connected software creates a single source of truth for financial data. All expense records match accounting records perfectly, simplifying audits and regulatory reporting. For companies managing complex accounts payable processes, this integration eliminates discrepancies that can lead to incorrect financial data.

What startups should look for

Integration with small-business accounting platforms keeps operations simple without requiring dedicated accounting staff. When expense data flows automatically into their accounting software for startups, small teams can produce accurate financial reports easily. This reduces errors and ensures compliance during critical periods like raising money or preparing taxes.

What enterprises should look for

Large organizations need integration with enterprise ERPs like Oracle or NetSuite. Enterprise-grade expense platforms provide open APIs and native connectors to handle high volumes of data flowing seamlessly between platforms. This becomes particularly important when your business is processing thousands of expense entries daily across global offices. Enterprises should look for solutions that automatically record VAT or GST from expense receipts to maintain more accurate tax filings and meet global compliance mandates.

Companies often have distributed teams across different cities or countries, and expense management software can simplify managing all those transactions. Key features that enable global support include multi-currency handling, which automatically manages different currencies and exchange rates for international expenses, and compliance with regional tax laws like VAT in Europe or GST in other jurisdictions.

In addition to helping to oversee global expenses, these platforms also give teams the tools they need to manage traveling and remote employees, starting with robust mobile access. Mobile apps allow staff to photograph receipts and submit expenses instantly, whether they're working from home or traveling internationally. Cloud-based platforms also ensure that employees anywhere can access the same up-to-date information as finance managers back at headquarters.

For companies with business travel expense reimbursement needs, having unified global processes eliminates the complexity of managing different expense solutions in each country. Remote teams benefit particularly from eliminating the paperwork of mailing receipts or waiting to return to the office to submit expenses.

What startups should look for

Even small startups often have remote workers or international contractors. Your expense platform should handle multi-currency expenses and remote submissions without breaking down as the team grows globally. Startups need systems that can accommodate expansion into new regions seamlessly, avoiding the need to switch platforms when they scale internationally or hire their first overseas employee.

What enterprises should look for

Large companies operating across multiple countries require robust global support that handles dozens of currencies, country-specific expense rules, and regional compliance requirements. Enterprise platforms must provide centralized dashboards that consolidate global spending while allowing drill-down views by country or region. Finance teams need the ability to set per-diem rates, tax treatments, and approval workflows for different locations while maintaining consistent oversight across all operations.

A centralized dashboard gathers all expense data in one visual interface that displays key metrics like total monthly spend, spending by category or department, top expense categories, and policy violations. Robust spend analytics tools allow finance teams to drill down into data, examining expenses by team, project, or time period while generating reports that identify important trends.

These analytics enable data-driven decision-making instead of guesswork about budget allocation. Finance teams can pinpoint exactly where money goes, whether travel costs rose last quarter or a particular vendor started charging more than expected. This visibility helps with forecasting future spend based on historical patterns, optimizing costs by identifying waste or negotiation opportunities, and maintaining accountability by showing managers how their teams spend relative to budgets.

With better spend visibility, companies can implement tail spend management strategies and find significant cost savings. Effective cash flow management also relies on accurate spend analytics to predict and control outflows.

A centralized dashboard simplifies reporting to executives and board members. Instead of manually compiling spreadsheets from different teams, finance leaders can easily generate comprehensive reports, providing consistent and current data across the organization.

What startups should look for

Even with smaller data volumes, clear dashboards help startups track burn rate and runway effectively. A finance leader can quickly identify whether a category consumes a disproportionate share of the budget and take corrective action. This visibility saves time when preparing reports for investors or advisors, as data exports come directly from the platform rather than requiring manual compilation.

What enterprises should look for

Analytics are indispensable at enterprise scale. Large companies need to monitor spend across numerous departments and projects, requiring customized reporting capabilities like cost-per-department analysis or project profitability calculations after expenses. Enterprise CFOs and controllers benefit from an expense management platform that provides a central single source of truth for spend data, as this ensures everyone from finance teams to department heads examines consistent, up-to-date information when making strategic decisions.

When employees pay for meals, transportation, small purchases, or emergency travel costs using personal funds, your expense management platform should make reimbursement quick and straightforward. With the best software, employees can photograph receipts and submit expenses immediately through the mobile app, and from there, expenses get automatically routed for approval based on preset workflows. Once approved, the platform can trigger payment via ACH or as part of the next payroll cycle.

Lengthy reimbursement processes hurt employee morale and can create personal financial strain when staff members cover large costs for extended periods. On the other hand, quick reimbursements remove productivity drains that occur when people spend time chasing overdue payments instead of focusing on work.

Payment automation software enables reimbursements in days, with some platforms offering real-time or next-day reimbursements for expenses under certain thresholds. Automated expense approval processes contribute significantly to this speed as paperwork shuffling or separate check-cutting processes aren’t needed, creating a smooth pipeline from submission to payment.

What startups should look for

Fast reimbursements are an advantage for small teams, making it important to find a platform that can support that. Employees appreciate when a company handles their expenses promptly, which builds trust. For cash-conscious startups, employees shouldn't function as the company's bank by constantly floating business expenses. Swift reimbursement processes ensure no one bears unnecessary personal financial burden.

What enterprises should look for

Scale requires efficiency in reimbursement processing. Enterprise-grade platforms can batch and automate reimbursements, ensuring employees receive approved expense repayments without delays. This becomes important for employee satisfaction in large organizations where slow, cumbersome reimbursement experiences can lead to resentment or non-compliance. When companies process reimbursements efficiently, they show respect for employees' finances and time, which supports overall engagement.

Scalability means your expense management platform can handle increasing users, transactions, and complexity as your company grows without performance degradation. A scalable system accommodates growth from 5 employees to 500 employees, or expansion from one office to multiple global locations, while maintaining the same responsiveness and functionality. The platform should support doubling transaction volumes or user counts without requiring overhauls or performance compromises.

You’ll need to be able to configure the platform for your organization's specific requirements and preferences. This includes creating custom expense categories or project tags, setting up multi-level approval workflows that mirror your org chart, and adjusting policy rules by team or department. Customization ensures the solution fits your processes rather than forcing you to change established workflows to accommodate software limitations.

This is important because no two companies operate identically. A startup might need to add new expense categories as it discovers new spending areas, while an enterprise might need to mirror complex organizational hierarchies in approval workflows. Companies focused on improving operational efficiency require systems that can adapt and scale rather than create bottlenecks.

A scalable, customizable platform is a well-supported, typically cloud-based product that can incorporate new features and integrate new requirements over time. This adaptability includes adding new integrations, updating compliance rules, or expanding into new regions as your business grows.

What startups should look for

When choosing expense management tools, startups should plan for growth. The platform you choose should handle your projected size in several years, not just current needs. This avoids the headache and cost of migrating to a new solution as you scale.

What enterprises should look for

Enterprises likely already operate at scale, so they need proven systems that can handle large enterprise demands, including thousands of users, multi-currency operations, and integration with complex ERP environments. Enterprise expense management platforms must offer granular customization, such as integrating with internal systems, tailoring permissions so managers see only their team's expenses while VPs access entire departments, and configuring different policies for various business units or geographic regions.

Your expense management platform should protect sensitive financial information while helping your company stay compliant with policies and regulations. Look for data encryption that protects confidential information like credit card numbers and personal details on receipts, multi-factor authentication for user logins to prevent unauthorized access, and role-based access controls that ensure only appropriate personnel see sensitive financial data.

Vendor certifications like SOC 2, ISO 27001, or PCI-DSS show strong security practices for handling financial and credit card data. These certifications also demonstrate that the vendor follows rigorous security standards and undergoes regular third-party audits.

For compliance support, the platform should assist with regulatory and tax requirements by automatically categorizing and tagging expenses for tax purposes, distinguishing between taxable and non-taxable expenses, and enforcing receipt retention policies for IRS or other audits. The solution should automatically maintain audit trails of all expenses and approvals, making it easy to pull documentation for any expense during compliance reviews.

Proper separation of duties in accounting becomes easier to maintain when the expense platform includes built-in approval workflows and access controls. Companies can also benefit from automated tracking of business deductible expenses to ensure they capture all eligible tax benefits while maintaining proper documentation.

Picking the right expense management platform for your business is a strategic investment in your company's financial operations and growth trajectory. The features of this software work together to create a solution that reduces friction in financial processes while improving control over company spending.

When finance teams have access to the right tools, they operate more efficiently and transparently, which benefits the entire organization. Real-time visibility prevents budget overruns before they impact cash flow, while automated processes eliminate manual errors and speed up month-end closes. Integrated corporate card programs reduce reimbursement burdens on employees while giving finance teams immediate expense visibility.

Be sure to consider future-proofing your finance operations rather than just solving immediate pain points. A well-chosen platform eliminates today's expense headaches and scales with your company as it grows, adapts to changing regulations, and supports expanding teams across multiple locations.

For businesses looking for the best expense management software, Brex offers a global spend management platform that allows startups and enterprises to track and control expenses while streamlining financial management. For startups, Brex provides enterprise-grade expense management from day one without the complexity or cost barriers that often limit growing companies. The platform combines corporate cards with built-in spending controls, real-time expense tracking, and automated reconciliation, which eliminates the need for multiple vendors or manual processes.

Brex can scale to handle the expense needs of enterprises, Fortune 500 businesses, and public companies. Brex supports complex, high-volume operations across global teams while processing multi-currency expenses automatically and integrating with major ERP platforms to accelerate the month-end close. With Brex, enterprise finance teams gain centralized control with department-level insights, customizable approval workflows, and policy enforcement that works consistently across all locations and business units.

Rather than juggling systems, Brex integrates travel and expense management, business banking accounts, bill pay, and accounting automations in a single platform. For Alchemy, a web3 developer platform, consolidating spend with Brex gave the business complete visibility and control over all of its spending.

“Brex’s ability to spin up infinite virtual cards and have governance upfront, programmatic controls that then lend to more rigorous control environments down the line — those were key considerations for us,” says Sean Soper, Head of Accounting and Financial Operations at Alchemy. Ultimately, automations and other features within Brex are saving Alchemy two to three days on their monthly close.

“Overall, it gives us a competitive edge,” Sean said. “Having a unified approach to all of [our spend] has helped bring everything together, and it's really streamlined the process. By consolidating expenses, we can optimize our spending, make more informed decisions on the fly, and improve our bottom line.”

Scale AI used Brex in its startup days and has grown to more than 900 employees. “What I love about Brex is that they recognize that companies get too bureaucratic as they get bigger and can’t do their best work,” said Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of Scale AI. “We wanted to enable employees to move fast and make decisions and not be blocked by long approval chains. Brex really solved that in building the platform.”

Schedule a demo with Brex today to see how you can transform your expense management system.

* Based on internal metrics from December 2024. Past performance does not guarantee future results, which may vary.