The 4 Best Expense Tracker Apps for Small Businesses

Our top business expense tracker app is FreshBooks. Its well-reviewed accounting software app lets you track expenses, upload receipts, and sync payments. Its scalable plans make it s a good fit for many types of business owners.

But FreshBooks is just one of  the best business expense tracker apps. Below, we review FreshBooks, Expensify, and more apps for small businesses like yours.

FreshBooks’s accounting software includes built-in expense tracking, so you don’t need to invest in two apps to manage your business’s costs. Instead, FreshBooks syncs with your bank account and credit cards, automatically importing and categorizing expenses, plus generating reports that help you make sense of your profit and loss.

And if you frequently bill your clients for expenses, FreshBooks’s excellent invoicing simplifies the process. Use FreshBooks’s app to track your time, expenses, and mileage during a project, then transfer over the final billable expense to your client’s invoice (which you can also create and send with the FreshBooks app).

FreshBooks doesn’t offer a free plan, but the company frequently offers frequent long-term sales. You can also save by paying for FreshBooks annually instead of monthly. Unfortunately, the cheapest plan limits you to invoicing just five clients a month. Freelancers with a higher client volume will need at least the $25-a-month Plus plan, which increases your client limit to 50 a month.

Zoho Expense focuses on employee travel. (It’s billed as an “end-to-end travel and expense” solution, not simply an expense tracker.) Along with the typical expense tracker features, Zoho Expense lets you book rooms, set travel budgets, and pre-approve travel expenses well before employees leave. Like Zoho’s accounting software, Zoho Books, Zoho Expense automates just about everything that can be automated, including employee expense approval and reimbursement.

Zoho Expense’s free plan includes up to 1 user (plus an accountant) who can collaborate on expense tracking and travel management. For 10 users and pre-travel approval, you’ll need the Premium plan, which costs $2.50 per user per month if you pay annually (paying monthly costs $3 per user per month). The Premium plan also requires you to have at least ten users—which ups the cost to $30 per per month, paid annually.

Zoho Expense syncs with Zoho Books, Xero, and QuickBooks Online, but accounting software costs an additional $12 to $30 a month on top of your Zoho Expense payment.

Wave Accounting is a truly free accounting software solution with fewer limits than many paid plans. As one of the best free expense tracker apps, Wave lets you track unlimited expenses and scan an unlimited number of receipts—while paying nothing, ever. 

Unlike paid competitors like FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online, Wave Accounting doesn’t have an accounting-specific mobile app (though it does have separate receipt, invoice, and payment acceptance apps). And while it’s great for freelancers, Wave doesn’t have any employee reimbursement or corporate card features.

For help with all things tax-related, try QuickBooks Self-Employed. As an Intuit product, QuickBooks Self-Employed syncs seamlessly with Intuit TurboTax, which makes claiming the right tax write-offs easier at the end of the year. Like the heftier QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Self-Employed is incredibly intuitive—it’s hard to find a more user-friendly mobile app.

Since QuickBooks Self-Employed was built for contractors and freelancers, it doesn’t include any employee-based spending tracker features. And at $15 a month, QuickBooks Self-Employed offers fewer invoicing and expense-tracking features than FreshBooks, which costs the same per month.

Business expense trackers are a solid investment for freelancers, solopreneurs, and other small-business owners who want to analyze costs and submit correct write-offs at tax time.

For flexibility and affordability, the best expense tracker app is Expensify. If you want accounting software with built-in expense tracking, try FreshBooks, QuickBooks Self-Employed, or Wave Accounting. For traveling and driver-focused alternatives, we like Zoho Expense and Everlance. And if physical receipts are taking over your office, Shoeboxed can start digitizing your data and categorizing your expenses right away.

Most business expense trackers have free plans, free trials, or both. Feel free to try different providers on for size before you commit—you’ll want an app that syncs with your accounting software, works for both you and your employees, and organizes expenses in a format you can follow.

Want to expand your business by trimming expenses? Check out our article on bookkeeping basics to learn more about income and expense management.

Business expense trackers obviously track your business’s expenses—but the best expense trackers don’t stop there. They also (usually automatically) categorize your expenses so you can identify areas to cut costs and simplify tax write-offs at the end of the tax year. Top business expense trackers should also include receipt scanning software so you can upload expenses on the go. Finally, expense tracking apps need to sync with your accounting software to save time and eliminate redundant data entry. (Some accounting software, like QuickBooks, includes built-in expense tracking and receipt scanning).

While self-employed business owners technically can use personal budgeting apps to track expenses, we don’t recommend it. They aren’t comprehensive enough to track a business’s needs, and they lack a lot of features most business expense trackers include. (For instance, personal finance apps don’t automatically track mileage—a must if you’re a freelancer with mileage-based tax write-offs or an employer whose employees travel for work.)

If you’re interested in becoming a better personal budgeter, check out our reviews of the year’s best budgeting apps. But personal finance apps like Mint and YNAB work only when applied to your personal life, not your business life.

Whether you’re a part-time freelancer or a small-business owner with one or two employees, expense tracker apps are the easiest, fastest way to track business expenses.

You can always use spreadsheet software to track expenses by hand: for instance, Microsoft Excel offers expense tracking templates. (If you want a truly free option, Google Sheets is easy to customize to your business’s budgeting needs.) But even if you log just a few business expenses a month, we recommend an expense tracker app over spreadsheets.

Why? For one thing, expense tracking apps usually automate expense tracking, which gives you more time to focus on your business. They also let you track mileage, which is important for tax write-offs at the end of the year, and scan or upload receipts to ensure all your expense data is in one place. Many also double as bill management apps, especially accounting software with built-in expense and billing solutions.

Budget tracker apps like Mint and YNAB are excellent for getting your personal finances in line, which can make you a more financially savvy business owner. But we don’t recommend using personal finance or budgeting apps for tracking business expenses, even if you’re self-employed. For one thing, it’s too easy to accidentally label personal expenses as business expenses (or vice versa), which makes taxes harder instead of simpler. Feel free to use both types of apps, but as soon as you become self-employed, make sure to separate your business and personal finances ASAP. 

To find and rank the best expense trackers for small businesses, we analyzed several key business budget and spending features:

• Expense tracking features, including recurring expense categorization, billable hours and expense tracking, types of tax categories, and receipt capturing
• Ease of use, including customizability, automatic expense tracking, and automatic accounting software integration
• Mobile app ratings and reviews on both Google Play and Apple’s App Store
• Travel-based features, including mileage tracking, travel planning, and GPS tracking
• Employee-facing features, including employee reimbursement and budget approval
• User limits
• Pricing and affordability

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.