7 Best Business Expense Tracker of 2025

To help support our reporting work, and to continue our ability to provide this content for free to our readers, we receive payment from the companies that advertise on the Forbes Advisor site. It’s important to note that only accrual accounting complies with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). If you plan on raising capital and eventually launching an IPO, use accrual accounting to operate your business.

The importance of tracking expenses

It allows you to send invoices, manage payments, track time, track income, manage projects, access financial reports to see, at a glance, how your business is doing—and more. For instance, on the FreshBooks dashboard, you can instantly view your profitability for the year so far, revenue streams, and spending. What’s also useful is that the software sports an automatic reimbursement system.

Categorize Expenses and File Receipts

When you keep track of business expenses, you can observe profits and losses and explore business trends to help you make forecasts. Since you know how much money you have and where your money goes, you can also plan responsible use of funds. If you or your team drive for work, you know that tracking mileage involves a gazillion small admin tasks that inevitably eat into your time. You need to note all the details, verify the drive was indeed for work, and then make sure all the recording transactions key players, from manager to accountant, have the right mileage records. Here at MileIQ, we worked hard to create a comprehensive toolkit for every leg of the journey — so tracking mileage becomes as simple as possible.

Company

• An automated system speeds up the account reconciliation process, helping you close your books more quickly.
• QuickBooks Online is accounting software that offers a package of utilities to help small business owners track and manage expenses.
• Here, using an expense tracking app makes sense, because it eliminates human error.
• When your records are up to date, it’s much easier to create realistic budgets that reflect your actual spending.
• Now that you have the right tools to track your everyday spending, your next step is to ensure you’re maximizing every dollar that gets counted.

It also gives you a time frame for this review, so you can cut unhelpful spending practices before they become too costly. Business expenses are the costs you have to pay to keep your business running. Think of them as anything Bookkeeping for Consultants you spend money on that directly helps you earn revenue. These expenses can be small, like buying office supplies, or much bigger, like paying rent for an office space.

Best Business Expense Tracker App at a Glance

Automated expense software uses technologies like optical character recognition (OCR) to extract data from receipts, reducing the need for human input. This increases the accuracy of expense reporting and minimizes the risk of miscalculations and mistakes. Expense management software keeping track of business expenses drastically reduces approval and processing times for each expense, typically averaging around 35 seconds per transaction. In contrast, using spreadsheets or older systems like physical ledgers can take over 130 seconds. With streamlined tools like Airbase, employees simply photograph receipts, allowing the software to automatically populate expense claims with essential details. This process takes just a few seconds, a stark improvement over the 61 seconds typically required using Excel or older software.

Common challenges in tracking business expenses and how to overcome them

• If you track expenses accurately and effectively, you produce more useful budgets and make better financial decisions.
• One of the most common decisions our clients make is choosing between Bench or their CPA’s in-house bookkeeping services.
• An often overlooked step when learning how to keep track of business expenses is redundancy.
• By leveraging these technological solutions, you can transform your expense tracking process from a tedious chore into a streamlined, insightful part of your business operations.

Operating Expenses (OpEx), however, are the day-to-day costs that your company incurs to keep its business running. While CapEx can’t be deducted from income for tax purposes, OpEx is eligible for deductions. It is important to understand the long-term financial implications of these expenses and how they may affect external perceptions of your business bank account’s financial health. Remember, neglecting expense tracking at tax time can lead to serious consequences, like legal penalties and potential bankruptcy.

• Recurring expenses are those that are incurred regularly, such as monthly rent payments or utility bills.
• Navan allows travelers to clearly separate personal and business costs, helping employees enjoy enriched travel experiences without financial surprises for the company.
• Effective business expense tracking forms the foundation of sound financial management.
• It connects you with your bank, accounting tools, accountant, payment services, and third-party apps, so everything is securely available at any time on any device.
• Some of these nice-to-have features we looked for included how the app integrated with accounting software as well as how the mobile app worked and whether it had automation functionality.
• 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.

QuickBooks is an accounting software that includes an expense and receipt tracking feature for an all-in-one function. Since it’s a multi-use software it comes with a slightly higher price tag, which may not be the most efficient fit for small businesses who already have accounting software. According to the IRS, there are lots of business expenses that are tax-deductible. That said, a business needs to provide complete accounting of the expense.