Need help with your expenses?
There are many different reasons why you might want to track expenses. Individuals may want to just to keep an eye on where their money goes each month. Others need to track business expenses to give to their CPA to use when completing their taxes. An employee may need to in order to get reimbursed by their employer. Sometimes a simple program is all that is needed, while other times the situation calls for a full-fledged accounting program. The options in this article are varied, so the perfect option for your situation is more than likely among them. Although they are listed in order of their Alexa traffic count rating, the important thing will be to choose the software that has the features you need that you can understand easily how to operate. These are desktop solutions with some having a mobile app that goes with it.
1. FreshBooks Cloud Accounting: http://www.freshbooks.com/expenses.php
Global Alexa Rating: 2,400
If you are like most people, your money is managed through more than one type of account. You may have a bank account, savings account, brokerage account or even a PayPal account that you use to pay expenses from, not to mention good old cash. Trying to remember to log all those expenses from all those places can take way too much time, but to not do so means feeling frustrated at the end of the month when you have no idea where all the money went. Thanks to FreshBooks, you now have a way to easily track your expenses. You simply connect your FreshBooks account to nearly 10,000 supported banks and credit cards and then automatically import your expenses daily. For those pesky cash transactions, simply snap a picture with your mobile device to log it in. Use QBO or OFX files generated from your bank to import expenses. Once you have everything set up, it takes very little effort to maintain and then you can pull up a report easily showing your expenses by category or vendor. You can try it free for 30 with no credit card required. Other features include online invoicing, time tracking and accounting reports & taxes. Use it just for expense tracking or use all the features. It’s entirely up to you. There is a free plan as well as 3 levels of paid plans that start at just $19.95/month.
2. TaxBot: https://taxbot.com/landing/home
Global Alexa Rating: 73,935
TaxBot is a way for small business owners and 1099 contractors to turn expenses into deductions. Their user friendly expense tracker asks you customized questions so that you can be sure to know about every expense you should be tracking – and it is compliant with both US IRS and Canadian CRA requirements. All of your records are stored in the cloud with bank level 256bit encryption – and they backup to 3 separate clouds! With TaxBot you can link your bank accounts and credit cards to your account so nothing is ever missed. The site also provides tax tips from former IRS trainer Sandy Botkin in the form of easy to understand video clips. There is also a GPS mileage tracking system. You can try their software free for 14 days. You can also sign up for their free tax tips newsletter. The cost for the software is $19.99 per month. You do have to supply your credit card information when you start, even to get the free trial period. They will refund you the first 30 days if you are not completely satisfied so that is more like a 30-day trial than a 14-day one. Use the software online or with your iOS or Android device.
Global Alexa Rating: 49,624
Insperity has a number of products including performance management, organizational planning, financial solutions, human capital management, time and attendance and, of course, expense management. They are trusted by more than 5,000 client companies worldwide for making expense management effortless. They offer a desktop solution that is for businesses with 10 or few users and an online solution for businesses with up to 5,000 users. The desktop solution has a free 45-day trial and then costs $149.95 per license or upgrade it for another $99.95 per license. It is unclear on the website what the upgrade is. The software is compatible with Windows and Mac. The software can be synced with online banking accounts or credit card accounts as well as with receipt photos snapped with the mobile app. It has a really nice feature for handling expenses that deal with clients in that you can add guests to your expense report using your Outlook contact list. You can export your information to QuickBooks Windows version or Microsoft Excel. They also offer their own ExpensAble Plus MasterCard that is fully integrated with the software. Another nice feature is the Hotel Genie that grabs and organized itemized hotel expenses. The software offers 15 customizable reports so you can easily see where the money went and have reports to give the CPA at the end of the year.
4. Toshl Finance: https://toshl.com/
Global Alexa Rating: 134,642
Toshl Finance is designed for the person that wants to set up and follow a household budget so they can have peace of mind about their finances. A nice thing about this software is that it is visually appealing with fun visualizations and graphs. With Toshl Finance you can set up a budget so you’ll always be able to see what you have left to spend as the month progresses. You will also enjoy the bill reminder feature so you’ll never pay a late charge again because you simply forgot to pay a bill. Toshl Finance can be used anywhere as you simply tell it which currency you want to use – it even provides daily exchange rates for the 34 most used currencies so it can be useful when traveling as well. Another interesting feature is the wide variety of file options for exporting your financial data (with Pro plan). The only feature this one doesn’t have that others do is they currently are not set up to import data from banks or other files. Choose from the free software or the Pro plan depending on your needs. The Pro plan will be needed if you have more than one income, have repeating incomes, desire monthly email reports, enjoy advanced fancy graphs or want to search your expenses. This offering is mostly a mobile application.
5. TriNet Expense: https://www.expensecloud.com/
Global Alexa Rating: 224,137
TriNet Expense offers both free and paid plans depending on your needs and they outline what features are included in each right on their website so you can easily determine which will work for you. For most individuals and even some small businesses, the free plan will actually fit the bill. It allows for automatic daily importing from about 20,000 different banks and credit cards, has the ability to create and submit expense reports, manage receipts in 160 currencies, import travel itineraries from Tripit and use your iPhone, Android or Blackberry for mobile expenses. As far as the paid plans go, you have a choice between expenses only or an expense + time tracking option. Expense only plans start at $10/month per user (1 to 9 users). The other plans cost less per user. It looks to be a very powerful software with the ability to integrate with other programs such as QuickBooks, NetSuite and more. It is nice that they offer a simple free plan for individuals as well as one that will keep up as your business grows.
6. TrackEveryCoin: https://www.trackeverycoin.com/
Global Alexa Rating: 358,509
A catchy name for an expense tracking software but it fits it perfectly. By tracking every coin, you will never lose track of your money. The website has the download for their desktop application and for the mobile app. You can use the web when online to input information or use the desktop application when you don’t have an internet connection and then sync to the web account for backup later. All data is stored in the web account. They are not integrated with banks like some software options but they do not charge for the website or mobile access. The nice thing about this software is that it is simplistic. It is a simple tool for those that do not need a lot of features. It has the important ones including tracking daily expenses, analyzing the data with graphs and pie charts, having bill reminders and tracking money owed to you or by you. Monthly reports are generated automatically and emailed to you, or you can generate a report for any selected date range. The reports are all PDFs so this is not the software for you if you need CSV but they claim to be working on offering that. This software is a great tool for tracking company expenses you need to submit for reimbursement. For a free software, it is pretty decent.
7. Mindsalt: http://www.mindsalt.com/
Global Alexa Rating: 365,485
Mindsalt is an on-demand time and expense management solution suitable for both large and small companies. It is completely web-based so you can use it anytime, anywhere. They have simple pricing in which they bill for the number of active users in your account and the amount depends on the modules that you have enabled. They have 4 different modules to choose from: Expense Reporting, Timesheet Tracking, Approvals and Time Accruals & Balances. Expense Reporting and Timesheet Tracking cost just $6 per user per month for each one or save and get both for $9 per user per month. The other two are add-ons costing $2 per user per month each. The website fully explains the features of all the modules. A nice feature of the expense tracking is the ability to enter expenses as reimbursable vs. non-reimbursable and billable vs. nonbillable. You can also upload and attach receipts to expense items. They offer a free 30-day trial that provides full access to all modules you activate. You don’t even need a credit card during the trial period. You can chose to activate at the end of that time or let it expire. There are no setup fees and no contracts. Simply go month-to-month and cancel anytime.
8. Deductr: http://www.deductr.com/
Global Alexa Rating: 367,373
Deductr was designed for small and independent business owners as a simple solution for tracking, monitoring and receiving tax deductions. It is intended to help you never miss another tax deduction by keeping track of every dollar spent. In just a few minutes a week, you can face tax time without stressing – simply print the year-end report and you’re done. With the software you can track your expenses from your computer or smartphone, track your income, track mileage and time, print customized reports and have access to real-time data. The mobile app is a free download with your Deductr account. Some of the reports you can create are: Profit & Loss, Tax Summary, Vehicle Report, Home Office Report, Tax Report, Mileage Summary, Activity Log, Medical report, Contractor Wage Report and Child Wage Report. Deductr also offers fantastic support including extensive A/V tutorials, free training webinars, FAQs, community support and unlimited online support. Oh, and the best part? It is FREE! If you want a little chuckle, check out the pictures on the About Us section – they’ve used old pictures for each of their team and they are a total riot!
9. Xpen$er/Coupa: http://xpenser.com/
Global Alexa Rating: 678,208 (Coupa 224,970)
Xpenser recently joined Coupa so you can gain access to information at the above link or go directly to the Coupa site at http://www.coupa.com/. The Coupa Suite offers various business tools including spend management, procurement, invoicing, sourcing, contract management, budgeting, reporting, analytics and, of course, expense management. Their expense management software includes a ton of features that will make any business more efficient. They offer a free 30-day trial but they don’t mention on the website how much the software costs after that. This software is designed for companies that have employees, particularly ones on the road that they need to track expenses for. It would not be suitable for a home based business or individual just wanting to keep on a budget.
Global Alexa Rating: 3,452,326
The Expense Tracker (TET) is a dynamic platform to show people how to start their own home based business. The video series and expense management tools will be very beneficial. They have a number of unique features including the fact that they store all transactions and financial information, including voice inputs, in their secured server for up to 7 years so you an export it out to Excel or recall it any time you need it. Speaking of voice inputs, that is another nice feature as you can call from any phone and access their On-Demand-System. You can add charges/expenses many different ways including telephone/voice, debit card, SMS text, website and email. There isn’t a setup fee but it does cost $19.95 per month to use the software. It appears to be pretty unique compared to other expense tracking options, but the downside is there isn’t much information on the website showing screen shots and you don’t get a free trial period to check it out. You can go to the ‘contact us’ page and email them to request a product demo, however.
Whether you go with a simple, free option or a more complex offering, you’ll likely find one of these expensing tracking software options to suit your needs perfectly. By using something to track expenses you just might find yourself paying closer attention and end up seeing your savings account grow because of it. This could get you just one step closer to your financial goals. That could make even a paid plan well worth the cost.
