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“Have I paid that vendor yet?” you ask yourself as you sort through the dozens of invoices you’ve received this month. Definitely not the way you wanted to spend your Friday afternoon.
As your small business grows, manually managing accounts payable (AP) processes becomes more challenging, time-consuming and error-prone.
Enter accounts payable software. These platforms can automate processes like invoice management and payment processing while syncing to your accounting software to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
This article offers an overview of the six best accounts payable software solutions for small businesses so you can find just the right platform for your needs. We’ll also give you a list of the features you should look for when choosing a platform, plus tips for how to make your decision.*
Financial admin eating up too much of your time? We can take it off your plate
Automate your accounts payable processes with Juni and free up your day for more impactful work.
*The information about all the platforms discussed in this article was collected between 9 January 2024 and 11 January 2024. This article was written and approved by Juni and is intended as marketing material.
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Whenever you’re researching software, whether that be an accounts payable solution or inventory management platform, you need to be clear on what functionalities your business needs. So before we get into our list, here are some features you should prioritise when selecting accounts payable software:
Let’s take an in-depth look at our list of software. For each platform, we’ll list its features (as well as its limitations), explain how pricing works and point out what kind of business it’s best fit for.
Juni’s platform for ecommerce entrepreneurs comes with automated accounts payable features that can help you run simpler, tighter and more accurate financial admin. With Juni, it takes just seconds to auto-collect, pay and even finance your invoices.
By collecting and scanning your invoices automatically, then pre-filling all the important payment details, Juni saves you time and reduces the risk of human error. You can also automatically import your receipts and invoices with your dedicated Juni inbox for effortless spend management, plus match receipts to transactions.
What’s more, if you need to reduce pressure on your cash flow cycles, Juni offers financing options for certain types of payments, giving you up to 120 days to pay.*
The platform goes beyond accounts payable features, also offering business accounts and cards, features to optimise cash flow management, powerful accounting automations, fast transfers and storefront integrations.
Most suitable for: Ecommerce entrepreneurs and small businesses
Juni has two plan options:
You can try our Scale plan for free for the first 30 days.
Based in Copenhagen, Pleo is a business spending solution with built-in AP automation software. Pleo’s invoice management features make it easy to capture, process, approve, pay and bookkeep invoices in a central location. With over 50 supported currencies, Pleo users can seamlessly pay vendors across the world.
Most suitable for: Companies that need to pay invoices in several currencies
Pleo has three plan options:
Spendesk is a spend management platform with accounts payable features like invoice automation and approval workflows, giving you greater control over the invoicing lifecycle and your AP processes. By using Spendesk, you can minimise (or eliminate) manual data entry for your invoicing processes, plus get real-time insights into your spending patterns.
Most suitable for: SaaS, tech and fintech companies
Spendesk doesn’t list its pricing options, so you’ll have to reach out to sales to get a quote
Sage Intacct’s cloud-based invoicing software helps small business owners and finance teams automate invoice management with the power of AI. For example, simply upload or email an invoice, and the software will automatically extract details and populate fields for your approval. The platform can also detect duplicate invoices, helping you stay in control of your expenses and avoid costly errors.
Most suitable for: Businesses that need powerful analytics tools
Sage Intacct has three plans for its accounts payable software. All plans come with three months free:
While SAP Concur isn’t specifically designed for small businesses, it’s still a good fit for solopreneurs and SMBs looking to automate their AP processes. The platform automates invoicing processes, meaning you can pay suppliers quickly without constantly having to double-check invoices and complete transactions yourself.
Most suitable for: Businesses with immediate plans to scale
SAP Concur doesn’t list its pricing options, so you’ll have to reach out to sales to get a quote.
Visma is the parent organisation for a number of accounting and invoicing solutions across Europe. It has designated products for 15 different EU countries, such as Visma eKonomi, its designated Swedish accounting platform. Visma eKonomi has basic AP features for paying vendors, but it has a range of other accounting features that can help you streamline your financial admin as a whole.
Most suitable for: Small businesses in Sweden
Visma platform prices range depending on which country you operate in and the Visma product you select. Visma eEkonomi has three plans that come with supplier invoicing features:
You can have all the software comparison guides in the world available to you, but if you aren’t intentional about your decision, you may end up choosing software that falls short for your needs. Here are a few steps you can take to help you make the right decision when selecting an accounts payable platform for your small business.
By digitising the traditionally paper-intensive process of handling invoices and payments, AP software is not only more efficient than manual processes, but also minimises the possibility of errors, like a missed or incorrect payment. Having more visibility over invoices, due dates and your general spending patterns can help you maintain tighter control over your financial operations.
But to get the most out of a platform, you need to make sure you’re choosing the right one for your needs. For example, if you run an online storefront, you’ll want to choose a solution like Juni that has the specific needs of ecommerce entrepreneurs in mind.
By choosing a software solution that’s a good fit for you, you’ll make your business more agile, resilient and competitive. Meanwhile, you’ll get back more time in the day to focus on what you most love about running your company, whether that’s marketing your product, interacting with customers or finding ways to scale.
Financial admin eating up too much of your time? We can take it off your plate
Automate your accounts payable processes with Juni and free up your day for more impactful work.
*Juni Invoices is available for EU-based companies only. Media financing is available for companies registered in NL, SE, DE, FR, ES, IT, FI and NO, upon eligibility. Fees and terms and conditions apply. Click here for more details.
Accounts payable automation software helps businesses manage and track the money they owe to suppliers, vendors and other parties. Essentially, this type of software helps business owners and finance departments handle their payment processes by recording invoices, tracking due dates and organising information.
While you can manually manage your accounts payable process, this approach can be time-consuming and error-prone. A better way to keep track of accounts payable is by using specialised accounts payable software that tracks and pays your invoices for you.
You can automate accounts payable processes by using specialised software. These platforms handle a number of tasks, including:
"Only six more to go," you tell yourself as you upload yet another receipt to your accounting software. We all know the pain of searching for receipts across emails and platforms and trying to match them to expenses.
This becomes even more challenging the larger your business becomes and the more vendors you have to pay. You can avoid most of that frustration and wasted time with the right spend management software.
But not all spend management platforms will be a good fit for your business. For example, digital commerce companies need solutions that take into account sector-specific expenses like ad receipts and multiple platform payments, while small businesses need tools that simplify their financial admin, not complicate it.
This article takes a look at the six best spend management software solutions so you can find just the right platform for your needs. We’ll also give you a list of the features you should look for when choosing a platform, plus tips for how to make your decision.*
Spend less time on spend management
With real-time spend overviews, receipt matching automation and powerful integrations, Juni will make you forget what a hassle managing your expenses used to be.
*The information about all the platforms discussed in this article was collected between 17 January 2024 and 19 January 2024. This article was written and approved by Juni and is intended as marketing material.
Before taking a closer look at the tools on our list, here are six features your spend management software (also known as expense management software) should come with:
Bonus: Look out for spend management platforms that come with built-in accounts payable and invoice automation features, which will help you centralise your financial admin and save time.
Now, let's explore the solutions on our list in depth. For each platform, we’ll list its key features (as well as its limitations), explain how pricing works and point out what kind of business it’s best fit for.
Juni helps businesses in digital commerce manage their cash flow, track their expenses and optimise their profits with features that are specifically designed with ecommerce companies in mind.
While it’s not specifically expense management software, you can use the platform for your spend management needs. Juni's goal is to give everyone in digital commerce, from the CFO to the accounting team to marketing managers, everything they need to focus on business growth.
Juni’s expense management features are especially valuable for users who have multiple receipts coming from different media buying channels and online transactions. With Meta and Google Ads integrations, plus powerful receipt matching, expense management suddenly becomes easy. On top of that, you can also manage your unpaid invoices and accounts payable processes within Juni, bringing your financial admin under one roof.
All of this comes with easy access to media and inventory financing for up to 2 million EUR, helping you free up your cash flow and grow your business.*
*Juni Invoices is available for EU-based companies only. Media financing is available for companies registered in NL, SE, DE, FR, ES, IT, FI and NO, upon eligibility. Fees and terms and conditions apply. Click here for more details.
Most suitable for: SMBs and mid-market companies in digital commerce
Juni has two plan options:
SAP Concur helps you streamline processes to deliver efficiency savings, with a focus on eliminating manual data entry, lost receipts and unclaimed VAT refunds. As such, it’s best suited to larger organisations. The platform helps you reduce the risk of human error and compliance issues with automations, plus the software can identify potential mistakes and discrepancies in real-time.
Most suitable for: Larger and enterprise organisations
SAP Concur doesn’t list its pricing options, so you’ll have to reach out to sales to get a quote.
Zoho Expense is the business expense tracking app from the Zoho suite of business tools, which means it integrates with Zoho’s other financial management apps. It’s a reasonably priced platform suited to handling all aspects of expense management and reporting for SMBs. Zoho Expense automatically records expenses from receipts, simplifying and automating the expense reporting process.
Most suitable for: People already using other Zoho products (namely Zoho Books)
Zoho Expense has three plans for its spend management software:
Expensify is a spend management solution for keeping track of business expenses on the go. Most of the expense management functionality can be done on your phone, while a series of handy integrations help to automate and streamline processes around uploading and allocating receipts. Plus, it’s easy for employees to create and submit expense reports for quick reimbursement.
Most suitable for: Small businesses with lots of employee expenses
Expensify has two plans:
One of the many features of smart accounting software QuickBooks is its built-in expense management tool. There are obvious advantages to expenses being handled via your accounting platform, like how easy it is to claim business expenses for tax purposes. And when you connect your bank to the platform, QuickBooks automatically matches and organises your receipts to transactions.
Most suitable for: Businesses who want more comprehensive accounting tools built into their spend management software
Quickbooks has five plans:
Fortnox is a cloud-based accounting software platform based in Sweden that helps businesses manage their accounting and bookkeeping processes, as well as other financial admin like spend management. Users can take photos of receipts and instantly upload them via a mobile app, and the platform automatically fills in date, amount and VAT.
Most suitable for: Businesses that operate in Sweden
Fortnox has three plans:
The information in this guide can help you make your decision, but ultimately, you need to factor in considerations about your business and its needs when choosing a platform. Here are three things you can do to ensure you’re choosing an ideal solution.
As you’ll notice from the list above, different software solutions are more suitable for different business industries and sizes. For example, Juni is spend management software built with the needs of ecommerce companies in mind. So when researching a platform, pay close attention to what type of business (big or small, ecommerce or SaaS) it’s best suited for.
While it shouldn’t be the only factor that guides your decision, you can’t ignore pricing when choosing a solution. You need to find a healthy balance between a platform you can afford (and doesn't go over budget) that still gives you all the key features and functionalities you need to run smarter, more efficient financial admin.
You may be a small business now, but if you have plans of scaling in the future, you want to make sure your expense management solution can scale with you. Juni, for example, caters to both SMBs as well as mid-market companies, meaning we can provide the solutions you need from the time your business is founder-led to when it has 100+ employees.
While you can never remove expense management from your to-do list, you can find a platform that does most of the work for you. The best spend management software is one that not only simplifies financial operations but also contributes to strategic decision-making and the long-term financial health of your organisation.
To find a platform that does all that, you need to make sure you’re making your selection with the unique needs of your business in mind. For example, if you operate in digital commerce, you want to choose a solution like Juni that comes with ecommerce-specific capabilities, like features designed specifically for media buying and online transactions.
So take your time finding the right platform—doing so can lead to significant time savings and valuable insights into spending patterns, helping you improve the overall financial health and success of your business.
Spend less time on spend management
With real-time spend overviews, receipt matching automation and powerful integrations, Juni will make you forget what a hassle managing your expenses used to be.
Spend management software is a platform or tool that helps businesses manage and control their expenses. This type of solution usually includes features for receipt management, expense reporting and approval workflows. Plus, these platforms often integrate with accounting software, as well as sync with banks and credit cards.
There are a number of benefits to using spend management software to control your expenses, including:
The price of expense management software varies depending on the size of your business and what industry you operate in, as this will impact which platform you choose. Prices range from as low as £7 per month to almost £100, and some spend management systems also offer free plans to certain users.
As a finance team, you’re the experts in advising your company on smart financial decisions that will bolster growth and business sustainability. But no matter how knowledgeable, skilled and experienced you are, you’re missing out on loads of potential insights if you don’t build a solid tech stack.
What you put in your finance tech stack will enable your team, and the right toolkit can be the difference between success and failure—you want correct information fast and don’t want your tech to be a barrier to getting the job done.
We spoke to Juni CFO Ruben Arnbert, as well as Johan Strid, Director of FP&A at Juni, to find out what makes up the finance team's tech stack and what you should consider when building yours.
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Just because you have some sort of existing tech stack doesn't mean it’s working as well as it could be. Juni CFO Ruben Arnbert says the first thing you should look at is how long it takes you to close your books, stating that “once in it takes longer than two days to get your financial results for the month, then I would start getting worried.”
He emphasises that “the purpose of a finance team is to guide the organisation and help it grow in a financially sustainable way. In order to do that, you need to understand how the business is performing—the sooner you do that, the sooner you can tell the business what it needs to change.”
Basically, the longer it takes you to close your books, the longer it takes for you to pinpoint what works and what doesn’t and advise the business accordingly. Those extra days at the end of each month add up and can ultimately impact the financial performance of your organisation.
Ruben also recommends taking a close look at how you spend your day-to-day, stating, “If you’re spending a lot of time doing bookkeeping and entering numbers into spreadsheets or your bookkeeping software, that’s just not efficient.”
This relates directly to how well your tools integrate—if they don’t connect, you’re left manually moving data from one platform to another, which is not only inefficient but also error-prone. As Ruben emphasises, “It's 2024, you shouldn't be typing stuff in manually.”
Ruben recommends looking at your finance operations like a pyramid. At the bottom layer, you have your core functionalities, so your bank and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, which should be integrated. “If those two talk to each other,” says Ruben, “then you should be able to more or less automate your accounting or make it very easy.”
In the middle layer of your pyramid, you have tools that help you analyse your company’s financial situation. Here, you’re looking at FP&A and business intelligence (BI) tools, which help you understand how the business is performing. “Here’s where you look at results and say, ‘This is what happened last month. I made money here, I lost money there. I invested that much and got this much out of it,’” shares Ruben.
Finally, the top layer of your pyramid is strategy and decision-making. At this point, you take the insights you’ve gained from your tools to communicate your recommendations to the rest of the business.
But that’s not the end of things—you also need tools like cash flow management solutions, accounts payable (AP) software, and financial reporting tools to optimise your finances. However, you can only figure out what additional solutions you need once you’ve completed the basic pyramid.
“Knowing what additional tools you need follows from understanding how your business is performing,” emphasises Ruben. “Then, you can see things like how much cash you have tied up in inventory, pointing to a need to improve your cash management process, or whether you pay hefty FX fees. But you won’t realise that until you can visualise broader business results.”
So from your essential day-to-day financial processes to helpful add-on tools, here are the areas that your finance tech stack should be helping you.
Your ERP software is the core of your finance tech stack, regardless of your business size. Ideally, your ERP should do the bulk of your accounting for you, managing day-to-day processes by collecting and organising key business information.
Understanding how the business functions across different departments is critical to successful financial planning, and your ERP can help with that, as it will bring together financial information from across the company in one place.
That’s why it’s so important to get an ERP that integrates with other pieces of your tech stack, like FP&A and accounts payable software, to make sharing and centralising your financial data more manageable. An ERP can also support inventory management, order management and customer billing, either in the ERP itself or by integrating with other tools.
When you’re just getting started, it might be enough to download your data, merge it into Excel, and build on it. But, if you want to benefit from automation, increased forecasting capabilities and more sophisticated visualisation, you’ll want to invest in FP&A software.
The right technology can help you manage your data and use it to model future scenarios for your business. As with most financial automation, the right FP&A software can help you free up time from manually handling your data and instead allow you to focus on analysis.
The main draw of a great FP&A tool is modelling. You want to see your financial history, how it looks at present, and how it could look in the future based on different scenarios. Because of this, FP&A tools are especially useful for budgeting—you can view historical data together with forward-looking views from your model.
Inevitably, your business will have different data coming from many sources—from sales to inventory to marketing. So manually identifying trends in this data and finding connections is no easy feat—that’s where business intelligence (BI) software can help.
BI software brings all this information together and provides practical insights to help you with data analysis, helping you better understand performance, from supply chain to sales. For example, Juni Insights acts as a single source of truth for all your ecommerce finances, from cash flow and ad spend to Amazon and Shopify analytics.
According to Ruben, “A business intelligence tool should help you visualise your most important metrics. It should connect to your ERP, fetching the necessary data, calculating KPIs and making projections.”
From processing cash flow to managing bank relationships, a treasury management solution (TMS) monitors all the influx and outflow of your company’s capital. By automating the process, a TMS gives you real-time, accurate insights into cash and liquidity while helping you keep tabs on your various accounts.
Ruben emphasises that a treasury management solution becomes more and more important “as you scale across jurisdictions, countries and industries. When you have multiple bank accounts in multiple jurisdictions with multiple banking partners, keeping track of all those transactions and cash movements becomes difficult.”
Ideally whoever you bank with will offer some accounts payable features, and you may be able to manage AP processes with your ERP. But if you need a more sophisticated solution, especially as your volume of supplier invoices increases, turn to accounts payable software.
For example, Juni’s accounts payable features automate the process by allowing you to auto-collect, pay and even finance your invoices in seconds. The platform automatically collects and scans invoices, pre-filling important payment details. Plus, you can easily import receipts and invoices and match receipts to transactions.
Contracts are essential to day-to-day operations, whether you’re closing deals with vendors or partnering with a new ad agency, but managing them manually can get to be time-consuming and inefficient.
While you may be able to handle contracts manually if you’re running a smaller business, as your company grows, so does the number of people who have to follow the proper legal processes. Having a tool to help streamline workflows and coordinate stakeholders can save time and make collaboration easier. In addition to helping you collect digital signatures quickly, these tools can also provide you with a library of contract templates to speed up the whole process.
Just because you automate your accounting processes doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be equipped to manage cash flow, which is why having a designated solution is important.
Juni, for example, is built to boost visibility and improve productivity for finance teams. Our virtual cards and multi-currency accounts, and accounting software and advertising integrations, give you a unified view of your finances. Our spend management features give you a deeper understanding of your cash flow with insights and analytics.
You can assign cards to employees and suppliers, giving you greater control of your transactions, plus configure custom notification settings. Juni can also help you optimise your cash flow management with cashback on all your eligible spend and access flexible capital with extended terms.*
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You may notice we didn’t mention Excel in the list above. But don’t underestimate your trusty Excel sheet—this tool should be a staple for every finance team, no matter what stage of growth you’re at. “We use Excel daily,” says Ruben. “It's so flexible that it's actually a very very good tool.”
For smaller teams, Excel can be helpful for FP&A and a great compliment to your ERP. For larger teams, it’s still versatile and ideal for a deep dive into your numbers. So from forecasting to expense management, Excel can have its place in your tech stack, helping you fill in gaps that your software doesn’t cover.
When setting up your tech stack, Ruben emphasises that “it's super important to break the process down into steps, which makes it much easier to identify where things aren’t working.” Here are three steps you can take to assemble your tech stack.
First things first—determine your organisation’s most pressing needs. Ruben suggests that you “start examining the very core fundamental layer, making sure that that works really well and that you don't spend a lot of time on admin. Then look at those numbers and let that drive what your next step should be.”
By doing this, you’ll uncover whether you need to start at the source and find an ERP that works better with your banking solution or if you’re lacking a powerful analytics solution.
Once you figure out which types of tools you need, it’s time to start researching the platforms themselves. Pay attention to what type of business each solution is designed for—if you’re a mid-market company operating in digital commerce, for example, you want a platform that understands the needs of ecommerce businesses like yours.
Additionally, weigh out the costs and benefits when doing your research. A tool may save you time, but needless to say, it’s not worth the investment if the price is going to put too much financial pressure on your business.
Looking into different solutions’ integration capabilities should happen at the research stage. So once you’ve selected and signed up for the various platforms you need, it’s time to set up integrations.
How interconnected your software is will determine how effective your tech stack is, so take advantage of all integrations available to you—this will minimise the need for manual input, as well as reduce the risk of costly human error.
Whatever tools you choose for your financial tech stack, your business needs are the most important thing to consider. As your operations evolve and grow, it’s essential to continually assess whether your tech is still working for you or whether you need to invest in new solutions. After all, tech is there to make your job easier and help you make better decisions for your business.
To summarise our recommendation of tools, remember the levels that Ruben breaks financial operations into:
Depending on the size and complexity of your business, you may not need all these add-on tools, or any of them for that matter. Just remember—start with the essentials to make sure your manual effort is minimal and you can close your books quickly and accurately.
Then, find analytics solutions that help you make strategic business decisions. And finally, fill in the gaps with tools that help you optimise your cash flow, automate more processes and run tighter financial operations.
*Juni Capital for cards is available for companies registered in UK, NL, SE, DE, FR, ES, IT, NO and FI, upon eligibility. Juni Invoices is available for EU-based companies only. Media financing is available for companies registered in NL, SE, DE, FR, ES, IT, FI and NO, upon eligibility. Fees and terms and conditions apply. Click here for more details.
A finance tech stack refers to the group of software tools that finance teams use to manage and automate financial processes, including accounting, budgeting, forecasting and reporting. The purpose of this tech stack is to streamline financial operations, ensure compliance and provide strategic insights through data analysis and financial management.
Tools that make up a finance tech stack can include ERP, FP&A, BI, treasury management, accounts payable, and cash flow management solutions.
A winning finance tech stack integrates tools that are adaptable, scalable and user-friendly, supporting the company's specific business processes and goals. It should provide real-time insights, enhance decision-making, ensure compliance and increase efficiency.
A finance tech stack needs to be customised to a business's needs, letting the finance team focus on strategic rather than routine tasks, in turn driving growth and promoting financial health.
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