Work trips can be exhausting and full of small expenses that quickly add up. Between the Ubers to and from the airport, the snacks to keep up the energy, and the long dinners with clients, spending can quickly sprawl out of control. The last thing you want upon returning is to search through a voluminous pile of crumpled receipts only to find they’re not all there.
WIRED and Condé Nast Traveler are here to help. Bringing together our expertise on software and travel, we picked a few of our favorite apps for tracking expenses on work trips. These could be worth trying out during your next big conference or even adopting as a wider organization. Do you have a reliable option that you trust and it’s not included on this list? Make your voice heard in the comments.
Expensify
Expensify is probably the best app for the widest number of people, from freelancers to bigger staffs. It includes all of the must-haves like receipt scanning, distance tracking, and easy categorization as well as a way to manage how you submit the reports and who is involved with the approval process. It’s not too flashy overall, but integrations with other apps commonly used on work trips, like Uber, Delta, and Workday, are nice to have.
Expensify for iOS, Android, and macOS
SAP Concur
Concur is popular with larger enterprises for handling travel; we’ve used it a few times for work trips ourselves. While the SAP Concur app has some rough edges, it’s worth having on your smartphone if that’s the expense protocol used where you work. Like all of these picks, you can take photos of your receipts in the app to streamline the process. Are you driving? Automatic distance capture can help you file those mileage reports as well.
SAP Concur for iOS and Android
Zoho Expense
Like many other expense apps, Zoho Expense lets you save your corporate credit card on the platform and scan receipts as you go. The app then helps you categorize and itemize expenses and extract important details. Hitting the road? No need for guesswork; you can track car mileage with the click of a button to get accurate reimbursements for driving time. You can also calculate your petty cash spend, and businesses can regulate employees’ daily allowances with customizable rules made just for them. It’s also one of the most budget-friendly expense apps, with free plans available for small businesses (three users or fewer) and a premium plan available at just $7 per month.
Zoho Expense for iOS and Android
Rydoo
Traveling abroad? Those who frequently venture to different countries on business will appreciate how easy it is to scan receipts and have all of the important details (country, tax rate, currency, etc.) auto-populate immediately with, according to Rydoo, 95 percent accuracy, without employees having to go through each time to add the info themselves.
Aside from the classic expense app bread and butter—the ability to integrate company cards, scan receipts, offer per diem management, and track mileage—Rydoo sets itself apart in a few different ways. There’s automatic expense approval for the bulk of submissions based on your company’s policies, and Rydoo even warns employees of expenses it feels may be noncompliant. It also highlights them for management and finance teams. Rydoo also tracks CO2 emissions, uses AI to automatically analyse all expenses, and approves expenses in real time as they are filed.
