The Best Expense Management Software in the UK (2026)

Last updated: July 2026. Pricing checked against provider websites at the time of writing - always confirm current pricing directly with each provider.

If your month-end still involves chasing receipts, correcting claim errors, and reconciling card statements line by line, the problem usually isn't your team. It's that spending information lives in too many places: cards, spreadsheets, email threads, and your accounting system.

Expense management software fixes this by capturing spend at the point it happens - a card payment, a photographed receipt, a mileage claim - and moving it through approval and into your accounts with the details already attached.

This guide compares the leading options for UK businesses in 2026. We build Expend, so we have a view - but this page is written to help you choose well, whichever tool that turns out to be. Every product here does something well, and the right choice depends on how your business spends.

Beyond compliance, the practical reasons to move off spreadsheets haven't changed: finance sees spend only after it's happened, employees forget receipts, VAT gets missed on reclaimable purchases, and reconciliation eats the first week of every month.

The VAT point deserves a number. Every standard-rated receipt that goes missing costs you one-sixth of its value in unreclaimed VAT - a lost £30 receipt is £5 you can't recover. Across a year of forgotten coffees, parking and subsistence, that adds up to real money, and it's the easiest saving to capture: software that photographs the receipt at the point of purchase and extracts the VAT automatically means the reclaim happens by default rather than by chasing.

How we compared the options

We assessed each product on the criteria that matter most to UK finance teams, starting with company size, different business sizes, specific needs, and the key features that make expense management tools the best fit for each setup:

• Receipt capture and data accuracy: how reliably the software handles OCR, lets teams use mobile apps to capture receipts and scan receipts, including paper receipts, extracts VAT, supports instant submissions, and matches documents to transactions with less manual work and fewer errors.

• Cards and payment options: whether you get company cards, can keep your existing cards, or both.

• Approvals and policy controls: routing claims to the right person, supporting policy compliance, and flagging out-of-policy spend before payment, not after.

• UK compliance: HMRC mileage rates (including the 2026 change), VAT capture, and digital record-keeping.

• Accounting integrations: depth of sync with Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, NetSuite and others, with the best platforms integrating directly with accounting software and checking connections to payroll systems rather than relying on a CSV export.

• Pricing transparency: whether you can see what you'll pay before talking to sales.

The options at a glance

Expend: cards, claims and mileage in one place, without forcing a card switch

Best for: UK businesses that want real-time visibility across all company spending, including spend on cards they already have.

Most spend management platforms require you to move spending onto their cards to get real-time data. That's a genuine sticking point if your business relies on existing credit limits, rewards, or banking relationships. Expend takes a different approach: you can issue an Expend physical or virtual corporate card where it makes sense, and use Card Connect™ to link existing Visa and Mastercard business cards, so employees keep the cards they already use while finance still sees transactions as they happen.

On top of that sits the day-to-day expense workflows: Expend is built so expense management software automates tasks like receipt scanning and approval workflows, with AI receipt capture that extracts VAT, merchant and line items and matches receipts to transactions; staff can forward receipts by email or use the app to capture them; expense policies that define what employees must submit; and workflows for expense claims and expense reports. It also includes mileage tracking with HMRC rates built in - including the automatic drop to 25p after 10,000 miles, support for custom rates, and app-based tools to log mileage and submit mileage claims. Google Maps integration can also improve route accuracy. That helps finance monitor employee expenses with audit trails and receipt verification, while giving real time spend visibility before approved expenses sync to Xero, QuickBooks or Sage, all in one platform.

Pricing: With 3 levels to choose from, Essential from £33/month and Elevate from £39/month and Enhanced from £48/month, each including 3 users, with a custom-priced Enhanced plan for larger teams.

Consider something else if: you need deep two-way ERP sync for a multi-entity group (see Payhawk) or you only want the cheapest possible receipt-scanning tool (see Expensify).

Pleo: published pricing for card-first small teams

Best for: teams of roughly 5–200, especially small business owners and non-accounting experts who want a simple card-first setup and are happy to move spending onto Pleo Mastercards.

Pleo pairs its cards with receipt capture and two-way Xero and QuickBooks sync, and its pricing is fully published: from £9.50/month on annual billing for the Starter tier (3 users included), rising through Essential (£39), Advanced (£99) and Beyond (£199), with extra users from £11–£18 each per month. That transparency makes budgeting easy for small businesses. The trade-off: the model is built around Pleo's own cards, so spend on existing company cards or reimbursement-heavy workflows sits less naturally at the centre, and it is less suited to larger organisations with more complex approval needs.

For a detailed feature-by-feature comparison, see Pleo vs Expend.

Soldo: hard spending ceilings on prepaid cards

Best for: organisations that need employees to be literally unable to overspend - common in construction, field teams and grant-funded work, and often useful for growing companies that need tighter spend limits as headcount increases.

Soldo issues prepaid Mastercards funded from per-user or per-team wallets, so every card has a hard ceiling. Standard costs £21/month for 3 users (additional users £7/month each, including non-cardholder roles), with a Plus plan at £33/month. The prepaid model is its strength and its limitation: strong control through physical cards, with Apple Pay support helping keep business spending convenient, but wallets need topping up, and it's less suited to businesses that want credit or to keep existing cards.

For a detailed feature-by-feature comparison, see Soldo vs Expend.

Payhawk: for multi-entity groups on ERP systems

Best for: mid-market and larger businesses, including larger organisations and large enterprises, running NetSuite, SAP or Microsoft Dynamics across multiple entities.

Payhawk combines corporate cards with genuine two-way ERP sync, multi-entity administration, and spend controls alongside accounts payable-style workflows such as invoice management. Pricing is custom and starts at a level (reported around £149+/month, with US-published plans from $599/month) that assumes meaningful spend volume. If you're a 15-person business on Xero, it's more platform than you need; if you're consolidating spend across three entities in two currencies, it's built for exactly that, and it also supports multiple currencies for groups operating across regions.

For a detailed feature-by-feature comparison, see Payhawk vs Expend.

Expensify: low-cost receipt scanning and reimbursements

Best for: businesses whose main problem is out-of-pocket claims, not card spend.

Expensify's SmartScan receipt capture is quick, and Expensify is particularly known for simple receipt scanning; the pricing is low: the Collect plan from £5 per member per month and Control from £14 per active member. It's best suited to reimbursement-heavy employee expenses and simple expense tracking, letting users scan receipts to submit claims and create expense reports faster, with direct deposit a common reimbursement method for approved claims. UK-specific features are thinner than UK-built rivals - mileage and VAT handling work but weren't designed around HMRC first - so check the details against your policy before committing. Reimbursement delays matter because 70% of employees consider leaving jobs due to slow repayment.

For a detailed feature-by-feature comparison, see Expensify vs Expend.

Webexpenses: UK-built claims workflows

Best for: organisations that want a claims-and-approvals system designed for UK rules, with UK-based support.

Webexpenses has been built for the UK market since 2000: HMRC AMAP rates are pre-loaded, VAT receipt validation sits inside the approval workflow, and support is UK-based. It doesn't issue its own cards, so it suits businesses focused on reimbursement claims and card statement imports rather than real-time card control. Pricing is quote-based.

ExpenseIn: pay only for people who submit

Best for: organisations where many users approve or review but few submit expenses.

ExpenseIn charges per active user - someone who actually creates or submits expenses that month - while approvers and finance users are free. That model can work out well for businesses with a small travelling team and a wider approval chain. ExpenseIn cards are a Stripe/Visa product bolted on to the platform: a different infrastructure layer. Real-time controls, instant freeze, and receipt prompts at point-of-transaction only work properly when there's no seam in the middle, with card-native platforms like Expend.

SAP Concur: the enterprise incumbent

Best for: large organisations with complex international travel and expense requirements, particularly those already on SAP.

Concur is the most established travel-and-expense platform and handles complex policy, audit and travel-booking requirements at scale. For small and mid-sized UK businesses, the implementation effort and cost are usually hard to justify against the tools above.

How to choose: match the tool to how you spend

Rather than looking for a single "best" product, start from your spending pattern:

Mostly out-of-pocket claims and mileage? You need strong receipt capture, HMRC mileage rates that update automatically, and a simple approval process, with automated approval workflows that apply customised rules, route requests to the right manager automatically, and ensure managers receive notifications about pending expenses for review. Look at Expend, ExpenseIn or Webexpenses.

Mostly card spend? Real-time card visibility matters most. If you're willing to switch cards, Pleo and Soldo are strong; if you want to keep existing business cards, Expend's Card Connect is the notable exception to the switch-your-cards rule, and allows you to run both existing business cards and issue budget-controlled physical and virtual cards for employees too.

A mix of both - cards, claims and mileage? Choose a platform that handles all three in one workflow, so employees aren't juggling two systems. Expend and Payhawk cover the full range at different price points and company sizes. If frequent travel is part of your expense process, dedicated T&E features such as booking integrations and per diem tracking can save significant time.

Multiple entities or an ERP? Payhawk or Concur.

Need hard, unbreachable limits per card? Soldo's prepaid model does this by design, and Expend's cards have robust customisable controls for each card, too.

Then pressure-test your shortlist with these questions:

1. Will employees actually use it? Ask for a trial and have your least tech-enthusiastic frequent claimer photograph a receipt. Adoption decides whether you get the visibility you're paying for.

2. Does the accounting sync go deep enough? "Integrates with Xero" can mean anything from a nightly two-way sync with tracking categories to a manual CSV export. Ask specifically.

3. What happens to your existing cards? If the answer is "cancel them", weigh the cost of losing credit limits, rewards or banking relationships against the benefit.

4. Are HMRC rates maintained for you? After this year's 45p-to-55p change, this is no longer hypothetical. Ask each vendor how (and how quickly) the May 2026 change reached their product.

5. What's the real per-month cost at your headcount? Published "from" prices usually include 3 users. Model your actual user count, including approvers, before comparing.

What switching actually involves

A common reason teams stay on spreadsheet-based processes is fear of a disruptive rollout. In practice, a typical migration looks like this: connect your accounting software, set up your expense categories and approval rules to match current workflows (usually mirroring what you already do by email), invite a pilot group for one month, then roll out to everyone. The payoff is typically 12-34 fewer hours of manual work each month, with less manual entry across receipt and transaction processing. Adoption also helps cut month-end close cycles by 30-50%. Most of the tools above are self-serve at the small-business end; some, such as Expend, include onboarding support.

Security and regulation: what to check before you switch

Moving company money and spending data into new software is a fair reason for caution. Three things to verify on any shortlist:

How the money side is regulated. Providers that issue cards or hold funds typically operate as (or through) e-money institutions, authorised in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or by an equivalent EU regulator. E-money rules require customer funds to be safeguarded, held in segregated accounts, separate from the provider's own money, so they can be returned if the provider fails. 

How your data is protected. Ask about independent security certifications, UK GDPR compliance, where financial data is hosted, and whether the provider supports single sign-on and two-factor authentication for your team, as well as whether AI-powered tools verify expenses against receipts to reduce fraud when handling sensitive financial data.

What the controls are on the cards themselves. Card-level limits, instant freezing, merchant category blocking and virtual cards for online spend all reduce your exposure if a card is lost or misused, often to a greater degree than a traditional company credit card. Smart categorization can also detect duplicates and flag anomalies automatically.

Frequently asked questions

What is expense management software? Software that captures business spending - card payments, receipts, mileage and reimbursement claims - checks it against your expense policy for policy enforcement and to prevent non-compliance, routes it for approval, and syncs the approved data to your accounting system. It helps manage employee expenses and business expenses in the same approval flow. The goal is real-time visibility for finance and less manual work for everyone.

What is the HMRC mileage rate for 2026/27? 55p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles in cars and vans, and 25p per mile after that. The 55p rate was announced on 21 May 2026 and applies retrospectively from 6 April 2026. Motorcycles remain at 24p and bicycles at 20p.

Do I need expense software for Making Tax Digital? MTD for Income Tax (from April 2026, for sole traders and landlords over £50,000, changing to over £30,000 from April 2027) requires digital records kept in compatible software. Expense software isn't mandatory, but capturing receipts and VAT digitally at the point of spend, then syncing to MTD-compatible accounting software, is the most reliable way to meet the requirement without duplicating work.

How much does expense management software cost in the UK? Published entry pricing in 2026 ranges from around £5 per user per month (Expensify) to roughly £21–£39 per month for plans that include 3 users (Soldo, Expend, Pleo). Mid-market and enterprise platforms (Payhawk, Concur) are quote-based and typically start in the hundreds per month. Some products are built for different business sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises. Most providers bill annually for their headline rates and exclude VAT.

Can I keep my existing business cards? Usually not - most spend platforms require their own cards for real-time data. Some platforms focus on corporate card programmes, while others support reimbursement-led workflows. Expend is an exception: Card Connect links existing Visa and Mastercard business cards, and Webexpenses and ExpenseIn work from card statement imports rather than issuing cards.

Is expense management software safe? Reputable providers that issue cards or hold funds operate under e-money regulation (FCA-authorised in the UK, or an EU equivalent) with customer funds safeguarded in segregated accounts.

Is a spreadsheet still good enough? For a handful of claims a month, possibly. The costs show up as you grow: paper receipts and manual expense reports become a bigger problem, alongside no visibility until month-end, missed VAT reclaims, manual policy checking, and - as this year's mileage rate change showed - rates that silently go stale. By comparison, automated receipt capture can cut report preparation time by 75%.

Next step

If your spending mix includes cards, out-of-pocket claims and mileage, and you'd rather not replace the cards you already have, Expend is built for exactly that. Book a demo and run one month-end alongside your current process - then compare the reconciliation time.

If another tool on this list fits your spending pattern better, most offer trials too. The worst outcome isn't choosing a competitor; it's another year of chasing receipts.