Best Business Expense Tracker for Small Businesses in Canada

Despite the array of business expense tracker apps on the market, 42% of Canadian small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) still use spreadsheets to manage expenses. Tracking receipts, bills and invoices this way might seem simple, but it’s also time-consuming and prone to human error. Spending precious hours entering expenses into a spreadsheet—or working to resolve discrepancies at month-end or during tax season—takes you away from the important work of running your business. 

As your company grows and you need to process more invoices and payments, manual tracking can’t scale with you. Businesses that want to expand their operations and increase efficiency need to find a solution that automates expense tracking and unifies expense management across all of their financial systems. 

Let’s talk about how using an expense tracker can help you get insight into the health of your business and gain control over your cash flow. We’ll also go over a few small business expense tracking tools and how to choose the right one for you.

What is a business expense tracker?

A business expense tracker is a system or software that allows you to record and organize all of the transactions related to running your business. While you can use a spreadsheet to enter expenses manually—hey, we’re not here to rain on your parade—we promise it’s much better to use an app that has automated expense tracking and management built in. Accounting software often has integrated expense tracking features, but so do business finance platforms like Float.

How does a business expense tracker work?

In general, expense trackers allow you to input expenses and categorize them—often in a way that aligns with the expense categories reported on your taxes. Both business owners and bookkeepers or accountants can use them to keep an eye on spend and cash flow in the company. 

Manual expense trackers like spreadsheets and standalone accounting software require you to bring up your receipts, bills and invoices and enter each line item or total one at a time (fingers crossed you don’t make any typos). Then you have to organize and store your receipts somewhere else—which might mean that you’re juggling different digital files plus an office filing cabinet for physical paperwork. 

If you don’t track your expenses as transactions happen, you and your bookkeeper will find yourselves scrambling to hunt down receipts for validation and reconciliation with your bank and credit card statements at the end of each month.

On the other hand, a small business expense tracking app or accounting software that’s integrated with your business bank account and corporate cards automatically records and categorizes your expenses the moment a transaction occurs. 

An expense tracking app or software acts as a receipt tracker for business. These types of apps usually provide several ways to directly upload receipts and paper invoices or bills. In many cases, all you have to do to log your expenses is take a photo of the physical copy of a receipt. Using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, the details on the receipt are then analyzed and automatically translated into a standardized format so the expense can be categorized appropriately.  

The best business expense trackers also automatically confirm that the transactions recorded on your bank statements match the receipts you’ve uploaded into the system. This can help you or your bookkeeper close the books faster at month’s end.

Why expense tracking software is essential for small businesses

You’ve probably heard that tracking expenses is important, like eating your vegetables or walking 10,000 steps a day. The business version of those healthy habits, tracking expenses is a routine that really does pay off. Keeping an eye on what you spend can help you run your business more effectively and power growth.

Here’s how expense tracking can benefit you and your business: 

Get ready for tax season

You need to keep track of your expenses so that you can report them on your taxes. Expenses like office supplies, rent, utilities, insurance, fuel for work-related driving and inventory may be deducted from the year’s total revenue to lower your taxable income. You might also be able to claim business travel expenses if you (and your employees) track them correctly. You need to keep an accurate record of expenses in case you’re ever audited by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). 

Improve cash flow

Sixty percent of Canadian SMBs face challenges managing cash flow. Tracking expenses gives you the chance to see where your money is going so you can be proactive about balancing spending and income. Staying on top of expense tracking helps you see when cash moves out of your business, so you can make sure you send invoices to customers and follow up on payments in time to cover your own bills. It also enables you to identify areas where you’re spending too much without seeing return on investment (ROI). 

Optimize pricing strategy

Understanding how much it costs to run your business helps you make sure that you’re charging enough for your products or services to generate a profit. Tracking expenses allows you to calculate your cost of goods sold (COGS) so you can sell items for more than it costs you to produce them. This allows you to experiment with pricing strategies like creating bundles or offering dynamic pricing during busy seasons. 

Plan for growth

Knowing your current expenses helps you refine your budget so you can make room for meaningful investments in your business. With clarity around how much it costs to run your business today, you can get a better understanding of how much it will cost to grow. If your revenue isn’t going to cover your projected expenses, you can make strategic decisions around seeking funding from investors or look into business financing options to take your company to the next level.

Qualify for business loans 

You may want to get a business loan so you can make large investments like purchasing new equipment or renovating your storefront. You might also want to use a business line of credit or credit card from a bank to help cover ongoing expenses like inventory or payroll. Many traditional banks need you to provide financial statements and projections to confirm your creditworthiness before offering you a loan. You’ll need a record of your expenses to show the bank how your business is doing to qualify for good interest rates.

Key features to look for in a small business expense tracking solution

✓ Easy photo receipt capture and upload options and accurate OCR 

✓ Automatic categorization, GL coding and tax coding

✓ Automatic expense policy enforcement, set spending limits and approval controls

✓ Intuitive interface that makes it easy to see transaction details at a glance

✓ Real-time transaction visibility, reporting and automated insights 

✓ Integrations with your bank and credit card accounts and accounting software

✓ Secure storage for receipts, bills and invoices

Finding the best app for small business expenses

1. Float

Float is a free business expense tracker and expense management platform built for Canadian businesses. It offers corporate cards, photo receipt capture and reimbursement features, as well as vendor invoice intake and payments to bring all of your expenses together. Float makes it easy to see where your money is going in real time across your entire team. Plus, you never have to worry about manually entering expenses—sorry, spreadsheets! Every transaction that moves through Float is tracked, matched and recorded in the platform and your integrated accounting software. 

Cost for small businesses: $0

2. Credit Karma (Mint)

Credit Karma, formerly known as Mint, is an expense tracking tool for personal finance, but it can work for freelancers and sole proprietors as well. It’s a good option if you’re looking for a very simple, free business expense tracker that’s just a step up from using a spreadsheet. 

Cost for small businesses: $0

3. QuickBooks or Xero

QuickBooks and Xero are both leading accounting software options that include expense tracking features and can be integrated with other expense tracking solutions. QuickBooks requires expenses to be entered manually unless you have a connected tracking app that automates the process. Xero has photo receipt capture, automated approvals and seamless reimbursement features built in.

Cost for small businesses: 

QuickBooks: $24–$160 /mo. 

Xero: $20–$67 /mo.

4. Expensify

Expensify is expense management software best known for its travel booking features. It has cash flow features like automatic bill pay and outgoing invoicing, not just vendor invoice intake. Similar to Float, it also provides corporate cards. Expensify offers 1% cash back on all purchases.

💡Pro tip: Psst… Float offers 1% cash back plus 4% interest on Float Balance funds.

Cost for small businesses: $5–$9 USD per user/mo.

5. SAP Concur

SAP Concur is geared towards larger companies and enterprises that need to manage frequent employee expenses including fuel, meals, and travel. It offers photo receipt capture and automated expense reporting as well as customizable approval flows. It also provides integrated accounts payable (AP) features including invoicing and vendor payments. 

Cost: Custom pricing based on business size and invoice volume. No public pricing available.

How to choose the best app to keep track of small business expenses

Frankly, the best app to keep track of small business expenses is the one that you’ll actually use as a part of your everyday workflow. A great app should take care of the manual process of logging and organizing receipts and transactions so that you can focus on high-value tasks that contribute to your business growth. 

Look for business expense trackers that are intuitive to use and integrate seamlessly with the other software solutions you use to run your business and manage your finances. Check out reviews from businesses that have similar operations or ask a financial professional what they recommend. Ultimately, you’ll only know if an expense tracker will work for you if you give it a try. Find solutions that offer a free business expense tracker or a free trial that you can experiment with before making an investment. 

Simple, seamless expense tracking with Float

Float keeps all of your business expenses in one place, from corporate card spending to vendor invoices and payments. With Float corporate cards, you can track employee expenses in real time and it’s easy for employees to submit receipts directly within the Float mobile app. You can also receive vendor invoices and pay them through Float, which means you can unify all your expenses in a single solution. 

Float is more than a business expense tracker. It’s an end-to-end solution that powers better business spending with payments and record-keeping orchestrated seamlessly in one intuitive platform. 

Still stuck in spreadsheets, managing expenses manually? Try Float for free and control your cash flow through a single pane of glass.

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