Corporate Credit Card Policy: What is it & How to Create One

One crucial aspect of business finance management is knowing how the money of your organization is being spent.  You can’t paint a complete picture of your organization’s financial health without understanding how the money is flowing first. This clarity is precisely what effective expense reports provide. When properly maintained, expense reports give you a clear perspective over your organization's finances. 

In this comprehensive guide, we delve into:

• The Definition of Expense Reports: What are they and why are they crucial?
• The Importance of Accurate Expense Reporting: How does it affect your organization's financial health?
• Creating Effective Expense Reports: We'll explore two practical methods to craft accurate and insightful expense reports, empowering you to make informed financial decisions.

What is an expense report?

An expense report is a crucial tool in business finance management. It is a categorized and itemized list of expenses made on behalf of the organization. These reports assist employers or finance teams in determining what money was spent, what was purchased, and how much of the expenditure is eligible for reimbursement.

The purpose of an expense report is to track the expenditures of a business and expense forms should include all purchases necessary to operate a business, such as food, gas, or parking.

It is most commonly used by employees when requesting reimbursement for expenditures. 

When expenditure amounts exceed a certain threshold, receipts are usually attached to the form. 

Employees are paid the requested amounts after the employer examines their submissions for accuracy and validity. 

In this case, the employer will be able to recognize accounting profit and taxable profit based on the reimbursements.

Business expense reports are usually generated on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis to track business spending:

• It is important for a company to maintain monthly and quarterly expense reports to track all of its purchases during that period. The reports are used to determine whether spending within the organization's budget is within its limits and to identify areas for cost reductions.
• Yearly expense reports are in turn used for tax purposes. A company's tax returns are prepared using its annual expense reports.

It is also possible to use expense reports to detail expenditures made against an initial employee advance. 

Employers still record employee expenses as business expenses, but they do not reimburse employees; instead, they deduct the expenditures from employee advances.

Why use an expense report?

Expense reports are essential for small businesses, enabling a clear tracking of business expenses often paid out-of-pocket by employees. These reports detail all reimbursable expenses and require attaching receipts for accurate verification. Once reviewed for accuracy, employees are reimbursed accordingly. Additionally, small business owners and accountants use these reports to analyze total expenses over specific periods, employing accounting tools to assess whether costs align with budget expectations

The following are some benefits of generating a expense report:

1. Facilitates efficient expense tracking and cost control

Analyzing expense report data is the ideal starting point for cost control. This allows you to track your firm's spending over time by giving you a clearer picture of what your money is being spent on. 

Additionally, you can analyze how much your employees are spending on different expense categories, determine which categories are driving up costs, and implement strategies to reduce or eliminate them. In addition to identifying loopholes in expense policies, these reports can help you decide which vendors to prioritize and which ones to let go by identifying loopholes in expense policies.

Tracking expenses over time allows you to identify whether a particular expense category (such as transportation or hotels) is increasing costs excessively. As a result, you can strategize on how to reduce or eliminate these costs.

2. Helps with budgeting

A business's budget is essential to its smooth operation. A detailed and accurate expense report can help your organization develop a strong and informed financial plan. As a result, various departments and projects can be allocated more appropriate budgets. You can maintain your business's financial security long-term by consistently tracking expenses in order to ensure that different departments and projects adhere to their budgets.

3. Makes for accurate reimbursements

In the event that an employee paid for business expenses out of pocket, they would expect a fair and accurate reimbursement. 

Also, you want to make sure that the request is fair so that you don't pay more than you are owed. 

It allows organizations to determine if a claim is legitimate faster by providing employees with a standardized process to learn what can and cannot be expensed. 

In addition to providing solid evidence of when, where, and how expenses were incurred, itemized expense reports with receipts do the same for proving compliance with your organization's expense policy.

4. Simplifies tax deductions

Tax deductions are available for many business expenses incurred by employees at work. In order to claim expenses as deductions, you must properly record them and provide proof that they were actually incurred. 

Business owners sometimes use their bank account or corporate card statements to keep track of their deductible expenses. It's important to keep in mind that these statements may not include all expenses. 

In contrast, expense reports simplify the process of keeping track and deducting deductible expenses during tax season. The finance team simply needs to add up all the expenses that can be deducted and enter them into the appropriate tax forms.

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What should be in the expense report?

By creating an expense report, you (or your accountant) can easily add up all expenses so that they can be entered into your tax return. 

Some crucial elements to include in an expense report include:

• The name, department, designation, and contact information of the employee who submitted the report.
• The date and amount of each expense (corresponding to the date and amount on the receipt)
• What type of expense is being incurred (meals, mileage, internet, etc.)?
• Vendor or merchant who sold the item
• If applicable, the client or project for which it was purchased
• From your accounting chart, determine the account where the expense should be charged
• A description of each expense in more detail
• Expense subtotals and total costs, including taxes, for each type of expense
• (If applicable) a deduction for prior advances made to the employee

How to create expense reports

Companies most often generate and track expense reports using spreadsheets, templates, or expense reporting software. 

You can generate expense reports in two different ways: manually through templates, or through Pluto. 

Manual expense reporting with custom templates

To make the task of preparing expense reports easier for employees, some organizations provide customizable, ready-made templates to download and use. To report expenses in this way, follow these steps:

1. The employee outlines their name, contact information, designation, the dates covered, and the purpose of the report in the appropriate fields.
2. Following that, they determine how many rows and columns the expense report should contain. For example, some firms have mandatory columns and categories that correspond to the expense categories and columns in tax returns.
3. In the report, expenses should be listed chronologically with brief descriptions, with the most recent expense appearing at the end.
4. In order to calculate the grand total, the employee must first calculate the subtotals for each expense category followed by the total for all expenses. Subtotals assist the finance department in analyzing expenses.
5. Finally, all expenses mentioned above must be accompanied by receipts. The receipts can either be scanned or photocopied depending on whether the report is being submitted digitally.
6. Reports are submitted to the line manager or department manager for validation and fraud detection.
7. As soon as they approve the report, it is forwarded to the finance department for reimbursement.

Automated expense reporting

The use of expense report templates is a quick way to keep track of expenses for small businesses. 

The problem arises when your business grows, at which point the process of filling out a report, even if using a template, can become a time-consuming task. 

When multiple departments process several expense reports a day, it is important to switch to an automated expense reporting solution like Pluto, so that these reports can be tracked and managed more efficiently.

1. Pluto enables employees to create expense reports on the fly. Their receipts need to be captured digitally or filled out in the mandatory fields within the application. 
2. By grouping all the expense claims together, a report can be created and submitted effortlessly. 
3. Pluto also provides virtual and physical cards, so the expense data are booked straight into the platform for later use.
4. Line managers and department managers review reports to identify policy violations, fraud, duplicate expenses, or warnings about them. 

How to simplify the expense reporting process

While expense reports are important when it comes to gaining an overall view of the way money is moving, creating them can be a hassle when your organization incurs too many expenses to keep track of manually.

However, there are a few ways that you can simplify your expense reporting. These include:

Switching to expense reporting software

The first step in expense management is to file expense reports. You must also maintain policy compliance, reimburse expenses on time, and conduct successful expense audits to stay on top of your business expenses. 

This is where Pluto can help. By providing multiple ways to record expenses on the go, we eliminate the need for manual data entry and paperwork. You can benefit from an expense management solution by:

• Generating and submitting reports automatically;
• The ability to support multiple expense policies and spend limits;
• Eliminates policy violations and fraudulent expenditures
• Analytical reports and intuitive dashboards increase spend visibility

With all of these features, you can save time and money while keeping your employees productive.

Make expenses easy to report and track

Provide your employees with Pluto real-time reporting system where they can track expenses, submit receipts, and report business expenses. 

Business expense reports can be updated in real-time using online or smartphone apps, and receipt images can be added for total transparency, if you use digital technology. 

Time-stamping and expense classification make it easy to catch fraud, which is beneficial to both you and your employees.

Embrace mobile devices

By scanning receipts and automatically extracting and reporting the key data, Pluto saves your employees' time and improves their expense reporting accuracy. 

It makes perfect sense for you to use an app that allows your employees to track expenses easily from their phones since most (if not all) of your employees spend a lot of time on their smartphones. 

Set up a routine audit

Ensure that you also incorporate a routine audit process into your business expense report policies. Your expense report should be audited quarterly, biannually, or annually, depending on the number of expenditures your employees incur. 

You can catch fraud cases through audits, but you can also understand where the biggest expenditures are and reduce them. 

Routine audits can also help you improve management and tracking of your business expenses by letting you know how to refine your reporting process.

Automated expense reporting with Pluto

Pluto allows you to issue virtual cards and physical cards and that immediately solves two things:

• No need for petty cash or out of pocket expenses;
• Real-time reporting of all the incurred expenses;

The spend management system allows you to issues cards for a particular employee, vendor, or even expense type. 

It also allows you to set the limits on the go, and see all the expenses in the real-time report. All that, while your employees can easily categorize the expenses and upload the physical receipts just by taking a photo on their mobile device. 

Reporting expenses manually is very time consuming, but having them all digitally stored and automatically reported solves the problem. 

Key takeaways

Expense reports are a crucial aspect of the financial bookkeeping of any business organization. Not only are they important for knowing how much money is being spent by the company, whether as a whole or for a specific project, but also for the purpose of reimbursing employees for business-related expenses. 

Plus, they also help you with budgeting, tax reporting, and cost control measures.

You can easily create an expense report using a premade or personalized template, but you’ll have a much easier time in the long run if you start using Pluto.

One of your teams discovers a SaaS tool and makes a quick purchase using the company credit card, thinking this software solution will simplify processes and increase efficiency. It seems straightforward at this point—a hassle-free process.

However, this purchase workflow shadows the IT and legal departments. None of them are involved in the decision-making process. As a result, the chosen product never undergoes the risk assessment for security threats and legal regulations. What appears as an elementary and frictionless process becomes a breeding ground for chaos and potential operational disruptions.

This blog post is for procurement teams that wish to understand the SaaS procurement process and streamline the purchases for efficiency. We will discuss the challenges with the traditional approach and how you can overcome these to create a secure and cost-effective tech stack.

What is SaaS Procurement?

SaaS procurement is the acquisition and management of cloud-based software solutions through a subscription model.

As a member of the procurement team, you assess organizational software needs, evaluate vendors, negotiate contracts, and oversee the entire lifecycle. You aim to ensure cost-effectiveness, compliance, and optimal performance of SaaS applications.

Challenges With Traditional SaaS Procurement Process 

The most significant loophole in traditional SaaS procurement processes is the lack of proper approval workflow. Employees purchase suitable SaaS tools by themselves based on self-assessment. While this approach is flexible and saves time, it leads to operational bottlenecks in the long run.

Here is an overview of what happens when the relevant stakeholders aren’t involved in the SaaS procurement process:

Absence of Procurement Team

When teams proceed without involving the procurement team, they introduce several challenges, impacting the following aspects:

1. Cost-Optimization: Without a centralized team overseeing SaaS subscriptions, different departments independently select similar plans, leading to redundant expenses. For example, two teams might unknowingly invest in the same SaaS product for $ 12/month/user plans. However, when consolidated under an enterprise plan, they could get added security features more cost-efficiently.
2. Vendor Management: Vendor management becomes fragmented without a procurement team, as various teams engage with multiple vendors independently. Hence, It becomes challenging to negotiate favorable terms, track performance, and ensure consistent service levels across the organization. This absence of centralized management hinders the organization's ability to leverage its purchasing power effectively.
3. Inconsistent User Experiences: Different teams choose diverse tools for similar tasks, resulting in variations in workflows and collaboration. This lack of standardization hinders overall efficiency and employees' ability to work seamlessly across different projects.
4. Renewal Management: The decentralized approach of SaaS procurement makes it challenging to track and manage subscription renewals effectively. Unintended renewals for underutilized or obsolete SaaS subscriptions ensue, leading to unnecessary costs and potential inefficiencies in resource allocation.

Absence of Legal Team

Legal professionals evaluate and ensure that the chosen SaaS solution adheres to data protection and privacy laws. Also, they help craft and review contracts to protect the enterprise’s interests.

The absence of legal scrutiny leads to inadequate safeguards, exposing sensitive information to security breaches. Moreover, without their input, contracts with SaaS vendors lack clarity, leaving room for misunderstandings, disputes, or unfavorable terms. There's a high risk of violating laws, regulations, or contractual obligations, leading to legal consequences and financial penalties.

Absence of IT Team (Also Known as Shadow IT)

IT professionals assess the security measures of SaaS products. The absence of IT involvement results in security compromise and operational inefficiencies. Let's say the sales team, without prior knowledge of the IT team, independently procures a SaaS product for inbound leads, integrating it swiftly into their workflow. This incident is also known as shadow IT.

But after a few weeks, a technical issue arises. Unaware of the product's existence, the IT department struggles to provide immediate support or resolve the issues promptly. It disrupts the sales team's workflow and raises broader concerns for the organization, exposing the company to potential data breaches or regulatory non-compliance. Moreover, fixing this issue involves potential legal ramifications and additional unplanned costs for IT intervention.

6-Step SaaS Procurement Process 

Each relevant stakeholder reviews and gets an overview of the purchase cycle — this is what a collaborative SaaS procurement process looks like.

1. Identify Need

This step involves identifying the specific software needs of the organization. Departments communicate their requirements to ensure the chosen SaaS solution aligns with overall business objectives. They fill out custom forms that become the procurement team's base to select the right vendor. 

2. Vendor Selection

The procurement team researches and evaluates various SaaS vendors to find a solution that meets the identified needs. At this stage, it aims to find the best vendor that offers functionality and security at reasonable pricing. Factors such as vendor reputation, integration capabilities, and contractual flexibility shape the selection process.

3. Approval Process

Relevant stakeholders, including IT, legal, and finance, review the selected vendor and approve the procurement. This collaborative approach ensures that the desired SaaS solution complies with legal standards, aligns with IT strategy, and fits within the budget.

However, this collaborative approach can quickly become a root cause for internal resentment if you don’t lay out proper approval workflows. A lack of workflow makes departments wait for weeks, while none of the stakeholders has visibility over the process. There is unnecessary back-and-forth communication, and eventually, teams move to the traditional, flexible, yet risky SaaS procurement process.

If delays and friction in approval workflows disrupt your SaaS procurement process, centralized SaaS procurement software helps teams collaborate with minimal friction.

You can create proper approval workflows that define who needs to approve what. You get a no-code workflow builder, where you add if-then rules and make the desired workflow. You can have multiple workflows for different kinds of purchases, including parallel approvals as well.

For instance, a purchase request goes to the line manager, then the finance team, and after that, for a combined legal and IT review. You can have intricate workflows as required to suit your hierarchical structures.

With proper workflows laid out in a procurement automation platform, you simplify approvals. Moreover, a centralized dashboard makes it easier for each stakeholder to get an overview of the process without getting stuck in long email threads. 

4. Purchase and Deployment 

After approval, the procurement team finalizes contractual agreements with the chosen SaaS vendor. They negotiate on pricing models, licensing terms, and any customization requirements unique to the enterprise's needs.

Also, the procurement team ensures that the purchase aligns with the organization's budgetary constraints and financial policies. This step involves securing the best possible pricing and managing payment structures through one-time transactions or recurring subscription models. Further, the procurement team develops and finalizes contractual agreements with the vendor. This step involves clarifying terms and conditions, specifying service-level agreements, and addressing legal or compliance-related aspects.

With the procurement formalities completed, the deployment phase starts. Firstly, the SaaS solution has to be configured to align with the specific needs and processes of the company. This step ensures that the SaaS solution seamlessly fits within the organizational framework.

Secondly, the deployment team collaborates with IT and relevant departments to ensure that the SaaS tool integrates effectively with other applications to have a unified data ecosystem. Moreover, they establish and maintain robust access controls by defining user roles, permissions, and authentication mechanisms to safeguard sensitive data and maintain compliance.

5. Onboarding and Training

Once deployed, the onboarding and training phase ensures employees use the new SaaS tool effectively. This step is crucial for optimizing usage and ensuring that the software contributes to increased productivity. 

Training sessions, documentation, and support materials are provided to familiarize end-users with the features and functionalities. This step minimizes the learning curve and maximizes user adoption.

6. Monitor and Renew

Once users are onboarded and the SaaS solution is integrated into the organization's workflow, the focus shifts to post-onboarding and ongoing management. This stage involves the following:

• Encouraging ongoing user engagement and collecting feedback, where regular communication channels help gather insights into user experiences and identify areas for improvement.
  
• Monitoring the SaaS solution's performance to identify and address issues promptly. The IT and support teams collaborate to resolve technical glitches, ensuring uninterrupted functionality and a positive user experience.
  
• Assessing functionality, user satisfaction, and alignment with business objectives to make renewal decisions. Simultaneously, compliance with legal and regulatory standards remains a significant consideration to avoid potential risks.

Collaborative Effort for Efficient SaaS Procurement

While SaaS procurement seems like a small piece of the puzzle, choosing and implementing it requires attention to detail to avoid operational and financial shocks. Each team needs to work together and help create a secure and cost-effective tech stack for the organization. 

However, collaborative efforts demand a centralized platform to overcome two core challenges — delay and friction. We have shared the top nine procure-to-pay software for enterprises for you to find solutions that transform the SaaS procurement process.

You want a procure-to-pay (P2P) software that automates your procurement process and addresses issues like lack of visibility, double payments, and delayed approvals. However, since such a tool has multiple users at different hierarchies and a complex workflow, you often end up with a more complex process if you don’t choose the right software. 

With ad-hoc processes, many issues pop-up: employees wait weeks for approvals, procurement teams have no real-time visibility over purchase requests and don’t know how to prioritize, finance teams get minimal control over expenses, and the entire process is chaotic. Hence, choosing the right procure-to-pay solution requires a focus on ease of use and flexibility. 

In this post, we will share the best procure-to-pay software for businesses in the UAE. We will discuss how P2P software helps with procurement management and which tools are worth considering. 

What is Procure-to-Pay Software?

Procure-to-pay software is a tool to automate the complete procurement process, which combines accounts payable (AP) software and procurement software.

Instead of having your procurement processes and data scattered across emails, Jira, different task management tools, and custom ERPs, you bring it onto a single platform. 

By moving from your legacy tools to an automated P2P software, you can:

• automate approval workflows, making the purchase request (PR) process easier and faster. Flexible approval workflows enable all stakeholders to approve requests with a trigger-based flow. 
• integrate with ERPs to maintain a preferred vendor list and manage order items. While most P2P software supports record-keeping only, some allow the conversion of PRs to purchase orders (PO) automatically after approval.
• match the goods received note (GRN) to enable two-way or three-way matching and ensure proper inventory and timely vendor payments. 
• process payments with multiple payment options to avoid delays and foster vendor relationships. It also helps avoid double payments, underpayment, or overpayment. 
• reconcile data faster via integrations with accounting software, enabling more visibility and control. Accounting teams get the right documents, and finance teams get visibility over expenses.

Since legacy ERPs aren’t enough to manage your entire procurement process, adding P2P software makes purchasing and payments easier. 

Top 9 Procure-to-Pay Software

Here is a procure-to-pay software list for companies in the UAE: 

1. Pluto

Pluto is an all-in-one procure-to-pay solution to transform your procurement and AP processes. It sits on top of your ERP as a layer to manage the multiple stages of the procurement process. From automating PRs to setting multi-layer approval workflows and managing vendors, it is the ultimate solution to transform a chaotic procurement process into a faster and more efficient one. 

Key Features:

• Features fully customizable workflows for raising PR and POs, requiring no technical expertise
• Offers a flexible approval engine capable of managing intricate hierarchies
• Enables multi-layer invoice approvals with policies to align with your company's structure
• Ability to upload invoices easily via WhatsApp images, eliminating the need to search for invoice details. Also facilitates invoice capture via emails directly to speed up the receipt capture process
• A centralized dashboard to gather bills in one place and track the status to avoid double payments
• Vendor-specific corporate cards to control budgets and detect irrelevant expenses
• Supports local and international wire transfers to make payments 
• OCR technology minimizes manual data entry by creating and populating bills from invoices
• Supports ERP integration to synchronize your vendors, POs, and bills and integrates with accounting software, such as Oracle, NetSuite, Zoho, Quickbooks, Wafeq, Xero, etc.
• Integrates with payment gateways and accounting software for seamless payments and reconciliation (a feature not available in other solutions)
• Raises alerts for upcoming payments and enables scheduling payments in advance and automate invoices 
• Provides a complete audit trail of the process to ensure visibility at each step
• Shows real-time analytics to facilitate deep insights for supporting budget control

Pricing: 

Request the sales team for a custom quote

Pros:

• More financial control with vendor-specific corporate cards 
• Better Forex rates than most local banks 
• Multiple integration options including Netsuite, Dynamics and more

Cons:

• Slightly longer on-boarding due to unlimited corporate purchasing card offering 
• Directly integrates with all other major ERPs except Tally

2. Order.co

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Order.co is a procure-to-pay platform that provides you access to over 15,000+ vendors in addition to your preferred vendors. It acts as an online marketplace like Amazon or eBay to help you procure items for your business. You add items to the cart, and it enables a rule-based approval system for POs with complete control and visibility. 

Key Features:

• Provides a custom, pre-approved Order.co catalog, including your current vendors and a vast network of 15,000+ vendors
• Supports purchases from multiple vendors regardless of their ordering methods (API, website, email)
• Sources the best prices for your needs to automatically generate POs and set up recurring orders to save time and reduce manual errors
• Offers real-time budgeting and reporting insights by the user, location, cost center, or vendor
• Simplifies payment processing by consolidating all orders from multiple vendors into one monthly invoice

Pricing:

Dependent upon locations and usage; contact hello@order.co for pricing information

Pros:

• Customizable product lists for ordering 
• Easy-to-create customizable workflows
• Ability to categorize purchases and run reports

Cons:

• Set up is confusing and requires customer support help
• Can not order from multiple vendors at the same time

3. Yooz

Yooz optimizes the procurement process by focusing on invoice management.  It is suitable for mid-size companies of all sectors wanting to automate procurement with a cloud-based procure-to-pay solution. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to enhance security and control in their account payable automation software.

Key Features:

• Enables online, real-time management of supplier relationships, improving communication and collaboration
• Provides mobile access for invoice approval and communication
• Maintains regulation-compliant traceability, ensuring adherence to relevant laws and standards
• Automates real-time general ledger (GL) coding and PO matching
• Captures all types of documents through various channels, such as email, drag and drop, mobile, scan, and secure file transfer protocol (SFTP)
• Integrates with accounting software and ERPs
• Allows users to approve and pay invoices in batches, offering multiple payment options, such as virtual credit card, ACH, e-check, and paper check
• Offers a range of services, including consulting, configuration, training, and user support

Pricing: 

Free trial for up to 15 days followed by a "pay-as-you-use" model. Also offers “gold edition” subscription pricing (based on the volume of documents) for an unlimited number of users and 4 hours of complimentary service

Pros:

• Integrates with Sage Intacct
• Ability to tag people in the comments and email them directly from the invoice
• Numerous criteria available for setting up the approval workflows

Cons: 

• Doesn’t offer payment services in the UAE, so you need to carry out payments on a different platform
• Doesn't have integrations with major vendors as a form of punchout
• Time-consuming to download and export files
• Hard for vendors to send the invoices through Yooz

4. Kissflow

Kissflow simplifies and enhances procurement processes while ensuring transparency and compliance. It helps users automate the entire process without requiring technical expertise or coding experience. It comes with 50+ ready-to-use applications, enabling unlimited automation applications.  

Key Features:

• Offers fluid forms to enable easy capturing, approval, and tracking of PRs
• Allows users to register and maintain vendors with access to multilingual catalogs
• Integration with accounting systems, ERPs, and finance systems like Quickbooks, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics 
• Accelerates the invoice approval process with timely alerts and automated checks. Connect invoices to contracts, POs, and service entry sheets in a single dashboard
• Customizable reports to visualize data using charts, filters, and heatmaps
• Ability to define and manage budget restrictions with dynamic rules throughout the entire procure-to-pay lifecycle
• Customized approval workflows to ensure transparency with rule-based approval processes
• Smart alerts that provide real-time updates on the status of POs and invoices to keep stakeholders informed 

Pricing: 

Starts at $2499/month (billed annually). Pricing varies based on transaction volume and number of users

Pros: 

• Intuitive interface with a relatively short learning curve

Cons:

• Does not support payment flows in the UAE
• Cost of its license is high (particularly for SMBs)
• Can not handle intricate processes that require a high degree of customization or involve multiple conditional branches
• Customization options are limited, including specific integrations, advanced business rules, or more sophisticated automation capabilities

5. Coupa

Coupa is a cloud-based automation platform to manage procurement processes. It facilitates supply chain optimization by providing visibility and control. It brings consumer shopping ease to the procurement process. With a focus on user adoption, it provides an intuitive shopping experience for employees, making it easier to adhere to pre-approved spending guidelines.

Key Features:

• Simplifies procurement by allowing organizations to track pre-approved spending and get real-time visibility into POs and order lifecycle
• Maximizes pre-approved spend to offer complete visibility over the purchase-to-pay processes
• Promotes user adoption at all levels with an easy-to-use interface, creating value for both employees and vendors
• Provides a centralized platform within Coupa Procure, allowing easy comparison of items across multiple vendors
• Offers real-time budget management with budget meters, allowing organizations to assess budget sufficiency before committing to spending
• Employs AI and machine learning to detect errors and fraud across business spend
• Enables quick notifications of disruptions and allows vendors to confirm availability, minimizing unplanned downtime
• Provides real-time visibility into inventory availability, helping organizations reduce redundant and wasteful spending

Pricing: 

Request the sales team for a custom quote

Pros:

• Several categories and filters in the analytics section to streamline data
• Chat option enables approver and claimant to discuss issues with receipts
• Enables setting up of customized approval chains and including additional new approvers  

Cons:

• Lots of unnecessary notifications, making it difficult to select the ones that need action or comment
• Low receipt searchability, making retrieval time-consuming
• Inconsistent syncing of remit-to address from NetSuite
• Complex to implement and not intuitive, forcing admins to spend more time resolving employees' queries
• Slow customer service 

6. Esker

Esker is a cloud-based automation procurement software. It helps you optimize procurement processes and collaborate strategically with your vendors. With the ability to integrate across various company departments, it simplifies user adoption while facilitating visibility and control.

Key Features:

• Facilitates approval mechanism and GRN matching for each PR and invoice 
• Offers real-time analytics, enabling you to maintain tighter budget controls
• Gives access to products from preferred vendors, aligning purchases with company procurement policies
• Provides a self-service portal, facilitating supplier onboarding, catalog management, and invoice status access
• Customizable dashboards to manage daily tasks, monitor productivity, and identify issues and opportunities as they arise
• Enables you to customize the interface with your company's corporate identity, enhancing the supplier's ability to identify and engage with your organization seamlessly

Pricing: 

Contact sales for pricing

Pros:

• Contains filtered views to allow for focused priorities 
• Auto-sends payment reminders

Cons:

• Gets expensive with each customization implemented
• Doesn’t allow unused/old customer accounts to be deleted
• Integration with accounting software isn't seamless 
• Approval workflow requires a manual trigger to start

7. PayEm

PayEm offers a procure-to-pay solution, covering everything in one place to replace your traditional procurement process. With a core focus on processing PR, it simplifies the creation of POs with custom forms and approval workflows. It facilitates collaboration between procurement and finance teams to enhance visibility and control. 

Key Features:

• Offers custom request forms equipped with conditional logic to ensure a user-friendly experience
• Provides fully customizable automated approval workflows based on factors like amounts, subsidiaries, and stakeholders
• Integrates with communication platforms like Slack and email, allowing request tracking and approvals
• Consolidates all the requests and approvals, simplifying discussions, document sharing, and creating an audit log
• Enables real-time updates and clear overviews of request statuses, minimizing the need for follow-up inquiries
• Offers OCR technology for invoice processing
• Syncs with your ERP and enables exporting reconciled transactions and uploading them to your ERP 
• Automates vendor management with payment scheduling, funds transferring, and limits setting for each vendor

Pricing: 

Request a custom quote

Pros:

• Multiple virtual credit cards for different vendors
• Supports global transactions 

Cons:

• Some vendors don't accept PayEm cards
• High transaction clearing time 
• Limits the user to either a virtual or physical card at one time 

8. Pipefy

Pipefy is an automation procure-to-pay tool to manage end-to-end procurement processes, from PR to paying vendors, to create a frictionless experience. It aims to break silos between teams to simplify purchase and AP. 

Key Features:

• Allows you to create and customize workflows, from purchase requisition to supplier management
• Provides secure portals where records and documents can be organized, ensuring that all information is easily accessible, especially during audits
• Ensures compliance with custom forms that include required fields to accelerate POs
• Enables access to real-time insights to help you forecast ideal quantities and vendors for requisitions
• Evaluates your processes, delivering reliable data to enable strategic and data-driven decisions
• Integrates with your existing ERPs and accounting systems, such as NetSuite, Oracle E-business Suite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, etc.  
• Enables deadline alerts, approval flows, and information exchange to prevent late fees and cashing in on early payment discounts
• Offers a customizable dashboard to streamline vendor registration, updates, onboarding, and contract management

Pricing:

Offers three packages starting with a free option for smaller teams, and a subsequent model that costs $20 per month per user and $34 per month per user. Also, offers an enterprise plan with custom pricing

Pros: 

• Offers templates for organizing processes

Cons:

• Complex sign-up process
• Workflows aren’t flexible with difficulty with respect to adding new users and making changes 
• Difficult to import data and search in the database for information

9. Procurify

Procurify speeds up the procurement process, enhances internal communication, and reduces financial risks. It is an easy-to-implement tool that saves time for finance and operations teams. From catalog management to custom user controls, it helps to track the procurement process in real time. 

Key Features:

• Tailors POs to match your internal processes and vendor expectations
• Creates, tracks, and maintains an audit trail of all procurement transactions for transparency and compliance
• Enhances financial controls by enabling PO-based purchasing
• Ensures that requested items are approved against budgets before procurement
• Syncs PO with your accounting system or ERP, whether via API, CSV, flat file, or direct integration
• Integrates with trusted vendors through punchout catalogs to streamline the ordering process
• Enables blanket PO, which involve making multiple purchases against a single PO, even when details of future purchases may be unknown
• Provides PO workflows to save on shipping costs, unlock vendor discounts, and reduce paperwork 

Pricing: 

Starts at $2000/month with a custom pricing tier

Pros:

• Easy-to-make amendments in the original PO
• Enables ordering from multiple websites for resources, including Amazon
• Makes it easy to upload documents to support expense and order reports

Cons:

• Doesn’t offer payment services in UAE, so you will need to carry out payments on a different platform
• Doesn’t cater to the UAE market, and does not support UAE-specific workflows such as VAT management
• Cannot edit orders once they are approved
• Cannot see the order history for a catalog item without running a report
• Physical inventory has to be tracked outside Procurify

Which Procure-to-Pay Software Should You Pick?

Don’t choose a platform that offers the maximum functionality. Instead, choose the one that is user-friendly and flexible. 

Procurement is already a complex process that requires visibility by different stakeholders. Choosing a tool that offers visibility and accommodates complex business needs will help you transform your chaotic procure-to-pay process. 

If you want to get started, book a demo, and our team will help you identify the bottlenecks and make the entire process simpler and manageable.