Tracking and managing monthly expenses is a tedious task that many small businesses perform manually.
Two of the leading solutions that have emerged to automate the expense management process are Expensify and Concur Breeze.
Both products are aimed at small businesses with less than 100 employees and both are relatively new (Expensify launched in 2008, Concur Breeze in 2010).
However, the heritage, and personas, of the two solutions differ. As with a number of innovative, next-generation SaaS products (such as Xero for accounting and BatchBlue for CRM), Expensify was built from the ground up as a modern SaaS expense management solutions for small businesses.
Concur, on the other hand, is the established enterprise market leader, its market-leading enterprise product having launched in 1993, and it has come down-market to field a product for small businesses.
Both Expensify and Concur Breeze offer a similar checklist of features, including importing credit card charges and managing the expense reporting process online. However, the manner in which the applications enable you to perform these tasks differs.
As with the best of the new applications, Expensify’s user interface is friendly and setup is incredibly easy: just type your e-mail address or connect with your Google account and you’re ready to roll.
As one Expensify reviewer remarked in response to a Comparz.com survey, “What setup process? I just logged in with my Google account.”
Concur’s setup and configuration, which can be previewed in an online demo, is more involved. The demo also gives you a feel for the larger organization roots and functionality of the product.
And indeed, user reviews reflect a feeling of older-generation technology for Concur Breeze—with some users reporting slower performance and more manual operations required.
As one user reported, “After evaluating both options we went with Expensify because of its cleaner design—much easier to set up and use.”
Expensify CEO David Barett is on record as saying that Concur Breeze is handcuffed in its effort to compete with Expensify because it cannot incorporate too many good features and “risk cannibalizing their high-margin customers.”
Pricewise, Expensify is free for up to two users. After that, it is $4 per users per month. Concur is priced at $8 per user per month.
Both companies offer a free trial, so take a look and see which one fits your needs and preferences.