The eight best travel and expense management software solutions

Without comprehensive, intelligent, and feature-rich travel and expense management, you'd be stuck with tedious spreadsheets, dealing with missing receipts, and enduring manual data entry, resulting in unnecessary bottlenecks and drawn-out verification and approval processes.

Errors and clunky processes breed delays while affecting spend visibility and adding stress to your travelling employees’ plates.

If you're hoping to scale or simply improve business-wide efficiencies, you need to address how you manage your travel and expense management processes.

Why travel & expense management looks different in 2026

Finance teams are operating under tighter audit scrutiny, faster closes, and higher employee expectations than ever before. Regulators expect real-time audit trails, employees expect consumer-grade UX, and CFOs expect instant visibility — without growing headcount.

And in 2026, the problem isn’t travel or expenses in isolation either. It’s the friction created when booking, payments, approvals, reimbursements, and accounting live in separate systems. True finance orchestration means these workflows run as one continuous flow, so visibility, control, and decision-making don’t break at handoffs.

11 must-have capabilities finance teams expect in 2026

A tech stack full of shiny features won't cut it in 2026. You need your tools to talk, to do more than one major thing and to deliver value to you fast. You should expect major, measurable outcomes like = Month one: fewer receipt chases, fewer exceptions. Month two: faster approvals, cleaner ERP data. Month three+: less rework, faster close, better spending decisions.

1. Intuitive user interface and ease of use
As a finance professional, adoption is a control mechanism; even the best controls fail when employees bypass them. The best systems feel simple to employees and strict to finance.
You know, your end users won't want to deal with a complex system that has too many bells and whistles. Give them a system that's clear and easy to understand, and tech that's smart and automates as much of the process as possible, so they won't want to bypass it.

2. Mobile app accessibility
You need high user adoption; otherwise, you're paying for a tool that no one is using. That means accessibility is key. A cloud-based solution with an app makes expensing or approvals on the go effortless.

3. Automated expense reporting and digital receipt capture
Take a picture of your expense receipt and have OCR tech extract important information and categorise it automatically. That's the kind of process you need to ensure error-free and accurate expense reports.

4. Integrated corporate cards and direct spend control
Integrated cards mean you can set individual user spending limits, which is essential for cost control and budget alignment. With advanced card control features, you can set different limits for different members of staff, and link each card with a digital expense policy to ensure all spend is kept compliant.

5. Real-time tracking, analytics and reporting
In some corporate travel management software, spending pulls through the system in real-time, making reporting much more proactive — you can finally say goodbye to lags caused by manual data entry. In modern travel and expense platforms, spend flows through in real time, eliminating the reporting lag caused by manual entry and delayed reconciliation. With Payhawk's ERP integrations, for example, finance teams can monitor budgets and exposure continuously, not weeks after the fact.

6. Automated policy enforcement and compliance checks
With each corporate card linking to a digital spend policy, compliance is enforced for each cardholder, and role-based permissions help you closely control who gets to view and edit policies and expenses. And full audit trails help keep users accountable and processes transparent, while helping you maintain regulatory and tax compliance.

7. Automated approval workflows
The ability to create custom approval workflows means you can route business travel expenses through the correct people at your organisation. This means fewer approval delays, which, in turn, means more operational efficiencies, particularly for travelling employees.

8. Seamless accounting and ERP integrations
When integrating systems, you benefit from real-time data flow. So you can proactively track budgets, avoiding budget overruns. You can reimburse travelling employees faster because of automatic receipt collection and categorisation, and much, much more.

9. Global capabilities
If your employees frequently travel and incur expenses in local currencies, you need a solution that supports multiple currencies. That means having the ability to reimburse and pay invoices in multiple currencies and implement country-specific expense policies.

10. Scalability
Having a scalable solution that gives you operational flexibility means you can adjust expense processes as your team evolves. Add and remove users when needed, issue cards and attach spend policies to closely monitor spend, and build as many approval workflows as your organisation needs.

You need the ability to closely control compliance and costs as you grow. So, planning for your future growth is essential.

11. Customer support
Delays in customer support have a direct impact on operational efficiency. You need a solution with rapid issue resolution to keep operations running smoothly and a provider that fosters an environment of continuous learning by making themselves available for training on new features, ensuring you're always getting the best out of the software.

12. Smart AI agents
In 2026, AI is no longer a differentiator; it’s a baseline expectation. AI agents hold the power to streamline tedious and manual processes. They don’t replace human teams; they support them. These agents help make booking travel a painless, seamless and policy-compliant experience for the user. Ask it to find and book you a hotel to meet specific criteria, but without straying from the spend policy set out. The AI agent can also collect and categorise travel-based receipts.

AI is here, but it's not 'created equal'. You need a solution that includes thresholds, escalation, logging and therefore keeps automation risk low, where approval stakes are high.

Best travel expense management software

There’s no ‘one’ best travel and expense management software out there. The best fit is the one that ticks all your boxes and then some. A solution that helps you streamline your business expense management, make tracking mileage effortless, and booking travel smart and compliant without increasing manual review.

You need a solution that seamlessly integrates with your existing tech stack, so you’re not making more work for your teams. You need intuitive interfaces that help guide users around the platform easily, and you want a platform that doesn’t have a steep learning curve.

The tools below were selected based on mid-market relevance, global scalability, ERP integration depth, automation maturity, and customer support quality - not just feature volume.

Payhawk

An AI-driven travel and expense management solution for businesses looking to scale effortlessly, remain compliant and gain unparalleled visibility into expense data and budget tracking.

Key features:

• AI agent to book policy-compliant travel and reduce manual tasks
• Dedicated customer support for administrators and users
• Track mileage by entering trip details, and let Payhawk automatically calculate the reimbursement amount
• Set custom per diem rates based on country-specific regulations
• Have employees submit out-of-pocket expenses through the Payhawk app and receive reimbursement through SEPA or Faster Payments.
• Create automatic custom approval workflows to match spend policies
• Issue physical and virtual cards with real-time visibility of all transactions
• Enjoy automatic expense reporting and keep stakeholders informed
• AI-driven data extraction from receipts and invoices using OCR technology
• Standardise global expense management, view all entities in one dashboard and monitor spend in one place
• ERP and accounting integrations match receipts with transactions for automatic reconciliation

SAP Concur

A flexible and scalable travel and expense management solution for small companies to large multinationals.

Key features:

• Mobile app helps employees submit expenses on the go
• Book flights, hotels and car rentals
• Match card transactions, travel and e-receipts
• Access a unified view of spending (invoice management, travel and expenses)
• Integrate your ERP, CRM, HR and accounting systems

Navan

Streamline and automate the entire travel and expense process.

Key features:

• Book travel in real-time with access to special rates and extensive travel inventory
• Built-in policy compliance check ensures all travel expenses comply
• Employees can manage bookings, submit receipts and expenses on the go
• Build customisable approval workflows to fit your structure and needs
• Dedicated corporate cards mean real-time expense tracking

Perk

Simplify corporate travel booking and automate expense tracking, all while ensuring compliance with policies. P.S. We seamlessly integrate with TravelPerk.

Key features:

• Book flights, hotels and trains from within the platform with access to negotiated rates
• Manage expenses automatically, integrate with Pleo, Ramp, Spendesk or Payhawk to eliminate manual expense reporting
• Centralise your invoicing, making it easy to track and download with automatic VAT reclaim built in
• Customisable travel policies and approval workflows to closely control costs while maintaining compliance
• Access real-time analytics through detailed dashboards and in-depth reports on travel spend

Emburse

An integrated platform helping you automate all your travel and expense management processes.

Key features:

• Capture receipts effortlessly with OCR technology through the Emburse app
• Create expense reports automatically based on schedules or user activity
• Tailor approval workflows to speed up the expense management process
• Integrate Emburse with ERP, finance, accounting and travel management systems to streamline operations
• Make reimbursements quickly and securely

Tipalti

Streamline spend visibility, global reimbursements and expenses all from within the Tipalit platform.

Key features

• Consolidate accounts payable, with expense management, procurement and corporate card management for seamless operations
• Intuitive web and mobile apps make the experience of submitting expenses user-friendly
• Speed up monthly close by 25% by creating automated workflows
• Reimburse in more than 200 countries and in more than 120 currencies
• Tipalti PI, along with AI and machine learning, reduces fraud and errors

Brex

From startups to enterprise organisations, Brex can scale as your business grows, offering an AI-powered travel and expense management solution.

Key features:

• Book and manage everything relating to travel and expense management under one roof (events, expenses, cards, and more).
• Process local and global reimbursements in multiple currencies.
• Track and control spend in real-time by setting custom approval chains, setting shared or individual travel budgets and tracking spending by department, category and more.
• Watch as Brex pre-populates expense fields and automatically collects receipts from thousands of merchants, reducing manual data entry and human errors.
• Automatic reconciliation of travel payments

Expensify

Streamline business travel booking while automating expense tracking and reimbursement.

Key features:

• Book all travel from within the Expensify platform, eliminating the need for multiple tools
• Dedicated chat rooms for each trip make team collaboration effortless
• Track each itinerary, approval and expense in a centralised dashboard for transparency
• Create traveller profiles and save things like seat preferences and passport details to further streamline your booking process
• Users can earn cash back with their Expensify card, which can incentivise compliant spending

How to choose the best travel and expense management software for your business

The best travel and expense platforms don’t just digitise receipts in 2026. They shape how spend, approvals, and data flow across the business. When evaluating options, the goal is to choose software that supports total finance orchestration, reducing manual effort, improving decision-making, and holding up as complexity increases across teams, entities, and markets.

1. Assess your specific needs
Before even researching what’s out there, you need to understand your current processes and how you’d like them to change. This is where you can involve every head of department to get a real understanding of their specific needs and challenges when managing spend. You need to find software that can solve as many of your business challenges as possible, and solve some you didn’t even realise you had.

2. Prioritise essential features
We’re talking about the features you already know you need access to, such as the ability to create virtual and physical cards, so you can disregard the communal corporate card you’re currently sharing, which lacks transparency and accountable spending. Or, perhaps you’d like a dashboard where you can manage all group entities within, see funds, move money and pay invoices in multiple currencies. Whatever you class as essential to function, make a note of them and closely align them with software options.

3. Evaluate usability and support
If the platform you like has all the features you could ever dream of, but the design isn’t user-friendly, you might find staff have a lower adoption rate. You need a platform that removes barriers and challenges, not adds to them. Look for software that is built intuitively, both the desktop and mobile app versions. And if your employees have questions about functionality or issues that arise, you need a competent and responsive support team available to address issues and keep operations running smoothly.

4. Consider scalability
As your business grows, your transaction volume also increases, along with the number of users spending funds. That’s why you’ll need a solution that supports you on that scaling journey. One that enables you to create custom approval workflows to suit your specific organisational structure or has multi-currency support as you embark upon international growth.

5. Integration capabilities
Seamless integrations mean more accurate travel and expense data across systems, and integrations with platforms like TravelPerk help minimise administrative tasks by importing all travel invoices (like flights and hotels), so all data is captured correctly and organised for you.

6. Data security and compliance
You need to ensure your data is under lock and key. And that means finding a solution provider that has data encryption when data is in transit and at rest. And, you should check that the provider has PCI DSS certification, too, which is the highest level of security for payment card information.

Payhawk has many security certifications, including the ones mentioned above and ISO 27001, SOC 1 and SOC 2, CSA STAR and more. Learn all about security at Payhawk.

7. Budget and pricing model
You need a solution that accommodates different business needs, which means flexible pricing plans. Being able to choose a plan based on your requirements and budget, and then having the ability to change the plan you’re on if you don’t use all the features or need access to more advanced ones, is crucial and makes perfect business sense.

8. Request demos
Always request a personalised product demo. This means it’s easy for you to see the tools and all their features in action before you sign up.

Transform manual burdens, like Mercell & Paradox

From manual receipt chasing, inefficient card payment management and chasing for additional payment information to efficiency across all financial processes, 100% real-time spend visibility and complete transparency over budgets. Procurement marketplace Mercell has transformed its expense management processes with Payhawk.

CFO Leon Steenbrink explains: “The biggest benefits of Payhawk? A combination of efficiency and additional control, and I'm happy with both — because that's exactly what we need in finance.”

Head of Buying, Louis adds: “Payhawk shows you the budget you can spend each month, and you can see how much you have spent so far. So you know how much there still is available. That was not the case before when we were all using the same company card.”

Meanwhile, at the global EdTech and media brand Paradox, Farah Rouassi, VP Finance & Strategic Partnerships describes wanting more time with the people she's travelling to see, and less time spent booking the trip.

It used to feel like a mini-project to book a flight and a hotel. It took over one hour and a lot of back and forth... But now it's over 90% faster! I booked something yesterday with Payhawk's AI travel agent, and it took just four minutes.

If you’re evaluating travel and expense software in 2026, start by mapping your current bottlenecks, defining non-negotiable controls, and shortlisting tools that integrate natively with your ERP. From there, request demos that show real workflows (not feature tours).

Request your personalised product demo and see our expense management platform in action.