Expensify vs. Concur: expense management features comparison in 2025

Receipts scattered across email chains, stacks of approvals piling up, and expense reports riddled with arithmetic errors–it’s a nightmare for finance teams trying to control company spend. Without the right tools, these headaches can grow into crises like compliance errors, missed reimbursements, and hours lost poring over reports. Choosing the right expense management solution isn’t just about simplifying expense tracking and reporting; it’s about building a reliable system that controls costs and gives you actionable insights.

In this article, we’ll dig into the pros and cons of two popular expense management tools: SAP Concur and Expensify. Take a look under the hood, learn what works (or doesn’t) about these solutions, and explore alternatives.

Expensify vs. Concur: Features overview

Looking for a head-to-head comparison? The table below illustrates how SAP Concur and Expensify features stack up.

Expensify vs. Concur: Expense management and tracking features 

Accurate and efficient expense management and tracking are core components of any business’ financial system, no matter its size. Choosing the right tool isn’t just a matter of convenience, it plays a critical role in your business's ability to control spending, identify trends, and extract actionable insights from financial data.

Expensify

For individuals, startups, and agile teams focused on controlling spend and saving time, Expensify’s collection of expense management tools simplifies expense management at an accessible price point.

SmartScan

Expensify’s SmartScan feature leverages OCR to simplify the process of logging and categorizing receipts. To log a purchase, users snap a photo of the receipt and SmartScan does the rest, extracting key details and automatically populating expense reports with information about the merchant, date, and amount.

Free plans for individuals and freelancers 

For budget-conscious solopreneurs and freelancers, Expensify provides a free plan with all the basic features needed to manage expenses for a micro business without a subscription.  If you plan to scan more than 25 receipts or invoices monthly, however, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

International reimbursements 

Expensify allows businesses to link global bank accounts, facilitating cross-border payments and streamlining international reimbursements. For businesses with frequent international travelers or contractors located abroad, this can save significant time and effort while ensuring timely payments.

Concur

SAP Concur specializes in enterprise-grade expense management tools to help large companies and multinationals monitor spend and meet compliance obligations without sacrificing efficiency.

Strong policy compliance 

Concur’s configurable workflows allow finance teams to configure custom policies with strict controls. Businesses can implement custom rules to automatically block unauthorized purchases based on an employee’s role or function, and implement granular approval requirements.

Automated alerts for violations 

Concur helps companies control spend by notifying approvers of out-of-policy purchases in real-time. By giving managers an opportunity to intervene before inappropriate spending escalates, SAP Concur can prevent expensive mistakes and build accountability.

VAT reclamation for tax compliance

Concur automatically identifies qualifying expenses and prepares the necessary documentation to support VAT reclamation for purchases abroad. For companies that operate in regions like Europe, where VAT comprises a significant portion of operating expenses, this feature can lead to notable cost savings.

Concur vs. Expensify: Travel management features 

Whether your team travels twice a year or twice a week, robust travel expense management tools are critical for controlling this tricky spend category. Even the best-laid travel expense policy can founder without guardrails, and employees appreciate the clarity and efficiency of a centralized management platform.

Expensify

Expensify focuses on providing flexible, versatile travel management features for small teams with basic requirements.

Unified travel booking platform

Expensify users can manage flights, ground transport, hotels, and other bookings directly from within the platform. Rather than toggling between multiple tools to stay on top of employee travel needs and expenses, finance teams can access and track all travel-related expense data from a single dashboard. 

Company card with cashback 

Expensify’s company credit card offers cash back allowing businesses to recoup a portion of their business travel expenses while streamlining expense reporting. A corporate credit card that reduces costs and removes the admin work of expense tracking by automatically recording and categorizing purchases for easy reconciliation is also an advantage for employees who spend a lot of time on the road. 

Concur

Concur offers a suite of features intended to help larger or complex businesses with extensive travel needs to manage the associated expenses efficiently without sacrificing oversight.

Concur Travel integration

Concur’s travel module, aptly named Concur Travel, allows businesses to manage all aspects of business travel, from flights to hotels to ground transport, from a centralized hub. Automated approval workflows speed up the booking process and support compliance with company policies. 

Price comparisons for better travel expense

Concur leverages integrations with major travel service providers to offer users real-time price comparisons for flights and accommodations to help drive cost-effective decision-making and reduce overall travel costs.

Expensify vs. Concur: Integrations

An expense management tool that plays well with your existing tech stack can deliver value beyond its features by removing friction from key processes. By connecting directly with accounting and resource planning software, solutions like Expensify and Concur cut down on time spent shuttling data from one platform to another. 

Expensify

Expensify integrates with solutions and platforms that prioritize travel convenience and uncomplicated financial management to make life easier for lean finance teams at startups, scaleups, and other growing companies.

QuickBooks

Expensify’s integration with Quickbooks allows small businesses to sync expense data directly into accounting workflows, reducing the need for manual data entry and increasing accuracy in financial reporting.

PayPal

By connecting with PayPal, Expensify simplifies expense tracking and reimbursement for companies that rely on the popular payment processor to handle transactions for business expenses, automatically categorizing and reconciling purchases. 

Airbnb

Expensify’s AirBnB integration helps companies manage business travel expenses by automatically tracking and reconciling lodging-related purchases. 

Concur

SAP Concur’s integrations are designed to help large businesses manage complex finance and expense management needs via scalability, advanced automation, and deep connectivity. 

Oracle

Concur’s integration with Oracle helps companies streamline their financial workflows and maintain centralized control over accounts payable and expense reporting with powerful ERP connectivity. 

Amadeus

By integrating with Amadeus, SAP Concur helps businesses stay on top of travel and expense reporting, including the bookings, mileage, and itineraries associated with a highly mobile workforce. 

Corporate credit card providers 

Concur doesn’t offer its own corporate credit card but does connect with corporate credit card providers to offer businesses an additional tool for tracking company spend and simplifying the reconciliation process. 

Concur vs. Expensify: User experience 

Choosing the right expense management tool means looking beyond features–how your preferred tool feels to employees can be a make-or-break factor that impacts adoption and productivity. 

Expensify

Designed to be easy to use straight out of the box, Expensify offers a clean interface and user-friendly navigation. Features like SmartScan automate receipt capture and other expense reporting tasks that typically slow down spend management. For companies more focused on efficiency rather than deep customization, Expensify’s combination of essential features and clean-cut layout may work.

Concur

Concur’s enterprise-grade focus and feature-rich experience can translate into a cumbersome interface and steep learning curve for new users. For Concur, extensive and wide-ranging functionality comes at a price: a less-than-intuitive interface that may lead to longer onboarding and slower adoption rates than with more straightforward tools.  

Expensify vs. Concur: Security measures

Incorporating an expense management tool into your tech stack means placing a great deal of trust in a third-party provider to protect and manage important company information. 

Expensify

Expensify employs high-level encryption and two-factor authentication (2FA) to ensure that only approved employees can access confidential information, while the company’s SOC 2 certification shows a strong commitment to secure data storage.

Bank-level encryption

All Expensify data transfers benefit from bank-level encryption to protect sensitive financial information, from receipts to bank account numbers, from prying eyes.

SOC 2 type II certification

Expensify holds SOC 2 type II certification, which reflects an advanced ability to manage data securely, making it a reliable option for businesses concerned with compliance and audit requirements. 

Two-factor authentication 

Expensify uses two-factor authentication to add an extra layer of protection against unauthorized access. By requiring a second form of verification, Expensify ensures that only personnel with the proper credentials can access the company’s expense management system.

Concur

SAP Concur’s security measures are tailored to enterprises with complex compliance and operational needs. Designed to offer peace of mind to finance teams juggling large-scale expense management workflows that cross international borders, Concur aims to remove the administrative burden that comes with navigating multiple regulatory standards and compliance regulations.

Stronger emphasis on global data residency

Concur’s global security infrastructure includes compliance with multiple data residency protocols in major jurisdictions. This is especially valuable for multinational companies that need to maintain centralized expense management while transmitting data through multiple countries.

12 ISO/IEC 27001, GDPR, PCI DSS compliance

Concur adheres to multiple advanced data protection security standards, including ISO/IEC 27001, GDPR, and PCI DSS, and shows a strong commitment to compliance and risk management. 

Single Sign-On (SSO)

SAP Concur offers SSO to streamline user access without sacrificing security, reducing the risk of credential-based attacks while eliminating the need for multiple sets of logins. 

Who is Expensify for?

With its collection of solid, if not sophisticated, expense management and tracking tools, Expensify may meet the needs of small businesses, solopreneurs, and freelancers who don’t need much beyond a reliable tool to capture receipts and automate expense reporting.

Who is Concur for?

Concur was conceived for enterprises, multinationals, and other large companies that need advanced expense management solutions capable of accommodating complex spend policies and multiple sets of compliance regulations. Features like ERP system integration, VAT reclamation, and custom automations provide the oversight and flexibility these organizations need to manage multiple interconnected finance workflows effectively.

Rippling: The best alternative to Expensify and Concur

Rippling Spend keeps costs in check offering automated expense management, receipt capture, corporate cards, and bill pay from one unified platform.

By connecting to your HR data, Rippling lets you build hyper-specific expense policies—tailored to employees across roles, departments, and locations. Plus, Rippling corporate cards block out-of-policy transactions before they can even be completed, helping teams achieve 100% spend compliance. As a bonus, Rippling corporate cards also offer cash back. 

While most expense management solutions only allow for basic employee-manager approval chains, with Rippling’s advanced policy engine, you can set hyper-custom policies based on the vendor, dollar amount, and expense category, helping you easily block out-of-policy expenses. Automated workflows can also help you control spending, alerting you when a department's expenses sharply increase. 

With Rippling you can: 

• Automatically route expenses and bills to the right approver every time. 
• Flag out-of-policy spending with hyper-custom policies, like by vendor or value, for further review. 
• Close the books faster with AI-powered transaction categorization and integration with your accounting systems.

Expensify vs Concur FAQs

What is Concur software?

SAP Concur is a comprehensive expense management and travel and expense solution designed for mid-sized companies and enterprises. Key features include mileage tracking, advanced spend analytics, automatic reconciliation, and invoice processing. Unlike Expensify, SAP Concur integrates with ERP systems like NetSuite to support global workflows.

What is Expensify software?

Expensify is a cloud-based expense management software designed to streamline expense reports, receipt scanning, and the reimbursement process, most commonly for small businesses and growing teams.

Is Expensify or Concur better for international businesses?

With its more advanced expense management features, global tax regulation compliance resources, and multicurrency support, SAP Concur may be a better choice for businesses operating across borders. Its ERP integrations, travel and expense workflows, and invoice processing likewise make it a strong choice for companies managing complex financial operations in multiple countries.  

Which platform is better for small businesses?

Expensify, with its clean interface and user-friendly feature set, is generally better suited to small businesses. Its straightforward approach to expense management, receipt capture, and expense tracking makes it a viable option for businesses needing essential features without extra bells and whistles. Expensify also integrates with the popular accounting solutions QuickBooks and NetSuite.

How do Expensify and Concur handle receipt scanning?

Both Expensify and Concur use OCR technology to handle receipt scanning, albeit slightly differently. Expensify’s SmartScan automatically logs expenses and syncs with expense reports to streamline the receipt capture process. SAP Concur’s Concur Mobile App integrates receipt scanning with more advanced expense tracking and audit workflows. Expensify emphasizes ease of use for small businesses, while SAP developed Concur to service enterprises.

This blog is based on information available to Rippling as of January 15, 2025.

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.