The Best Spend Management Tools and Software for 2022
Too often in business, it can be easy to lose track of every expense a company has. Accounts payable departments spend so much time making sure they’re getting each payment out the door to their vendors in a timely manner that they might not be able to analyze their purchasing or how it varies among different parts of companies. This is where spend management tools and software can make a difference.
Today, we’ll explore some basics, look at different spend management tools and software currently on the market, and help guide companies figure out how to choose the right solutions. Join us as we explore smarter ways for companies to manage their spending.
Spend Management Basics
One way to think of spend management is as a safeguard. The research and advisory firm Gartner defines spend management as “a set of practices that ensure organizations make procurement and sourcing decisions in the interests of both the bottom line and company efficiency.” Spend management tools help companies know they’re spending money in ways that are fiscally sound and will help them do what they need to do.
How Companies Prioritize Spend Management
On the hierarchy of accounts payable duties, spend management might rank some ways down. AP teams might be so focused on getting invoices processed in a timely and cost-efficient manner that they might not realize that they have tools at their disposal that can help them to control and leverage the amounts their companies are paying for goods and services.
But spend management seems to be an emerging discipline in accounts payable. Partly, this is because it’s become more important for companies to watch their spending in uncertain economic times – and spend management tools are a great way to do this. In addition, AP automation software often has built-in spend management features and many companies have implemented these cloud-based platforms in recent years.
Why Spend Management Matters
It’d be great if purchasing was static across companies, with the same departments spending the same amounts for goods and contracted services. But procurement doesn’t work like this, with some divisions of companies spending far more than others.
Too often, disparate corporate spending can go unnoticed. Another 2021 survey report by Stampli and Treasury Webinars, “AP Today: Bottlenecks, Benchmarks & Best Practices” found that 38% of respondents were at companies that left purchasing solely to the discretion of individual departments.
Spend management tools and software can quickly bring any purchasing that individual departments do to light. It can also highlight unusual purchasing trends, possibly-fraudulent purchases, or shadow spend.
What to Look For in Spend Management Tools
A spend management tool can be as simple as a corporate credit card statement or monthly expense report submitted by an employee. Ideally, though, the best spend management tools for 2022 come in the form of software, with a few of the latest technological bells and whistles.
First off, the software should be able to integrate with a company’s enterprise resource planning software, should it have an ERP. It’s no problem if a company hasn’t made this investment. The idea is just to have spend management tools connected to whatever a company is using for its general ledger, to allow for as real-time as possible of accounting data.
There should also be an easy-to-use dashboard that visualizes all of the most salient numbers for a reporting period, as well as some built-in automation and AI. The idea is to make things as easy as possible for end users and make it so the spend management tools have as great a chance as they can to work their magic.
6 Different Spend Management Tools to Consider
The good news when it comes to spend management tools and software is that there are a lot of different options on the market. It’s about finding what’s the best for your particular company, give it its needs, size, or vertical.
Here are six of the best software-based spend management tools to consider for 2022:
Stampli
Stampli is AP automation software that allows end-to-end invoice processing and helps AP teams control corporate spend.
This includes a spend management dashboard that, with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, gives companies an acute look at their spending. This is helped by other innovations such as Stampli Direct Pay and the Stampli Card, which lets spending happen directly from inside of Stampli’s AP automation system.
Stampli’s software has won numerous awards for its technology, customer support, and leadership and currently has a 4.8/5 star rating on G2.
Who should use it: Stampli’s SaaS-based software is industry agnostic and works best for companies of all sizes (small, mid-size, or enterprise-level) provided they regularly have a higher volume of invoices to process.
Avaza
One of the easiest ways that spend management can spin out of control for businesses is with major projects. Costs can quickly start to spike, with sometimes not that clear of an explanation why this is.
Avaza is one of the spend management tools that can help with this, designed especially to monitor projects. It can also handle expense management, timesheets, and more, with a 4.62-star average on Software Advice.
Who should use it: Project managers.
FinancialForce
Companies sometimes try to use Salesforce as ERP software, even if it’s designed as a CRM tool. A better option? Opting for FinancialForce, which helps businesses perform accounting and manage their cash and ties in with Salesforce.
Who should use it: Companies that are already using Salesforce (or who might be interested in implementing both tools), or companies using Stampli.
FreshBooks
Like we noted at the start of this, it can be hard for companies to know every expense coming down the pike. FreshBooks, which boasts a 99% user satisfaction rating and a 9.7 score on FinancesOnline, is built to alleviate this problem, with expense tracking tools.
The company’s also been partnering with other firms, such as Chaser to handle automatic B2B payments for invoices.
Who should use it: Companies that want to zero in on their expense tracking could like FreshBooks, though the solution might not have the all-in-one usability compared to other solutions.
SAP
SAP is most known, perhaps, as one of the major providers of ERP software. It also offers spend management software known as Ariba, which helps automate the process.
Who should use it: Companies with SAP ERP systems.
Wave
Not every business is mid-size or enterprise-level. For freelancers or one-person shops, Wave can be one of the spend management tools worth considering. It’s earned high marks for ease of use and value, though it rates slightly lower for functionality and customer support.
Who should use it: Freelancers or small businesses.
3 Steps to Choose the Right Spend Management Software
With everything we just explored, how can a company make sure it’s choosing the right spend management software? Here are three steps to ensure it happens correctly:
1. Consider Your Niche
One of the reasons we’ve spelled out so many solutions above is that different ones are geared toward different types of businesses. A freelancer almost certainly doesn’t need what a mid-size business or enterprise-level firm does and vice versa.
For some individuals or small businesses, a very rudimentary or free tool can probably work just fine. At the very least, it can be a pronounced upgrade over doing nothing at all in regard to spend management tools.
Larger companies, on the other hand, might get every dollar’s worth of their subscription cost for more sophisticated spend management software.
2. Prioritize an All-In-One Solution
Of course, a better bet than just choosing the right spend management tools can be to opt for something that’s part of a broader solution.
That’s how it is with Stampli, at least. We didn’t set out to create spend management software when we launched our AP automation and invoice management solution. Our AP automation software helps companies process invoices in a more controlled and efficient manner, and then controlling spend is an optional convenience for customers with Stampli Direct Pay for check and ACH payments, in addition to Stampli Card for corporate credit cards.
3. Find a Solution that Does the Work for You
Another thing that sets Stampli apart is that our software is built with advanced optical character recognition, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. This stack of technologies is at the very core of Billy the bot. Billy does the heavy lifting when it comes to processes that touch accounts payable.
There’s no need for AP staff to have to be dumping transactions into spreadsheets or other files to manually perform spend management. Instead, staff can enter the equation when the time has come for more high-level spend management analysis.
In Conclusion
The right spend management tools and software can help companies take their spending to the next level. These tools can help companies know that their purchases are legitimate, fiscally sound, and necessary.
While there isn’t any one spend management tool that every company has to have, we believe that all-in-one solutions can offer a range of benefits and help get businesses in the door for broader upgrades, such as AP automation or integrating automation with your ERP software.
See if Stampli is the right spend management tool for you. Contact us today!
