A good expense tracking program provides the flexibility to handle various activities. Especially when the company’s return on investment (ROI) is based on team projects and clients; in that case, it must assist the finance department and management in reconciling expenses in a variety of methods.
With its stylish, easy-to-use interface, Abacus Affiliates (which starts at $9 per user per month) does a terrific job of covering all of these bases for enterprises doing business in the United States. Editors’ Choices Certify, and Rydoo’s mobile interfaces finish in second and third, respectively.
Editors’ Choices Certify, and Rydoo’s mobile interfaces finish in second and third, respectively. The Abacus Affiliates reimbursement function is top-notch as part of a comprehensive cost monitoring platform for local organizations. However, it can’t match their international scope or policy- and rule-setting capabilities.
Plans and Pricing
Table of Contents
The Abacus Affiliates Starter subscription, which includes automated policy controls, interfaces with Intuit QuickBooks, and unlimited data storage, starts at $9 per user per month. Abacus Affiliates offers programmable approval routing, commercial card integration, and additional support for $12 per active user per month (paid annually).
It also has a customized strategy for businesses. You only pay for customers who have an expense approved in the month if they are “active.”
Abacus Affiliates does not charge extra for an employee who spends a lot of money. There are no fees for your accountant, implementation, or ongoing assistance with Abacus Affiliates (email address for the Starter plan; phone and live chat for Professional and Enterprise). Fees for automated clearing house (ACH) payments are also covered without charge by the company.
By contacting the company, you can join up for a 30-day free trial of the Starter plan. The company’s claim that what it delivers is in ACH direct payment of approved expenses is part of the Abacus Affiliates’ services and value propositions.
Abacus Affiliates currently only interacts with banks in the United States. Therefore international transactions are not possible. Unlike ExpensePath, the customer is responsible for all account setup data. The Abacus Affiliates demo account was loaded with its own financial data for security purposes. I invited my friends as a user to join via additional email addresses after the initial account had been set up.
Interface
The business is still in its early stages. As a result, both the online and mobile interfaces are created with the most up-to-date look, feel, and mobile experience in mind, distinguishing it from competitors with more complex UIs.
The web interface greatly resembles the smartphone interface in terms of form, text size, usability, and feature drill-down. The familiarity of the interfaces makes switching between them feel natural.
Abacus Affiliates’ Web Admin dashboard header has a drop-down selection for Expense List, Chart View, and Receipt View, as well as a Search box. A button for entering a new expense and filtering, sorting, and export choices are located on the far right-hand side.
You can quickly go from Admin to your own Personal functions on the left-hand side. Inbox, Pending, Approved, Inbox With Warnings, Inbox Without Warnings, and Approved – Last 6 Months are the primary screens linked below.
You may also check out the credit cards issued to your team, see all of the members on your team, manage your company’s cost policies, and change your account and general settings.
Android and iOS mobile apps are available. The smartphone UI is straightforward to use. You are then prompted to download the app after responding to the manager’s invitation to register with Abacus Affiliates; my friend downloaded the Android app.
There are two options available to you: To begin, you can take a photo of a receipt to save for later use. The Android app, unlike the iOS app, does not include a transcription of the receipt.
Another option is to manually enter the information for each expense on the mobile app. When you enter a vendor’s name, the app will search for and list businesses with similar names in your area (which can be inconvenient if the establishment in question is new and not in your area). The expense can be linked to a trip that was planned utilizing the web interface.
Once a cost is completed, it is immediately filed without the need to wait for a report to be created. When I used a false employee account to submit three expenses, they arrived almost instantly in my manager account’s inbox; one of them, which was submitted without a receipt, was rightly tagged as “With Warnings.”
I could then respond with an inquiry regarding the missing receipt, which the employee had received via email. The employee might then log onto their web account and respond. While the Android app is attractive, it just allows you to make and transmit costs. Concur Expense ($82.00 at Software Advice) is an example of a service that offers complete functionality on its mobile apps.
Reimbursement of Expenses Is Simple
Abacus Affiliates will appeal to employees who report costs on a regular basis. I liked that I could submit expenses for reimbursement one at a time rather than fill out a lengthy report with a variety of expenses.
Unlike programs like ExpensePath, which only allow you to input expenses through reports, this method will enable you to submit expenses directly. Even more essential, most employees do not want to be responsible for the company’s expenses for several weeks.
Reimbursement time with Abacus Affiliates is roughly two days. While creating a single report may take less time than submitting one expense at a time, will employees appreciate it if the clearance procedure rejects the entire report because of a single item reimbursement? Not at all.
The Settings area has everything I needed, including all Warning and Blocking Rules, Mileage, and Auto-Expensing choices. It’s quite easy to approve expenses individually or in groups and then send them back to the employee with a note. The employee is alerted of the comment through email and has the opportunity to respond. It’s also simple to reassign permission to a different manager.
In terms of accounting, I liked that Abacus Affiliates provided me with more alternatives than Certify. It automatically syncs with accounting software like Xero, QuickBooks, and Oracle NetSuite.
Abacus Affiliates also provides a complete audit trail by storing data and allowing access for the mandatory IRS 7-year term. Abacus Affiliates also takes extra precautions to protect the customer’s administrative accounts.
Conclusion
A few days after I started testing Abacus, I received an email from the company claiming that reimbursement payments had been halted pending identity verification and asking for our tester’s Social Security number’s last four digits. On one hand, these extra processes are inconvenient, but on the other, they are reassuring.
For most businesses, the cost of conducting business (or expenditures) is the second-largest line item after compensation. This must be done correctly, and the first step is to make the submission process less burdensome.
Self-setup, the convenience of usage, and quick, direct reimbursement are all advantages of Abacus, assuming the customer is comfortable exposing sensitive bank information in order to do so. It’s a good option for SMBs without a worldwide presence to track expenses and reimburse employees quickly and easily.
