Spend Management: Guide & Tips For 2023

Vlad Falin
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Spend Management: Guide & Tips
Businesses that have trouble managing spending run the risk of impacting their financial bottom line.
For example, poor invoicing practices that cause a delay in payment can lead to contract management issues or, even worse, a lost client for your business. It also might cause issues with some of your preferred suppliers if they feel they’re not being paid on time.
Making a slip-up that disrupts a subscription can mean your company lacks access to critical software or tools until the issue is fixed.
A poor expense report system means charges incurred on your business trip might result in many follow-up questions, so your accounts payable team is on the same page with purchase orders. A system without real-time visibility for spending data is not ideal for any organization and does not make it easy to reduce spend.
Intelligent spend management helps prevent these issues. A business uses spend management to comprehensively track and review organizational-wide spending and purchase orders down to the last dirham.
In this post we will deep dive into spend management and discuss the best ways to properly manage it.
The Importance Of Spend Management
What happens if your company is not careful with spending or has too much indirect spend?
You risk revenue loss and other issues that can quickly destroy a well-thought-out business plan. It’s hard to cut costs and improve efficiency if your financial processes are very time-consuming.
A McKinsey report reveals that external spending with suppliers often accounts for 40-80% of a company’s total expenditures - underscoring the importance of effective spending control.
For many companies, reviewing and optimizing spend can profoundly impact employee workloads!
Good spending management practices will help the company be more financially stable and prevent any financial crises. It is always a good idea to have a system to track where the company's money is going. This can help to make sure that all expenses are accounted for, and no money is wasted.
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Advantages Of Digital Spend Management
In this day and age, using an online tool to keep track of your expenses should be a no-brainer. Let’s have a look at some of the main advantages.
Insight Into Everyday Expenditures
Where is every dirham your company makes going? If you don’t know, digital spend management will dramatically strengthen financial accountability, budgeting, and expenses. In addition, reporting on where company funds are flowing makes it much simpler to see how different department heads oversee budgets. Read more on how to improve internal control over financial reporting.
Stronger Financial Controls
Spend management tools like Pluto, allow you to not only monitor your spending in real-time but also set the limits on the go. In addition to that you can issue cards for departments or individuals, and even focus them on a particular type of usage, such as specific vendors only.

Budget Optimization
Effective spend management is a great solution to ensure a better-looking budget. Analyzing and managing spending makes it simple to find and cancel unneeded services, negotiate lower prices with new supplier contracts, and never have to pay a late fee again. It will also significantly help your board of directors as they’ll have a simplified, streamlined budget to review and discuss at the start of the year.
Common Spend Management Challenges
It’s easy to pursue spend management practices that hurt your business’s bottom line if you’re not careful. Many ‘traditional’ best practices might not fit companies with remote-first work policies, engage in cutting-edge industries, or have an unorthodox structure.
If your company has a dynamic structure, spend management becomes all the more important to help you keep up with the competition and get the most value out of every dirham spent.
Keep these potential challenges in mind as you pursue spend management practices.
Relying On Old Spending Data
Be wary of relying on old budgets or financial data when managing more spend. It’s challenging for leadership to identify problem areas with cash inflows or outflows, when they only have outdated information.
Overreliance On Manual Mapping
Having to go back at the end of the month to match spending to budgets manually can take an inordinate amount of hours and opens the door to errors and mistakes that can throw off a spend management policy.
Pluto helps to automatically match spend to budgets in real-time, ensuring accounting and finance teams have accurate updates.
Harnessing Too Much Technology
Modern financial software can dramatically help your company’s day-to-day operational flow. However, if these solutions do not work together, chaos can ensue which leads to data migration and processing errors. Pluto integrates with your accounting tools, cutting the data flow time significantly.
Outdated Processes
The post-COVID world of remote and digital work means your employees might be scattered across the globe and in different time zones. Having to arrange shared corporate cards manually or coordinate team spending with employees in different locations can be tricky. Pluto offers unlimited virtual cards, which allow you to provide a payment channel for any employee anywhere in the world.

How To Improve Your Spend Management Process
Optimizing your spend management process might seem tricky at first glance. Fortunately, small and large businesses often rely on the same core strategies to optimize spending.
Rely On Spend Management Software: Pluto can help automatically track expenses, keep abreast of budgeting, and help manage strategic sourcing. CEOs and CFOs then have relevant, real-time data at their fingertips to see where their company is financially.
Focus On A Few Payment Methods: Do you have too many company cards in your pocket? It might be time to streamline purchasing methods to help simplify your spend management strategy. For example, your business can dramatically improve expense tracking by asking employees to only use company cards for business expenses instead of asking for their personal cards to be reimbursed.
Have An Organized Approval Process: You can clarify your spending process (you might want to check our post on how to create a corporate card policy) by ensuring employees have a clear hierarchy of how and by whom purchases need to be approved. If your team is unclear, they might complicate the payment process by not filing the right reports, which means your financial team could be left in the dark about purchases.
6 Efficient Spend Management Strategy Tips
Your company needs to optimize its spend management strategy to ensure the final results lead to reduced procurement costs, improved efficiency, and streamlined workflows.
Spend management best practices also help improve vendor relationships and communication, procure the optimal goods and services your business needs, and even help you earn volume and early payment discounts due to more effective and simplified financial practices.
Keep the following steps in mind for the best results regardless of your organization’s industry or size.
Calculate Expenses
Do you know exactly where employees spend company funds? If not, you’ll need to build a comprehensive list of company expenses, suppliers, and entities where funds are going.
This might quickly become a challenge if you’re in charge of a large business. If so, look to designate specific team members to review employee salaries, utilities, marketing, training, and all other day-to-day expenses to have the most detailed list.
You can’t improve what you do not measure. You can use Pluto to get a firm grip on your expenses. Pluto allows you to monitor and control your expenses so you clearly see how much was spent in which category.
Confirm Data
You’ll want to ensure all accrued expense data is accurate and can be cross-checked with receipts and inventory records. Ensuring transaction data is precise, and expense lists are free of duplicates, spelling mistakes, and other mistakes makes the entire spend management process more efficient.
Take this step extremely seriously if your company spend practices have relied on more manual processing methods. Standardization ensures that multiple currencies, formatting differences, and other nuances are accounted for when looking at spend analysis data.
(Goes without saying that when using Pluto this is all pre-done for you!)
Categorize Information
While optimal spend management brings all expenditures under a single umbrella to review, your team will still want to categorize expenses into various groups to make reviewing and making adjustments across different departments simpler.
It’s usually best to categorize expenses in multiple ways to understand where money is going. Pluto allows you to categorize expenses both through specialized cards or just by tagging, so everything is nicely grouped together when it is review time.

Review Expenses
A well-thought-out process of calculating, verifying, and categorizing spending information will simplify your entire review process when you’re looking at spend data.
You should immediately be able to spot expenses that are anomalies or recurring spending that might be able to be cut out from the start.
Pluto’s dashboard can give you a high level but also a detailed view, so you can clearly identify trends and separate expenses.
Devise A Strategy
You’ll want to move decisively once you’ve identified potential changes to spending habits and department budgeting approaches.
It might seem difficult at first glance to start reducing budgets, cutting out vendors, or make other dramatic changes to your company’s budget and expense habits. Rely on good change management practices and your leadership team to cultivate employee and stakeholder buy-in to any adjustments.
Practice Good Data Forecasting
Keep updating your expense data as you make a budget and spending adjustments. Doing so keeps your team on top of where funds are going and can help forecast different spending scenarios and how they might impact your business’s bottom line.
Keeping data and information updated becomes particularly important if your expenses grow to ensure financial operations run smoothly. Don’t forget to cultivate supplier relationships if you work with different vendors for optimal inventory management.
Should You Rely On Spend Management Software?
Manually processing expense claims, keeping up with petty cash, and tracking company credit cards can quickly turn inefficient, hinder your company’s financial management, and inhibit the overall procurement process.
In contrast, the right spend analysis solution can aid real-time expense tracking, provide easy-to-read charts and graphs of high-level expenses, and capture and store financial-related documents, so your finance team members are not scrambling to find a receipt or report.
Pluto has a multitude of features including procurement software and account payable that will help you with spend management and make spend control much easier.
Flexibility
Pluto allows you to create cards for various purposes, edit spending limits on the go and monitor your expenses in real time. This allows you to scale up or down depending on what your business needs at any given moment.
Powerful Analytics
With Pluto, you will be able to track spending patterns and areas of high expenditure and get real-time insights into your business finances. The powerful analytics will help you make better decisions about where to allocate your resources.
Ease Of Use
The main bottleneck of many spend management platforms is that the employees do not use them - as it is just too time-consuming. Not with Pluto! The sleek and user-friendly interface makes expense management a breeze.
Simplified Reimbursements
Receipt upload and reimbursements can be quite a burden for the team. Pluto allows you to take pictures of receipts with your phone and just add them to your reimbursements list. With the use of categories and tags, you will be able to both submit and review them in record time!
Key Takeaways For Company Spending
Spend management remains an essential component of all organizations regardless of size. Accountability for every dirham flowing in and out ensures your company maximizes revenue and remains growth-focused, no matter the budget.
You can take the first step today by relying on Pluto and processes to establish control over budgets, track spending, manage payments, cut costs, and boost your financial team’s day-to-day operations and processes.
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Vlad Falin, Finance Writer
At Pluto Card, our mission is to assist businesses of all scales make well-informed choices. To uphold our standards, we follow editorial guidelines to guarantee that our content consistently aligns with our high-quality benchmarks.
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Mohammed Ridwan
Top 9 Procure-to-Pay Software for Enterprises
You want a procure-to-pay (P2P) software that automates your procurement process and addresses issues like lack of visibility, double payments, and delayed approvals. However, since such a tool has multiple users at different hierarchies and a complex workflow, you often end up with a more complex process if you don’t choose the right software.
With ad-hoc processes, many issues pop-up: employees wait weeks for approvals, procurement teams have no real-time visibility over purchase requests and don’t know how to prioritize, finance teams get minimal control over expenses, and the entire process is chaotic. Hence, choosing the right procure-to-pay solution requires a focus on ease of use and flexibility.
In this post, we will share the best procure-to-pay software for businesses in the UAE. We will discuss how P2P software helps with procurement and which tools are worth considering.
What is Procure-to-Pay Software?
Procure-to-pay software is a tool to automate the complete procurement process, which combines accounts payable (AP) and procurement software.
Instead of having your procurement processes and data scattered across emails, Jira, different task management tools, and custom ERPs, you bring it onto a single platform.

By moving from your legacy tools to an automated P2P software, you can:
- automate approval workflows, making the purchase request (PR) process easier and faster. Flexible approval workflows enable all stakeholders to approve requests with a trigger-based flow.
- integrate with ERPs to maintain a preferred vendor list and manage order items. While most P2P software supports record-keeping only, some allow the conversion of PRs to purchase orders (PO) automatically after approval.
- match the goods received note (GRN) to enable two-way or three-way matching and ensure proper inventory and timely vendor payments.
- process payments with multiple payment options to avoid delays and foster vendor relationships. It also helps avoid double payments, underpayment, or overpayment.
- reconcile data faster via integrations with accounting software, enabling more visibility and control. Accounting teams get the right documents, and finance teams get visibility over expenses.
Since legacy ERPs aren’t enough to manage your entire procurement process, adding P2P software makes purchasing and payments easier.
Top 9 Procure-to-Pay Software
Here is a procure-to-pay software list for companies in the UAE:
1. Pluto

Pluto is an all-in-one procure-to-pay solution to transform your procurement and AP processes. It sits on top of your ERP as a layer to manage the multiple stages of the procurement process. From automating PRs to setting multi-layer approval workflows and managing vendors, it is the ultimate solution to transform a chaotic procurement process into a faster and more efficient one.
Key Features:
- Features fully customizable workflows for raising PR and POs, requiring no technical expertise
- Offers a flexible approval engine capable of managing intricate hierarchies
- Enables multi-layer invoice approvals with policies to align with your company's structure
- Ability to upload invoices easily via WhatsApp images, eliminating the need to search for invoice details. Also facilitates invoice capture via emails directly to speed up the receipt capture process
- A centralized dashboard to gather bills in one place and track the status to avoid double payments
- Vendor-specific corporate cards to control budgets and detect irrelevant expenses
- Supports local and international wire transfers to make payments
- OCR technology minimizes manual data entry by creating and populating bills from invoices
- Supports ERP integration to synchronize your vendors, POs, and bills and integrates with accounting software, such as Oracle, NetSuite, Zoho, Quickbooks, Wafeq, Xero, etc.
- Integrates with payment gateways and accounting software for seamless payments and reconciliation (a feature not available in other solutions)
- Raises alerts for upcoming payments and enables scheduling payments in advance and automate invoices
- Provides a complete audit trail of the process to ensure visibility at each step
- Shows real-time analytics to facilitate deep insights for supporting budget control
Pricing:
Request the sales team for a custom quote
Pros:
- More financial control with vendor-specific corporate cards
- Better Forex rates than most local banks
- Multiple integration options including Netsuite, Dynamics and more
Cons:
- Slightly longer on-boarding due to unlimited corporate purchasing card offering
- Directly integrates with all other major ERPs except Tally
2. Order.co

Order.co is a procure-to-pay platform that provides you access to over 15,000+ vendors in addition to your preferred vendors. It acts as an online marketplace like Amazon or eBay to help you procure items for your business. You add items to the cart, and it enables a rule-based approval system for POs with complete control and visibility.
Key Features:
- Provides a custom, pre-approved Order.co catalog, including your current vendors and a vast network of 15,000+ vendors
- Supports purchases from multiple vendors regardless of their ordering methods (API, website, email)
- Sources the best prices for your needs to automatically generate POs and set up recurring orders to save time and reduce manual errors
- Offers real-time budgeting and reporting insights by the user, location, cost center, or vendor
- Simplifies payment processing by consolidating all orders from multiple vendors into one monthly invoice
Pricing:
Dependent upon locations and usage; contact hello@order.co for pricing information
Pros:
- Customizable product lists for ordering
- Easy-to-create customizable workflows
- Ability to categorize purchases and run reports
Cons:
- Set up is confusing and requires customer support help
- Can not order from multiple vendors at the same time
3. Yooz

Yooz optimizes the procurement process by focusing on invoice management. It is suitable for mid-size companies of all sectors wanting to automate procurement with a cloud-based procure-to-pay solution. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies to enhance security and control in AP automation.
Key Features:
- Enables online, real-time management of supplier relationships, improving communication and collaboration
- Provides mobile access for invoice approval and communication
- Maintains regulation-compliant traceability, ensuring adherence to relevant laws and standards
- Automates real-time general ledger (GL) coding and PO matching
- Captures all types of documents through various channels, such as email, drag and drop, mobile, scan, and secure file transfer protocol (SFTP)
- Integrates with accounting software and ERPs
- Allows users to approve and pay invoices in batches, offering multiple payment options, such as virtual credit card, ACH, e-check, and paper check
- Offers a range of services, including consulting, configuration, training, and user support
Pricing:
Free trial for up to 15 days followed by a "pay-as-you-use" model. Also offers “gold edition” subscription pricing (based on the volume of documents) for an unlimited number of users and 4 hours of complimentary service
Pros:
- Integrates with Sage Intacct
- Ability to tag people in the comments and email them directly from the invoice
- Numerous criteria available for setting up the approval workflows
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer payment services in the UAE, so you need to carry out payments on a different platform
- Doesn't have integrations with major vendors as a form of punchout
- Time-consuming to download and export files
- Hard for vendors to send the invoices through Yooz
4. Kissflow

Kissflow simplifies and enhances procurement processes while ensuring transparency and compliance. It helps users automate the entire process without requiring technical expertise or coding experience. It comes with 50+ ready-to-use applications, enabling unlimited automation applications.
Key Features:
- Offers fluid forms to enable easy capturing, approval, and tracking of PRs
- Allows users to register and maintain vendors with access to multilingual catalogs
- Integration with accounting systems, ERPs, and finance systems like Quickbooks, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics
- Accelerates the invoice approval process with timely alerts and automated checks. Connect invoices to contracts, POs, and service entry sheets in a single dashboard
- Customizable reports to visualize data using charts, filters, and heatmaps
- Ability to define and manage budget restrictions with dynamic rules throughout the entire procure-to-pay lifecycle
- Customized approval workflows to ensure transparency with rule-based approval processes
- Smart alerts that provide real-time updates on the status of POs and invoices to keep stakeholders informed
Pricing:
Starts at $2499/month (billed annually). Pricing varies based on transaction volume and number of users
Pros:
- Intuitive interface with a relatively short learning curve
Cons:
- Does not support payment flows in the UAE
- Cost of its license is high (particularly for SMBs)
- Can not handle intricate processes that require a high degree of customization or involve multiple conditional branches
- Customization options are limited, including specific integrations, advanced business rules, or more sophisticated automation capabilities
5. Coupa

Coupa is a cloud-based automation platform to manage procurement processes. It facilitates supply chain optimization by providing visibility and control. It brings consumer shopping ease to the procurement process. With a focus on user adoption, it provides an intuitive shopping experience for employees, making it easier to adhere to pre-approved spending guidelines.
Key Features:
- Simplifies procurement by allowing organizations to track pre-approved spending and get real-time visibility into POs and order lifecycle
- Maximizes pre-approved spend to offer complete visibility over the purchase-to-pay processes
- Promotes user adoption at all levels with an easy-to-use interface, creating value for both employees and vendors
- Provides a centralized platform within Coupa Procure, allowing easy comparison of items across multiple vendors
- Offers real-time budget management with budget meters, allowing organizations to assess budget sufficiency before committing to spending
- Employs AI and machine learning to detect errors and fraud across business spend
- Enables quick notifications of disruptions and allows vendors to confirm availability, minimizing unplanned downtime
- Provides real-time visibility into inventory availability, helping organizations reduce redundant and wasteful spending
Pricing:
Request the sales team for a custom quote
Pros:
- Several categories and filters in the analytics section to streamline data
- Chat option enables approver and claimant to discuss issues with receipts
- Enables setting up of customized approval chains and including additional new approvers
Cons:
- Lots of unnecessary notifications, making it difficult to select the ones that need action or comment
- Low receipt searchability, making retrieval time-consuming
- Inconsistent syncing of remit-to address from NetSuite
- Complex to implement and not intuitive, forcing admins to spend more time resolving employees' queries
- Slow customer service
6. Esker

Esker is a cloud-based automation procurement software. It helps you optimize procurement processes and collaborate strategically with your vendors. With the ability to integrate across various company departments, it simplifies user adoption while facilitating visibility and control.
Key Features:
- Facilitates approval mechanism and GRN matching for each PR and invoice
- Offers real-time analytics, enabling you to maintain tighter budget controls
- Gives access to products from preferred vendors, aligning purchases with company procurement policies
- Provides a self-service portal, facilitating supplier onboarding, catalog management, and invoice status access
- Customizable dashboards to manage daily tasks, monitor productivity, and identify issues and opportunities as they arise
- Enables you to customize the interface with your company's corporate identity, enhancing the supplier's ability to identify and engage with your organization seamlessly
Pricing:
Contact sales for pricing
Pros:
- Contains filtered views to allow for focused priorities
- Auto-sends payment reminders
Cons:
- Gets expensive with each customization implemented
- Doesn’t allow unused/old customer accounts to be deleted
- Integration with accounting software isn't seamless
- Approval workflow requires a manual trigger to start
7. PayEm

PayEm offers a procure-to-pay solution, covering everything in one place to replace your traditional procurement process. With a core focus on processing PR, it simplifies the creation of POs with custom forms and approval workflows. It facilitates collaboration between procurement and finance teams to enhance visibility and control.
Key Features:
- Offers custom request forms equipped with conditional logic to ensure a user-friendly experience
- Provides fully customizable automated approval workflows based on factors like amounts, subsidiaries, and stakeholders
- Integrates with communication platforms like Slack and email, allowing request tracking and approvals
- Consolidates all the requests and approvals, simplifying discussions, document sharing, and creating an audit log
- Enables real-time updates and clear overviews of request statuses, minimizing the need for follow-up inquiries
- Offers OCR technology for invoice processing
- Syncs with your ERP and enables exporting reconciled transactions and uploading them to your ERP
- Automates vendor management with payment scheduling, funds transferring, and limits setting for each vendor
Pricing:
Pros:
- Multiple virtual credit cards for different vendors
- Supports global transactions
Cons:
- Some vendors don't accept PayEm cards
- High transaction clearing time
- Limits the user to either a virtual or physical card at one time
8. Pipefy

Pipefy is an automation procure-to-pay tool to manage end-to-end procurement processes, from PR to paying vendors, to create a frictionless experience. It aims to break silos between teams to simplify purchase and AP.
Key Features:
- Allows you to create and customize workflows, from purchase requisition to supplier management
- Provides secure portals where records and documents can be organized, ensuring that all information is easily accessible, especially during audits
- Ensures compliance with custom forms that include required fields to accelerate POs
- Enables access to real-time insights to help you forecast ideal quantities and vendors for requisitions
- Evaluates your processes, delivering reliable data to enable strategic and data-driven decisions
- Integrates with your existing ERPs and accounting systems, such as NetSuite, Oracle E-business Suite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, etc.
- Enables deadline alerts, approval flows, and information exchange to prevent late fees and cashing in on early payment discounts
- Offers a customizable dashboard to streamline vendor registration, updates, onboarding, and contract management
Pricing:
Offers three packages starting with a free option for smaller teams, and a subsequent model that costs $20 per month per user and $34 per month per user. Also, offers an enterprise plan with custom pricing
Pros:
- Offers templates for organizing processes
Cons:
- Complex sign-up process
- Workflows aren’t flexible with difficulty with respect to adding new users and making changes
- Difficult to import data and search in the database for information
9. Procurify

Procurify speeds up the procurement process, enhances internal communication, and reduces financial risks. It is an easy-to-implement tool that saves time for finance and operations teams. From catalog management to custom user controls, it helps to track the procurement process in real time.
Key Features:
- Tailors POs to match your internal processes and vendor expectations
- Creates, tracks, and maintains an audit trail of all procurement transactions for transparency and compliance
- Enhances financial controls by enabling PO-based purchasing
- Ensures that requested items are approved against budgets before procurement
- Syncs PO with your accounting system or ERP, whether via API, CSV, flat file, or direct integration
- Integrates with trusted vendors through punchout catalogs to streamline the ordering process
- Enables blanket PO, which involve making multiple purchases against a single PO, even when details of future purchases may be unknown
- Provides PO workflows to save on shipping costs, unlock vendor discounts, and reduce paperwork
Pricing:
Starts at $2000/month with a custom pricing tier
Pros:
- Easy-to-make amendments in the original PO
- Enables ordering from multiple websites for resources, including Amazon
- Makes it easy to upload documents to support expense and order reports
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer payment services in UAE, so you will need to carry out payments on a different platform
- Doesn’t cater to the UAE market, and does not support UAE-specific workflows such as VAT management
- Cannot edit orders once they are approved
- Cannot see the order history for a catalog item without running a report
- Physical inventory has to be tracked outside Procurify
Which Procure-to-Pay Software Should You Pick?
Don’t choose a platform that offers the maximum functionality. Instead, choose the one that is user-friendly and flexible.
Procurement is already a complex process that requires visibility by different stakeholders. Choosing a tool that offers visibility and accommodates complex business needs will help you transform your chaotic procure-to-pay process.
If you want to get started, book a demo, and our team will help you identify the bottlenecks and make the entire process simpler and manageable.
Disclaimer: The comparisons and rankings of procure to pay software competitors in this article are based primarily on reviews found online. While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information, these reviews are subjective and reflect the opinions of the users who posted them. The information presented is intended for general informational purposes and should not be considered as a definitive guide for choosing a software provider. We encourage readers to conduct their own research and consider their specific needs before making a decision.
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•
Mohammed Ridwan
Top 6 Procurement Software Solutions for Modern Businesses
The traditional procurement process is time-consuming, prone to errors, complex, and challenging to implement efficiently. From raising a purchase request to making vendor payments, multiple stakeholders are involved. In addition, securing approvals through various channels of an organization leads to chaos. Hence, 77% of companies are shifting to procure-to-pay digital solutions, also known as procurement software.
What is Procurement Software?
Procurement software are tools that automate the procurement process.
Instead of relying on multiple platforms and different channels to procure goods and services, the process is automated and brought together on a centralized platform.
A powerful procurement solution helps you in:
- streamlining the request and approval process for purchases
- generating, tracking, and managing purchase orders
- creating, negotiating, and tracking supplier contracts
- managing and maintaining supplier relationships
- automating invoice validation, approval, and payment workflows
- integrating with other systems for seamless data flow and coordination.
What Are the Benefits of Procurement Software?
By automating your procurement process with a procurement management software, you can improve it in the following ways:
- Once you enter data, it is auto-populated throughout the procurement cycle. This minimizes the risk of errors due to manual data entry in purchase orders, invoices, and other documents.
- You get real-time visibility into the procurement process. You can also track the status of purchase requests, orders, deliveries, and payments.
- With built-in reporting and analytics tools, you can generate detailed reports on spending, supplier performance, and other key metrics. This data-driven insight enables better inventory planning and strategic decision-making.
- You can standardize workflows for purchase requisitions and approvals. Route the requests to the appropriate individuals for approval and reduce any delays. Notifications and reminders are automated, ensuring timely responses.
- Invoice processing and payment workflows are automated. This ensures that invoices are paid on time. This helps in taking advantage of early payment discounts and strengthens vendor relationships.
Top 6 Procurement Software
To help you select the procurement management software best suited for the needs of your organization, we have listed the top 6 procurement solutions:
1. Pluto

Pluto is an all-in-one procurement software designed to transform your accounts payable (AP) processes. It reduces your finance team's workload and makes procurement easy. From automating purchase requests to setting multi-layer approval workflows and managing vendors, it is the ultimate procurement solution to transform a chaotic procurement process into a faster and more efficient one.
Key Features:
- Features fully customizable workflows for raising purchase requests and purchase orders, requiring no technical expertise
- Offers flexible approval engine capable of managing intricate hierarchies
- Enables multi-layer invoice approvals with policies to align with your company's structure
- Ability to upload invoices easily via WhatsApp images, eliminating the need to search for invoice details. Also, facilitates invoice capture via emails directly to speed up the receipt capture process.
- A centralized dashboard to gather bills in one place and track the status to avoid double payments
- Vendor-specific corporate cards to control budgets and detect irrelevant expenses
- Supports local and international wire transfers to make payments
- OCR technology minimizes manual data entry by creating and populating bills from invoices
- Supports ERP integration to synchronize your vendors, POs, and bills and integrates with accounting software, such as Oracle, NetSuite, Zoho, Quickbooks, Wafeq, Xero, etc.
- Raises alerts for upcoming payments and enables scheduling payments in advance and automate invoices
- Provides a complete audit trail of the process to ensure visibility at each step
- Shows real-time analytics to facilitate deep insights for supporting budget control
Pricing:
Request the sales team for a custom quote
Pros:
- More financial control with vendor-specific corporate cards
- Better Forex rates than most local banks
- Multiple integration options
Cons:
- Slightly longer on-boarding due to corporate card offering
- Integrates with all other major ERPs except Tally
2. Yooz

Yooz optimizes the AP process, specifically focusing on invoice management. It is a cloud based software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies to enhance security and control in AP automation. It is suitable for mid-size companies of all sectors wanting to automate procurement with a cloud-based procurement solution.
Key Features:
- Enables online, real-time management of supplier relationships, improving communication and collaboration
- Provides mobile access for invoice approval and communication
- Maintains regulation-compliant traceability, ensuring adherence to relevant laws and standards
- Automates real-time GL coding and purchase order matching
- Captures all types of documents through various channels, such as email, drag-and-drop, mobile, scan, and sFTP, supporting multiple formats, including PDF, Factur-X, UBL, CII, and EDIFACT
- Integrates with accounting software and and ERPs
- Allows users to approve and pay invoices in batches, offering multiple payment options, such as Virtual Credit Card, ACH, eCheck, and Paper Check
- Offers a range of services, including consulting, configuration, training, and user support
Pricing:
Free trial for up to 15 days followed by a "pay-as-you-use" model.
Pros:
- Integration with Sage Intacct
- Ability to tag people in the comments and email them directly from the invoice
- Numerous criteria available for setting up the approval workflows
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer payment services in UAE, so you need to carry out payments on a different platform
- Doesn't have integrations with major suppliers as a form of punchout
- Time-consuming to download and export files
- Hard for vendors to send the invoices through Yooz
3. Procurify

Procurify speeds up the procurement process, enhances internal communication, and reduces financial risks. It is an easy-to-implement tool that saves time for finance and operations teams. From catalog management to custom user controls, it helps to track the procurement process in real-time.
Key Features:
- Tailors purchase orders to match your internal processes and vendor expectations
- Creates, tracks, and maintains an audit trail of all procurement transactions for transparency and compliance.
- Enhances financial controls by enabling purchase order-based purchasing
- Ensures that requested items are approved against budgets before procurement.
- Sync purchase orders with your accounting system or ERP, whether via API, CSV, flat file, or direct integration
- Integrates with trusted suppliers through PunchOut catalogs to streamline the ordering process.
- Enables blanket purchase orders, which involve making multiple purchases against a single purchase order, even when details of future purchases may be unknown.
- Purchase order workflows to save on shipping costs, unlock vendor discounts, and reduce paperwork
Pricing:
Starts at $2000/month with a custom pricing tier
Pros:
- Easy to make amendments in the original purchase order
- Enables ordering from multiple websites for resources, including Amazon
- Makes it easy to upload documents to support expense and order reports
Cons:
- Doesn’t offer payment services in UAE, so you will need to carry out payments on a different platform
- Isn’t catered to the UAE market, and does not support UAE specific workflows such as VAT management
- Cannot edit orders once they are approved
- Cannot see the order history for a catalog item without running a report
- Physical inventory has to be tracked outside Procurify
4. Precoro

Precoro is a cloud-based solution designed to streamline operations, automate tasks, and centralize purchasing procedures. It enables tracking discounts, monitoring corporate expenses, and enhancing cash flow transparency. It also provides analytics and reports for strategic procurement planning.
Key Features:
- Simplifies the approval by allowing users to approve from any device via email or Slack notifications.
- Supports customizable approval workflows with multi-step and role assignment
- Facilitates creating, approving, and tracking purchase orders and transfer orders from Amazon Business via Punch-in
- Connects with various ERPs and business tools like NetSuite, QuickBooks, and Xero, or its API
- Ensures data security through Single Sign-On (SSO) and 2-factor authentication
- Offers an intuitive interface and guidance from a dedicated customer success manager whenever needed
- Gives a risk-free 14-day free trial with access to all features
Pricing:
Starts at $35 per user per month billed annually for teams with under 20 members and offers custom pricing for enterprises
Pros:
- Provides flexibility for enterprise needs
- Works well for budgeting procurement
- Allows tracking invoices in a centralized environment
Cons:
- Requires training to customize complex workflows
- Invoice processing is slow
- Isn’t suitable for manufacturing industries
- Difficult to collaborate on invoice drafting
5. Kissflow

Kissflow simplifies and enhances procurement processes while ensuring transparency and compliance. It helps to automate the entire process without requiring technical expertise or coding experience. It comes with 50+ ready-to-use applications, enabling unlimited automation applications.
Key Features:
- Offers fluid forms to enable easy capturing, approval, and tracking of purchase requests
- Allows to register and maintain vendors effortlessly with access to multilingual catalogs
- Integration with accounting systems, ERP, and finance systems like Quickbooks, SAP, and Microsoft Dynamics
- Accelerates the invoice approval process with timely alerts and automated checks. Connect invoices to contracts, purchase orders, and service entry sheets in a single dashboard
- Customizable reports to visualize data using charts, filters, and heatmaps
- Ability to define and manage budget restrictions with dynamic rules throughout the entire procure-to-pay lifecycle
- Customized approval workflows to ensure transparency with rule-based approval processes
- Smart alerts that provide real-time updates on the status of purchase orders and invoices to keep stakeholders informed
Pricing:
Starts at $2499/month (billed annually). Pricing varies based on transaction volume and number of users.
Pros:
- Intuitive interface with a relatively short learning curve
- Allows automated workflows to be created with limited technical expertise
Cons:
- Not built specifically for procurement teams
- Does not support payment flows in UAE
- Cost of its license is high (particularly for SMBs)
- Can not handle intricate processes that require a high degree of customization or involve multiple conditional branches
- Customization options are limited, including specific integrations, advanced business rules, or more sophisticated automation capabilities
6. Vendr

Vendr is a practical solution for streamlining SaaS procurement. It simplifies the entire process, from intake requests to contract management. It provides essential SaaS insights, negotiates expert advice, and integrates with core business tools for procurement and vendor management.
Key Features:
- Buyer guides to provide negotiation insights and gain the upper hand in software purchases
- Negotiation advisory to provide personalized guidance on negotiating like a pro and enter negotiations with confidence
- Simplified intake forms to ensure company-wide compliance and visibility
- Integration with different accounting and finance tools, such as Oracle, NetSuite, Intuit, Quickbooks.
- Integrates with platforms like Rippling Workday to include correct stakeholders. Additional integration with SSO providers such as onelogin.
- Comprehensive renewal dashboard to receive early alerts and streamline the renewal preparation process to maximize savings.
- Vendr Slack integration for quick answers and timely notifications to collaborate in real time with your team, minimizing approval cycle times
Pricing:
There are 2 packages—the basic one starts at $15,000/year and the pro package starts at $20,000/year.
Pros:
- Offers assisted buying with a team who negotiates on your behalf
- Comprehensive database of vendors in one place
- Helps standardize procurement workflow
- Provides insights about fair market value
Cons:
- Restricted to SaaS procurement only
- Multilingual services are limited
- Navigating multiple workflows is not as fluid as desired
- Doesn't support multiple currencies
Find the Right Procurement Software
When choosing procurement software, focus on user-friendliness, scalability, and integration capabilities. Make sure the software aligns with your specific needs.
For instance, if you frequently deal with multiple suppliers and have a complex approval process, ensure the software can accommodate these intricacies. Similarly, if you're in the healthcare industry, look for procurement software that complies with industry regulations like UAE Healthcare Law and the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) regulations. This ensures the privacy and security of patient data and adheres to local data protection standards. Moreover, check if the vendor offers active support and training. In case of a technical issue, having an unresponsive support team can disrupt the process and create bottlenecks.
Don't rush the decision. Thoroughly evaluate multiple options. Investing in an appropriate solution will save you money and headaches in the long run.
Want a tool that is safe, fast, and transforms your chaotic procurement process into an automated solution? Book a demo today and see how Pluto can simplify procurement for your team.
Disclaimer: The comparisons and rankings of procurement software competitors in this article are based primarily on reviews found online. While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information, these reviews are subjective and reflect the opinions of the users who posted them. The information presented is intended for general informational purposes and should not be considered as a definitive guide for choosing a software provider. We encourage readers to conduct their own research and consider their specific needs before making a decision.

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Leen Shami
Expense Management; Definition, Types & Tips
Effective expense management is a critical aspect of any organization's financial health, ensuring smooth operation through controlled employee spending. Employees frequently incur various business expenses, from travel and entertainment to office supplies. To facilitate reimbursement, these expenses must be meticulously reported with detailed descriptions and receipts, subsequently reviewed and approved by line managers and finance teams. This process, central to expense management, not only streamlines how employees pay for business expenses but also provides a comprehensive track of their spending through organized expense reports.
What is expense management?
Expense management refers to the systematic process of tracking, processing, and reimbursing employee spending. This involves scrutinizing expense reports, evaluating reimbursement claims, and enforcing company policies on permissible expenses. It is a key practice in ensuring adherence to the organization's expense policy while maintaining accurate financial records.
Why is expense management important?
As an essential part of any business, expense management is vital for various segments of a company, such as the following:
1. Finance teams
An expense management process is the most important to a finance team or accounting department. Their main goal is to sustain accurate business financial records and analyze past trends to determine future business decisions.
Additionally, it can help identify cost-saving opportunities and risks by providing insights into the company's financial health.
2. C-level executives & managers
Owners, managers, or C-levels are more concerned about growing revenue, managing risk, reducing expenses, satisfying employees, and having a productive business.
3. Employees
Having reimbursements processed quickly creates a feeling of trust and satisfaction among employees. This greatly influences the productivity of your employees and your company.
4. Compliance
Maintaining detailed records of your business expenses ensures that your company stays compliant and assists companies in audit activity in case of fraudulent behavior.
Nevertheless, with the corporate income tax being introduced in 2023, expense management makes it simpler for businesses to file their taxes.
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Expense management process
The expense management process is designed to safeguard against policy violations and mishaps, and it typically follows a uniform sequence across most businesses:
- Employee Expenditure: An employee makes a purchase for business purposes.
- Reimbursement Claim Submission: The employee submits a claim for reimbursement of the incurred expense.
- Claim Review: The submitted claim is reviewed and either approved or rejected.
- Payment Processing: Upon approval, the reimbursement is scheduled, often aligning with the employee's End-of-Month (EOM) salary.
Types of expense management
Approaches to expense management may differ from company to company. Here you'll find the different ways in which expenses are managed:
1. Paper tracking
Employees collect paper receipts and submit them to the accounting department for approval monthly or quarterly. This is the traditional (and outdated) method of managing expenses.
2. Spreadsheets
Businesses, especially in the UAE, usually use spreadsheets to manage their expenses and reduce dependency on paper receipts. Some common spreadsheet software is Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and Zoho Sheets.
3. Expense management software
An expense management software simplifies the process for companies by automating it. After an employee makes an expense, the managers are alerted to either accept or reject the expense. If the expense is accepted, it is usually scheduled to be reimbursed with the employee's EOM salary.
4. Pluto
Pluto is an expense management software that helps accounting teams save time by automating reimbursements, expense reporting, expense tracking, and budget control.
When a business expense is made, a Whatsapp notification is sent to the employee, prompting them to upload their receipt by snapping a photo; this also simplifies the reconciliation process. When that is done, the admin/manager is notified to accept or reject the expense. If the expense is accepted, it is reimbursed to the employee's bank account in seconds.
On the other hand, Pluto gives you the ability to create unlimited corporate cards with spend limits so you won't have to go through an approval workflow.
Real-time expense reports are also one of the many benefits Pluto offers, helping finance teams, CFOs and accountants make informed decisions. Learn how to improve internal control over financial reporting on our new post.

Traditional vs. automated expense management
Despite the benefits of automated expense management, a large percentage of organizations in the UAE still perform manual expense management. This leads to expense reports that are time-consuming and prone to error.
Traditional expense management
Traditional expense management is one expense management process that relies on several steps to manage spending and ensure the process for an expense claim is correct. As an expense management solution, expense tracking is usually in the form of paper tracking or excel sheets, as mentioned above.
Typically, once employee-initiated expenses are made, the employee must store the expense receipts and file them as reimbursable expenses at the end of the month when the accounting department is doing the end-of-month closing. After the expenses are submitted, the approval process begins. The employee's manager either accepts or rejects the reimbursable expense; if it is accepted, it is sent to the accounting team for reimbursement.
This is considered a nightmare for accounting departments, as they will have to go through manual data entry and spend countless hours on expense reporting at the end of month closing.
Automated expense management
Unlike traditional expense management, automated expense management software reduces time spent on processing expense reports, managing the business's cash flow, reconciliation processing, and controlling expenses incurred for finance teams.
Automated spend management software, such as Pluto, eliminates the manual process and automates the process for finance teams from A-Z. With expense management software like Pluto, you can automate different flows, such as the following:
Reimbursements
Pluto helps you manage expenses incurred by digitizing the reimbursement process. Once an expense is made, Pluto sends you a Whatsapp notification prompting you to upload your receipt by replying to the Whatsapp or by uploading it onto the Pluto app. Once that is done, the expense record is saved, so employees don't lose it, and the expense is submitted for approval.
As an added perk, Pluto also auto-categorizes expenses made so employees and finance teams won't have to worry about categorization!
Expense reporting
With Pluto, all expense records are in one place, meaning expense reports are automated; this helps accounting departments save hundreds of hours on manual work.
Additionally, expense reports are trackable in real-time, giving managers, finance teams, and accounting departments complete visibility over the business's finances.

Accounting
Close your books 5x faster!
Whether you use Zoho expense, SAP Concur, or Quickbooks, your accounting software can integrate directly with Pluto's platform.
Through our integration, you can also sync your chart of accounts and your GL codes to automate bookkeeping.

Budget control
Pluto allows you to issue your employees unlimited corporate cards with spend control. If you have daily allowances, weekly budgets, or travel expenses, you can get better control over your employee spending by setting custom limits on their corporate credit cards.
Expense management advantages
If you've reached this far, you might already know the advantages of automated expense management.
Accurate expense reporting
- Real-time, automated expense reports
- Sort reports by day, week, month, or by department, or category
Quick reimbursements
- Faster approval process for employees and finance teams
- Auto-categorization when uploading receipts
Monitor employee spending
- See what is being spent and where in real-time
- Set daily, weekly, or monthly allowances
Close books faster
- Integrate with all major accounting software to close your books 5x faster
- Sync your GL codes
Expense management policy
Employee spending can be controlled by implementing an expense management policy. The policy can function as grounds for rejecting or questioning expenses and help determine whether they should be reimbursed.
In every expense management policy, the following items should be included:
Types of expenses
A complete list of everything employees may purchase and what they may not purchase.
Budgets
The current budget should be disclosed to everyone, and those with questions should be able to contact those responsible.
Reimbursements
A reimbursement policy must specify the reimbursement method, such as online, by credit card, or by other payment methods.
Choosing an expense management software
If you're purchasing an expense management solution, make sure it fills your company's unique needs, offers the right level of functionality, and comes with a dedicated account manager.
Some of the key features you should be looking for are:
Real-time expense tracking and reporting
Having real-time expense reports is vital, as it helps finance teams monitor employees' expenses and manage them on the go.
For example, if the company's marketing department uses 70% of its monthly budget in the first two weeks of the month, the finance team can notify them that 70% of the budget has been used so they can plan and budget for the remaining 30%.
With Pluto, you can:
- Get notified as soon as an expense is made, so you know who spends what, where, and when
- Keep track of all business expenses, such as reimbursement, travel, and employee expenditure data, to avoid going over budget
Quick reimbursements
End-to-end reimbursements are crucial for a business to operate seamlessly. With quick end-to-end reimbursements, employees no longer have to wait till payroll to get reimbursed.
With Pluto, you can:
- File a reimbursement request through Whatsapp or the Pluto app
- Get reimbursed in seconds
Approval flows
Approval processes should be hassle-free. It's essential to have automated approval flows to ensure employee expenses and expense claims are approved by the right managers.
With Pluto, you can:
- Automatically assign expenses to the right reviewer
- Create your own customized approval flow

Integration with accounting software
Integrating your accounting platform with your expense management software reduces the time spent on bookkeeping.
With Pluto, you can:
- Integrate most major accounting platforms
- Sync your chart of accounts
- Sync your GL codes
- Close your books 5x faster
Customizable budget control
Setting limits and budgets is essential to control your company's financials fully. This helps your company stay within its budget and avoid mishaps with company spending.
With Pluto, you can:
- Create unlimited corporate cards with set limits
- Increase limits on corporate cards in seconds
- Issue vendor-specific cards

Pluto combines the above features with easy integrations, complete visibility, and total control over every aspect of your company's expense management.
Modern finance teams save time & money with Pluto.
Get started today.
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