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Smartbills vs Expensify

Expensify reads the photo an employee took of a receipt. Smartbills gets the itemized receipt from the merchant when the payment goes through. There's no photo to chase.

At a glance

Smartbills vs Expensify, in one screen

Expensify is one of the best-known expense management tools, and its workflow starts with a photo: an employee snaps the receipt, SmartScan reads it with OCR, and the result becomes a line on an expense report. It has a large installed base, a familiar mobile app and its own card, so most finance hires have used it somewhere before.

Smartbills

Best for

Teams that want each receipt to arrive from the merchant as itemized data. Month end isn't spent chasing paper nobody kept.

Where it's stronger

  • Receipts arrive as structured data sent through Smartbills. Line detail is exact instead of inferred.
  • Capture doesn't rely on anyone remembering a photo.
  • If you also sell to consumers, the same receipt runs loyalty and pay at table.
  • Tax-recoverable lines can be found without anyone reading an image.

Expensify

Best for

Choose Expensify if your team already runs on its expense reports and wants a familiar, well-supported report-and-approve workflow it won't have to relearn.

Where it's stronger

  • A far larger installed base, and a workflow most finance hires have already used.
  • Mature travel and per-diem handling built over more than a decade.
  • A very wide integration catalog, including systems we don't connect to yet.
  • A receipt photo works at any merchant, including the ones on no network at all.

Every comparison on this site names what the other product does better. If we couldn't think of anything, we didn't publish the page.

Side by side

Smartbills and Expensify, feature by feature

These are structural differences, not plan checkboxes. Capabilities change, so check the vendor's own documentation before deciding on any single row.

Where the receipt comes from

The structural difference; most rows below follow from it.

SmartbillsIssued by the merchant at payment, as data
ExpensifyPhotographed by the employee, then read by OCR

Line items, not just the total

SmartbillsEvery line, as the POS recorded it
ExpensifyExtracted from the image where legible

What happens when the paper is lost

A network receipt exists whether or not anyone kept the paper.

Smartbills
Expensify—

Cards your team can spend on

SmartbillsCorporate and virtual cards
ExpensifyExpensify Card

Approvals and spending rules

Smartbills
Expensify

Works with your accounting system

SmartbillsQuickBooks, Xero, Sage and others
ExpensifyQuickBooks, Xero, NetSuite and others

An app for the person handed the receipt

SmartbillsWallet, warranties, subscriptions, bill splitting
ExpensifyExpense-report focused

What the same receipt does for a merchant

Only relevant if you also sell to consumers.

SmartbillsLoyalty, pay at table, customer activation
Expensify—

Moving from Expensify

None of this needs a big-bang cutover. Most teams run both tools for one cycle and compare capture rates before switching anyone off.

  1. Export your history

    Expensify exports your reports and receipt images. Keep that archive for past years. Smartbills needs none of it migrated to start.

  2. Connect your accounting

    Point Smartbills at the ledger you already use and map categories once. Coded receipts post there from then on.

  3. Run both for one cycle

    Capture in parallel for a month, then count how many transactions got an itemized receipt before moving anyone off Expensify.

  4. Move the busiest cards first

    Give Smartbills cards to the teams with the most receipts, and leave the rest until the numbers justify it.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What people ask us before they sign up.

The difference is the capture step. When the store sends the receipt, Smartbills receives the itemized receipt as data when the payment goes through, while Expensify starts from a photo that SmartScan reads. After that, approvals, coding and accounting sync work in broadly similar ways on both.

You photograph the receipt, as you do today, and Smartbills extracts the details from it. Network coverage makes things better where it exists, but you don't need it to use Smartbills.

Yes. Expensify exports reports and receipt images, and that archive stays yours. Smartbills doesn't need it imported. You can keep it purely as history.

No, though coverage is strongest in retail, hospitality and fuel, where most employee receipts come from. Office and online purchases are captured from emailed receipts and card feeds instead.

Yes, including single-use virtual cards for subscriptions and one-off suppliers. You can also keep your existing cards, because capture reads the card feed either way.

Keep comparing

More comparisons

The products people evaluate alongside Expensify.

All Expensify alternativesBest expense management software

The products that do the work.

Each product works on its own, and when you run two, the same record carries from the receipt to the ledger entry.

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Ready to see it against Expensify?

Bring one month of your own receipts and card transactions, and we'll show you the capture rate on both sides instead of a slide deck.

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