9 Free Expense Tracker of 2024

Expense trackers offer an easy, efficient way to monitor your spending, create budgets, and boost your financial management. Gone are the days of boxes filled with paper receipts—a good expense tracker lets you upload, categorize, and track your expenses in one easy system.

Tracking your expenses is important for managing business reimbursements and spending budgets, understanding where your money is going, and creating a financial plan to increase your savings. 

There are a variety of expense trackers for personal and business use, with features ranging from basic bank integration to corporate card syncing, automatic receipt categorization, and custom expense analytics.

We’ll explore 9 of the best free expense tracker apps and compare their different features and prices. We’ll also look at how expense trackers function so you can find the best fit for your personal and business needs.

Table of Contents

• FreshBooks
• EveryDollar
• YNAB
• Expensify
• Simplifi
• Digits
• QuickBooks
• Rocket Money
• Shoeboxed
• What Is an Expense Tracker?
• How Do Expense Trackers Function?
• Streamline Your Expense Tracking with FreshBooks

1. FreshBooks (Best Overall) 

FreshBooks is designed for small business owners so you can quickly and easily track all your expenses. The cloud-based system allows for easy collaboration with partners and employees and integrates with other popular software like Gusto for payment processing, bookkeeping, and more. 

Desktop, browser, and mobile options make it easy to track your expenses on the go. Track mileage and upload receipts from the mobile app so you’ll never have to worry about carrying piles of paper receipts. FreshBooks expense tracking software also makes it easy to organize and categorize expenses so you’re ready for a stress-free tax season.

Features 

• Automatically imports bank account and credit card expenses
• Integrates with payment processors like Gusto
• Desktop, mobile app, and browser options
• Track mileage from the mobile app
• Mobile receipt scanning

Pricing 

• FreshBooks offers a free 30-day trial so you can find the right plan for your small business
• Lite: $19/month
• Plus: $33/month
• Premium: $60/month
• Custom plans available by consultation

2. EveryDollar

Users looking for an easy personal finance tracker will find plenty of helpful features with EveryDollar. Designed to help users learn where every dollar of their spending goes, it offers custom budgets and generates reports for robust expense tracking.

The free plan for EveryDollar is limited—it offers custom budgeting and a savings fund, but that’s about it. Bank connectivity, goal setting, and budget reports are only available with the Premium plan. It doesn’t offer things like receipt scanning or reimbursements, so it’s better geared toward personal finance tracking than business expense management. 

Advantages

• Create customized budgets
• Connect to your bank account to import expenses
• Generate custom reports for your budget
• Access to group financial coaching

Drawbacks

• Some complaints about the user interface
• Most features are only available on the paid plan

Pricing

• Free basic version
• 14-day free trial for Premium
• Premium: $17.99/month

3. YNAB

You Need a Budget, or YNAB, is a versatile and robust personal budgeting app. It offers a wide range of features for tracking your spending through imported bank transactions and offers easy expense charts to help you see where your money is going.

Since YNAB is geared towards personal finance management, it doesn’t have a lot of tools for small business expense tracking. Its big downside is that you can’t scan receipts and it’s not meant for reimbursements. While it’s a good fit for tracking your basic spending habits, small business owners may find it difficult to achieve everything they need from a professional expense tracker.

Advantages

• Subscription-sharing with family and friends (up to 6 people)
• Goal-setting and tracking
• Loan planner tool for calculating and managing debt
• Automatically import bank transactions

Drawbacks

• No receipt scanning feature

Pricing

• 1 year free for registered college students
• 34-day free trial
• $15/month

4. Expensify

Expensify offers a robust array of receipt and expense tracking features, making it a great fit for medium to large businesses. It offers sophisticated features like corporate card integration, foreign currency reimbursement, and GPS mileage tracking that streamline your process for expense tracking and employee reimbursement.

Since Expensify is aimed at larger companies, the vast array of features presents a steep learning curve that may not be the best fit for smaller businesses. The free version is also limited to only a few features that are best geared towards personal spending.

Advantages

• Integrates with corporate credit cards
• Mileage tracking app includes GPS tracking
• Analyze spending trends
• Reimbursement for domestic and foreign currencies

Drawbacks

• User interface can be a challenging learning curve
• Limited features on the free plan

Pricing

• Basic free plan
• Collect: $5/month per user
• Control: $9/month per user

5. Simplifi

Simplifi is a versatile tool for users looking to create a custom personal budget. It goes beyond the standard budgeting tools by offering customized reports for your spending and saving, with an easy dashboard for navigating the app. It also integrates with your bank account and credit cards to rapidly import transactions.

Since Simplifi is geared towards personal finance tracking, it doesn’t offer the receipt scanning and organization options of a business expense tracker. This can be limiting for small business owners who have multiple accounts and want to categorize their expenses and offer employee reimbursements.

Advantages

• Bank account and credit card syncing for quick imports
• Create customized reports for spending and savings
• Intuitive user interface
• Real-time spending alerts

Drawbacks

• No integrated credit score reporting
• Doesn’t offer auto-entry receipt scanning

Pricing

• No free trial, but a full refund is available within 30 days
• $3.99/month

6. Digits

The Digits app aims to help users build their savings accounts without having to think about it. The app syncs your data to your checking and savings accounts, then automatically transfers small amounts of money from checking to savings according to your custom saving goals.

While the automatic system is helpful for saving, the lack of alerts can make some users feel the need to check their accounts frequently. Since Digits is focused on the savings aspect, it offers very few features in terms of expense categorization, receipt uploads, and other things that are helpful for business expense tracking.

Advantages

• Set custom short and long-term savings goals
• Automatically saves your money for you
• Offers overdraft protection features
• Syncs with investment systems

Drawbacks

• Doesn’t offer notifications on automatic savings
• Minimal features aside from savings goals

Pricing

• 30-day free trial
• $5/month

7. QuickBooks

QuickBooks is an accounting software that includes an expense and receipt tracking feature for an all-in-one function. Since it’s a multi-use software it comes with a slightly higher price tag, which may not be the most efficient fit for small businesses who already have accounting software. 

For new users looking for accounting and expense tracking, QuickBooks has some strengths—automatic recurring expenses and synced accounts make for easy recording, while cash flow statements help you track your spending. However, it only allows for reimbursements through payroll, which can be frustrating for businesses that want to track expenses and reimburse employees more quickly.

Advantages

• Option to automate recurring expenses
• Sync bank accounts and credit cards for automatic expense importing
• Built-in cash flow statements
• Includes a mobile app for receipt scanning and uploading

Drawbacks

• Only offers reimbursements through payroll
• Limited users on basic plans

Pricing

• 30-day free trial period
• Simple Start: $30/month
• Essentials: $60/month
• Plus: $90/month
• Advanced: $200/month

8. Rocket Money

Rocket Money is a different genre of expense tracker—it’s geared less toward business reimbursement and more toward personal finance management. It offers unique features like tracking down and canceling your unused subscriptions, as well as the ability to negotiate bill rates on recurring payments (these are only available on the higher-paid plans).

While not necessarily helpful for small businesses looking for a standard expense tracking and reimbursement system, Rocket Money still has lots of potential for small business owners who want to keep on top of their finances. Its notifications system is a plus for never missing an important bill payment or bank alert.

Advantages

• Features bill negotiation services on recurring bills
• Tracker to find and cancel unused subscriptions
• Notifications for upcoming renewals and other expense events

Drawbacks

• Bill negotiation is only available on more expensive plans

Pricing

• Free basic account
• Premium subscription with a sliding scale from $4/month to $12/month

9. Shoeboxed

Shoeboxed is a top pick for its receipt scanning and organization capabilities. Users can upload receipts and the app will automatically scan and digitize them. You can then search through those receipts and convert them into expense reports directly in the app.

The downside of Shoeboxed is its receipt limits—the most expensive plan offers 300 digital and 300 physical receipts every month, while the least expensive plan is limited to 50 digital and 25 physical receipts. For this reason, it may not be the best fit for large companies, but it’s a good option for smaller businesses looking to organize their receipts for tax time.

Advantages

• Unlimited users
• Automatically imports receipts sent through Gmail
• Effective receipt scanning and digitization

Drawbacks

• Maximum of 600 receipts per month (300 digital, 300 physical)
• Cannot reimburse through the app

Pricing

• Free 30-day trial
• Start Up: $23/month
• Professional: $47/month
• Business: $71/month

What Is an Expense Tracker?

An expense tracker is a tool that helps users monitor their personal or business expenses for better financial management. Personal expense trackers usually focus on savings goals, tracking where money is spent, and paying down debt. Business expense trackers offer more features like receipt scanning and spreadsheet organization, corporate card integration, and preparation for tax filing.

Most expense trackers will integrate with your bank account to help you track spending. Other apps with integrations like credit card syncing and compatibility with accounting software can help you track your expenses more efficiently. It’s important to explore expense tracking features to see if an app is better suited to personal or business finances.

How Do Expense Trackers Function?

Expense trackers function by importing all of your expenses so you can keep track of how much you spend and where that money goes. Simple expense trackers will integrate with your bank account to import transactions, while more comprehensive trackers offer additional options for credit card syncing and receipt scanning and categorization.

A robust expense tracker should not only track how much you spend but organize that spending into categories so you can create a clear budget. Automatic receipt scanning and analyzing is helpful for businesses that need to reimburse employees. It’s also beneficial to choose an expense tracker that can generate reports so you can see a quick overview of your personal or business finances.

Streamline Your Expense Tracking with FreshBooks

An expense tracker is a great way to streamline your financial management by creating clear budgets, setting savings goals, and tracking your spending. There are a variety of free expense trackers available with different features for personal and business tracking.

FreshBooks expense tracking makes it easy to track your professional spending so you can boost your small business’s efficiency. Effortlessly upload your receipts for quick and easy reimbursement, track mileage with the app, and categorize your expenses for stress-free tax filing. Try FreshBooks free to get started tracking your expenses and save money today.

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