We believe there are better options available in this category, read below to learn what this software does well, and what they could do better. ⤵
BILL Spend & Expense (Formerly Divvy) The spend management platform for teams of all sizes (customizable virtual cards, budgeting, auto-reconciling, and expense reimbursement).
I'm sure you've heard of a business credit card? Divvy is a replacement for your typical corporate card. It's totally free to use (no annual fee), you get rewards and it has a much more comprehensive feature set, giving you the ability to create virtual credit cards for each vendor with spending limits. Further, Divvy is an expense management solution. Bought a new marketing software? Categorize it and when integrated with Quickbooks Online, it will automatically reconcile your books for you.
Simply put, if you are a business owner living in the United States, you are missing out if you're not using an expense management solution + a divvy business credit card. There are other players in the market, and we've used all of the core competitors (Ramp, Brex, Expensify, and Airbase), and we're here to tell you to look no further than Divvy (newly rebranded to BILL Spend & Expense). (Did we mention it's totally free? 👀)
Divvy gives us so much control when it comes to our spending. We can easily create a virtual credit card, set a budget and Quickbooks category within seconds for each different vendor. We simply set a budget for each credit card for the exact amount that we know will be charged. If a subscription service decides to increase their pricing and charge our card, it will decline. And we like that, because we want to be the one deciding if someone should charge us more or not. 💪
Because we're able to put virtual cards down with each vendor, Divvy's allowed us (and our vendor) to actually catch a person that committed fraud by stealing and using our credit card 🤯 Of course, the employee of our vendor was fired. Catching them would have been impossible to pin down if we had a generic credit card on file. We share this story in this 1 minute video.
Have multiple employees that need their own corporate card? Create a card for them and set a spending limit, that's all you need to do. You can change the spending limit for each employee, make it $50 or $500, Divvy cards allow you to be flexible. If they leave the company, simply freeze the card (you have total control—just think of what the process is like with a typically corporate card. Issuing a new card for an employee is an annoying process, as is cancelling it). Not to mention the positive affect it has on your employees, as they get to feel empowered and like a trusted part of the team.
The rewards are pretty standard with others in the business credit card space, getting somewhere around 1–1.5% on all categories, with a bit more in certain categories (higher % when making payments weekly—less if made bi-weekly or monthly).
One customer that we recommended Divvy to started using it and quickly saw his reward balance grow. He decided to use the reward funds as Christmas bonuses for his employees. He said, "it's money that's just sitting there, and if I can give them a little extra to take home at the end of the year, it's something cool I get to do."
Travel rewards are also a perk with Divvy as they are partnered with TravelPerk. While we haven't cashed in our travel rewards yet, it's a great option for our next company retreat!
Out of all the competitors, Divvy has the best UI/UX and does a fantastic job at natively integrating with QuickBooks Online (for automating your expense reconciling process), and handles team budgeting like a dream:
Divvy allows you to create a virtual credit card and map it to the respective category + set up an email forwarding filter within your email once, and every single time the card is charged, your QuickBooks Online is already reconciled and up-to-date with a PDF of the receipt.
The Divvy eligibility requirements are way more accessible than that of Ramp and Brex (who both make their account criteria unnecessarily high). Divvy is great for startups and teams of all sizes, even if you're just getting your business started.
Divvy is the best tool in the spend management, business credit cards, budgeting, and basic accounting automation suite for most businesses of all sizes.
Accounting software for small and medium teams typically based in the US
We find that teams based in the US tend to use QuickBooks Online, and businesses outside of the US tend to lean more toward Xero.
This is important because it means that the features QBO is building is more focused on things like US Sales Tax laws, while Xero may have more accounting features helpful outside of the US especially.
Also, accountants inside of the US are often more proficient with QBO as compared to Xero (although they should be familiar with both).
P.S. We highly recommend QBO over QuickBooks Desktop because of their robust API—you're not going to be integrating QuickBooks Desktop easily with anything.
Rating: D-
Some people have mentioned that QuickBooks Online allows for some expense management features like virtual credit cards, that said, a tool like Bill Spend & Expense (formerly Divvy) does so much more for expense management than simply allowing for a one-off virtual card though. Unlike QBO, a proper expense management tool allows you to go deeper, as it ties in individual and team budgets (across the entire company), all to ensure your company only allocates what they have budgeted for.
QBO also does not have proper receipt matching that automatically ties the receipt from your email to the individual transaction.
QBO does not have credit card rewards with their virtual credit card solution either.
Rating: C
This is one of those areas that it makes sense that they cover, but you can tell it was an add-on versus being their core service. Payroll is boring, and hey, QBO does the job, it's just not a straightforward user-experience, and let's just say we used it for 4 years before switching to Gusto, and there's not a single bone in my body that misses QBO for payroll. It was also incredibly painful closing it down with them, reporting to all the Department of Labor agencies, and everything. Save yourself the time and skip out on QBO for Payroll.
Rating: D
If you compare QuickBooks Online to any of the best time tracking software on the market, you'll see just how wildly barebones, slow, and underwhelming it is. Even just the process of logging into QBO feels like you're pushing a boulder uphill, now you need to do it any time you track software? No thanks, I'll pass.
They designed it more to be for people who just need to submit their time one-per-day or once-per-week, they are building to check a box, not to be leading the time tracking space.