Figures verified against HMRC and gov.uk guidance on 28 July 2026.
Every page on this search result uses the word checklist and then ships prose. Twenty headings, each one a paragraph about why integration matters, and nothing at the end you can put in a procurement file. This page is built the other way round: the artefact is the point, and the writing exists to explain how to use it.
Two things this page is not. It is not an expense policy checklist. That is a different job, covered in your easy to follow expense policy checklist, and you should do it first, because the policy is the requirement and the software is only the implementation. And it is not a definition. If you are earlier in the process, what expense management software is and how it works end to end cover the ground, do I need expense management software tells you whether to start at all, and the expense management buyers guide is the pillar for this whole cluster.
How to use this checklist
Three rules make the difference between a scorecard that decides something and a spreadsheet that gets abandoned in week three.
Weight before you demo. Vendors are good at making you care about the thing they happen to be good at. If you set your weights on Monday, a Thursday demo cannot move them. The widget below sets a starting weight per theme from six facts about your business, then lets you override every one of them. Both halves matter: the default stops you staring at a blank grid, and the override stops the default being wrong.
Score what you saw, not what you were told. The scale runs zero for not available, one for a workaround or a roadmap date, two for claimed but not seen, and three for demonstrated on screen. Two is the score that matters, because two is where most evaluations quietly live and where most disappointments start. Every criterion sitting on a two goes straight onto the demo question list.
Mark your must-haves, and let them cap the verdict. A weighted average will happily let a vendor score 78% while failing the one thing that would end the conversation. Ticking Must on a criterion means a score of zero or one caps the verdict regardless of the total. Seven are ticked by default. They are the ones that, in practice, are hardest to fix after signature: VAT split at the line, a digital link rather than a retype, policy enforced at submission, self approval blocked at system level, a named connector to your finance system, UK data residency in the contract, and an exit clause that names the format.
Score your shortlist
Nothing below is sent anywhere. There is no email gate and no form. Copy or print the result and take it into the next call.
Weighted expense management software scorecard
Set your profile, check the weights it assigns, score up to three vendors, then take the gap list and the demo questions into your next call. Nothing is sent anywhere and there is no email gate.
1. Your profile
2. The weights you were assigned
These come from your profile. Change any of them. Zero removes a theme from the score entirely.
3. Your shortlist
4. Score the 46 criteria
Zero means not available. One means a workaround or a roadmap date. Two means they said yes but you did not see it. Three means they demonstrated it on screen, with your data or something close to it. Tick Must for anything that would end the conversation if it failed.
| Criterion | Must | Vendor A | Vendor B | Vendor C |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. UK tax and VAT compliance | ||||
| Splits VAT out per claim line and stores the supplier VAT number from the receipt image | ||||
| Treats a receipt of 250 pounds or less as a valid simplified VAT invoice and derives the VAT itself | ||||
| Separates staff entertaining from client entertaining and blocks recovery on the client side | ||||
| Calculates recoverable VAT on the fuel element of a mileage claim using advisory fuel rates | ||||
| Moves data towards the VAT return through a digital link rather than a copy and paste or a retype | ||||
| Keeps claim records and receipt images for at least six years and returns any one of them in minutes | ||||
| B. Capture and mobile | ||||
| Submits, approves and queries a claim on a phone with no desktop step anywhere in the loop | ||||
| Captures a receipt from a messaging app the team already has open | ||||
| Captures offline and syncs when signal returns, with nothing lost in between | ||||
| Reads a creased thermal till receipt, not only a clean supplier PDF | ||||
| Detects duplicate receipts across different submitters, dates and amounts | ||||
| Converts foreign currency at a dated rate and stores the rate that was used | ||||
| C. Policy, approval and control | ||||
| Enforces policy at submission, so a breach is stopped before an approver ever sees it | ||||
| Runs different policy sets per entity, department, grade or country | ||||
| Routes approvals by value, category and cost centre, across more than one step | ||||
| Blocks self approval at system level, including for directors and cover arrangements | ||||
| Keeps an audit trail of every change that no user, including an administrator, can edit | ||||
| Handles delegates and out of office approval without anybody sharing a login | ||||
| D. Cards and reconciliation | ||||
| Imports card transactions automatically rather than through a manual file | ||||
| Matches receipts to transactions and ages the unmatched ones visibly | ||||
| Chases the cardholder automatically for a missing receipt | ||||
| Controls card limits and merchant categories from the same system | ||||
| Produces a statement level reconciliation that ties back to the bank | ||||
| E. Mileage and travel | ||||
| Applies the current AMAP rates, including the change on 6 April 2026, and keeps rate history | ||||
| Applies the 10,000 mile threshold per employee per tax year without anyone tracking it manually | ||||
| Calculates point to point mileage, stores the route, and lets the employee justify a detour | ||||
| Deducts the ordinary commute where a journey starts or ends at home | ||||
| Supports the passenger supplement and the motorcycle and bicycle rates | ||||
| F. Integration and data flow | ||||
| Has a named, supported connector to your accounting system rather than a generic export | ||||
| Reimburses through payroll as well as by bank payment file | ||||
| Pulls cost centres, projects and nominal codes from the finance system instead of asking people to type them | ||||
| Surfaces failed postings in a visible queue and lets you retry them | ||||
| Publishes API documentation, including rate limits | ||||
| Supports single sign on with automatic joiner and leaver provisioning | ||||
| G. Security, data protection and assurance | ||||
| Holds Cyber Essentials, and Cyber Essentials Plus where public sector data is involved | ||||
| Holds ISO 27001 with a scope statement covering the product, not only the head office | ||||
| States UK data residency in the contract and names the region | ||||
| Maintains a current sub-processor list and gives notice before it changes | ||||
| Commissions an independent penetration test at least annually and will share a summary | ||||
| Supports your DPIA with a completed processor questionnaire | ||||
| Enforces role based access and MFA, and exports an administrator action log | ||||
| H. Commercials, implementation and exit | ||||
| Prices per active claimant per month, with active defined in writing | ||||
| Prices every add-on: OCR volume, cards, integrations, extra entities and support tier | ||||
| Puts implementation scope, timeline and a named owner into the order form | ||||
| Names the exit format, the data included and the cost of extraction in the contract | ||||
| States the notice period, any uplift cap and what happens to historic receipt images at termination | ||||
Nothing scored yet
Set your profile above, then score each criterion for the vendors on your shortlist. The verdict, the gap list and the demo questions all update as you go.
Per theme, weighted
| Theme | A | B | C |
|---|---|---|---|
| A. UK tax and VAT compliance | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| B. Capture and mobile | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| C. Policy, approval and control | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| D. Cards and reconciliation | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| E. Mileage and travel | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| F. Integration and data flow | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| G. Security, data protection and assurance | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| H. Commercials, implementation and exit | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Gaps for Vendor A, and the risk each one creates (0 in total)
- No gaps recorded yet. A gap appears here as soon as you score a criterion zero or one.
Take these to the demo (46 criteria are still unscored or resting on a claim, 0 scored so far)
- Ask them to photograph a real UK till receipt during the call and show the VAT number and VAT amount landing on the claim line without anyone typing.
- Ask an approver on the vendor side to reject a claim with a comment on a phone, screen shared, not described.
- Ask them to submit a claim that breaks two rules and show the messages the employee sees before they can send it.
- Ask them to set an out of office delegate and show the approval recorded against both names.
- Ask them to produce a statement reconciliation for a closed period and show the difference line resolving to zero.
- Ask them to add two passengers to a 60 mile journey and show the supplement calculated separately.
- Ask them to disable a user in the identity provider and show access dropping without anyone touching the expense system.
- Ask what happens to the invoice in a month when 40 of your 300 people claim nothing at all.
Weighted score is the sum of each theme percentage multiplied by its weight, divided by the total weight. Unscored criteria count as zero, which is deliberate: an unproven capability is not a capability.
The 46 criteria, and what each one is actually testing
The criteria sit in eight themes. Each theme carries a weight, so the same 46 criteria produce a different answer for a 60 person software business with no cards and a 900 person facilities contractor with 300 vans.
A. UK tax and VAT compliance
This is the theme the international vendors lose, and they lose it quietly, because nothing on the demo goes red. The tests that separate them are specific. Can it treat a receipt of 250 pounds or less as a less detailed VAT invoice and derive the VAT itself, rather than asking the claimant to type a number they are guessing at? Does it know that VAT can be reclaimed on supplies of 25 pounds or less without a receipt where the supplier is demonstrably VAT registered? Does it apportion a mixed entertaining event, where the employee share is recoverable and the UK client share is not?
The one nobody asks about is the digital link. VAT Notice 700/22 states plainly that cut and paste is not a digital link. That single sentence invalidates the workflow most businesses actually run: photograph the receipt, key it into a spreadsheet, retype the total into the return. The photograph is fine, and the same notice confirms that where the image contains everything VAT requires you do not have to keep the paper. It is the retype in the middle that breaks. Ask the vendor to trace one claim from photograph to the box on the return and name every hop.
B. Capture and mobile
Mobile is where adoption is won or lost, and it is the theme most evaluations score from a slide. The distinction that matters is not whether there is an app, it is whether the app is equivalent to the desktop or a cut down view of it. If an approver cannot query and reject a claim from a phone, month end waits for whoever is travelling. We score mobile capability in far more depth in the expense management app post, including a mobile parity test you can run on a trial account, so this checklist keeps mobile to six criteria and points you there for the detail.
Two of the six are worth insisting on. Offline capture, because engineers, drivers and site staff work in places with no signal and a capture that fails quietly becomes a receipt in a van footwell. And OCR on a real receipt: send the vendor a photograph of your own worst crumpled thermal receipt during the call, rather than watching them extract data from a clean PDF invoice. How receipt OCR actually works explains why the two are not remotely the same problem.
C. Policy, approval and control
The question underneath this theme is where policy gets applied. Enforced at submission, a breach never reaches an approver and the employee learns the rule at the moment they broke it. Enforced at approval, every line manager becomes the policy police and the argument happens at the end of the process when the money is already spent.
Self approval is the one to be inflexible about. It is the most common single finding in expense audits, it usually involves a director or somebody covering a colleague on leave, and a policy that says no is not a control. Ask the vendor to log in as an administrator and try to approve their own claim. The right outcome is the system refusing. The company expense policy template covers what the rules should say; this theme covers whether the software can hold you to them.
D. Cards and reconciliation
If you issue company cards, the transaction arrives before the receipt does, which inverts the whole process. That makes an automatic transaction feed non-negotiable, and it makes the unmatched queue the report you actually live in. Ask to see it sorted by age, and ask what happens at day thirty. The answer tells you whether chasing is a system function or a person’s afternoon.
Reconciliation detail sits in how to do a credit card reconciliation, and the product side is on the card reconciliation and expense cards pages. Note the terminology: expense cards, not pre-paid cards, and they are part of the same system rather than a separate banking portal you log into once a quarter.
E. Mileage and travel
Mileage is the fastest way to find out whether a vendor maintains its UK tax data or wrote it once. Approved mileage payments for cars and vans rose to 55p for the first 10,000 miles on 6 April 2026, the first change since 2011 to 2012, with 25p above 10,000 and 5p per passenger per mile. A system still showing 45p is a system nobody has updated, and it underpays every driver in your business. Our HMRC mileage rates 2026-27 post has the full table.
Two further tests. The 10,000 mile threshold has to apply per employee per tax year automatically, because missing the drop to 25p turns the excess into a taxable benefit somebody unpicks at P11D. And the ordinary commute has to be deducted where a journey starts or ends at home, because reimbursing commuting is a benefit rather than a business expense and it is a routine finding. See vehicle mileage tracking and claiming VAT on mileage.
F. Integration and data flow
A file export is an integration you maintain. A connector is an integration they maintain. That is the whole theme in two sentences, and it is why the criterion is a named, supported connector to your finance system rather than the word integration on a slide. Ask them to name your system and show it running in a live tenant.
The one that gets missed is the failure path. Every integration fails sometimes. What matters is whether the failure appears in a visible queue with somebody’s name against it, or disappears until year end. Ask them to break a posting deliberately and show you where the error surfaces. Integrations lists the supported connectors, and syncing with accounting systems goes into the mechanics.
G. Security, data protection and assurance
This is the theme that delays contracts, and the delay is almost always avoidable by asking earlier. Send the security questionnaire before the second demo rather than after the decision. The seven criteria are deliberately about evidence rather than assurances, and the table further down sets out exactly what to ask for.
H. Commercials, implementation and exit
Two of these five are about money and three are about what happens when things go wrong. The exit criterion is the one nobody on this search result covers at all, and it is the one that costs the most. Your VAT records have to survive six years. If the vendor’s standard terms delete your data thirty days after termination, and the export is a folder of image files with no index linking them to claims, then your six year record has no value the moment you leave.
The UK compliance criteria, written as testable requirements
Every vendor page says HMRC compliant. Almost none of them says what that means, and the phrase is not a certification, an accreditation or a defined standard. Here is the same claim rewritten as ten things you can make somebody do in a demo, with the rule and the figure behind each one. If the answer in the fourth column is what you hear, the claim is decoration. More context in our guide to expense compliance in the UK.
Ten UK compliance tests, the rule behind each and the failing answer
| The test to run in the demo | The rule and the figure | Where the rule sits | What a failing answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|---|
| Submit a 14 pound cafe receipt with no VAT shown separately. | A supply of 250 pounds or less including VAT can be evidenced by a less detailed VAT invoice showing the supplier name, address and VAT number, the time of supply, a description, the gross amount and the VAT rate. | HMRC VATREC16042, citing VAT Notice 700 paragraph 16.6.2 | The employee types the VAT figure in. |
| Claim 18 pounds of parking with no receipt at all. | VAT can be reclaimed on supplies of 25 pounds or less without a receipt where you can show the supplier is VAT registered. | HMRC GfC8, employee expenses part 5 | We require a receipt for everything, no exceptions. That is a policy choice, not a rule, and it costs you recoverable VAT. |
| Enter a 90 mile journey in a 1.6 litre diesel car. | Input tax on the fuel element is the fuel element multiplied by the VAT fraction, and you must hold fuel VAT invoices covering it. Advisory fuel rates are published quarterly. From 1 June 2026 a 1601cc to 2000cc diesel is 17p per mile. | VAT Notice 700/64, paragraphs 9.8 to 9.10 and advisory fuel rates | Mileage does not have VAT in it. |
| Trace one claim from photograph to the box on the VAT return and name every hop. | Cut and paste, or copy and paste, is not a digital link. Every transfer between pieces of software in the chain has to be digital. | VAT Notice 700/22 | You export to a spreadsheet and paste the totals in. |
| Ask whether you still need to keep the paper receipt. | Where the image is retained and contains all the detail required for VAT, the original invoice does not need to be kept unless it is needed for another purpose. A few documents, such as C79 import VAT certificates, must stay in original form. | VAT Notice 700/22 and Notice 700/21 | We would recommend keeping the paper as well, just in case. That is a hedge, not a compliance position. |
| Ask them to retrieve a named claim from three years ago, and time it. | VAT records must generally be kept for at least six years. | VAT Notice 700/21 | We archive after two years and retrieval goes through a support ticket. |
| Enter 10,400 business miles for one employee in one tax year. | Approved mileage for cars and vans is 55p for the first 10,000 miles and 25p above that, from 6 April 2026. The 55p rate replaced 45p, the first change since 2011 to 2012. | gov.uk, business travel mileage, rules for tax | It is 45p. This is still the most common wrong answer on the market, including from systems updated this year. |
| Add two passengers to a 60 mile business journey. | 5p per passenger per mile, tax free, for fellow employees travelling on the same business journey. | gov.uk, business travel mileage | We do not handle passengers, people add it as a separate expense. |
| Ask what feeds P11D and what feeds payroll. | P11D and P11D(b) are due by 6 July and Class 1A National Insurance by 22 July, charged at 15%. Payrolling of benefits in kind becomes mandatory from April 2027. | gov.uk, reporting and paying expenses and benefits | You export a report and send it to your accountant. |
| Ask for the retention setting on PAYE expenses records. | PAYE records, including taxable expenses and benefits, must be kept for three years after the end of the tax year they relate to. The penalty for inadequate records can reach 3,000 pounds. | gov.uk, PAYE and payroll for employers, keeping records | That is a payroll question, not an expenses question. |
Two notes on that table. First, the mileage row is the single most reliable indicator of whether a vendor keeps its UK tax data current, because the 55p rate is only a few months old and the change was the first in fifteen years. Note also that gov.uk’s rates and thresholds page for employers shows 45p, because that is the National Insurance figure; the tax rate of 55p is on the business travel mileage page. A vendor who cannot explain that distinction has not read either.
Second, subsistence. If a vendor quotes the benchmark scale rates at 5, 10 and 15 pounds, they are reading a superseded HMRC page. The current rates sit at EIM30240 and the late evening rate is 25 pounds, not 15. It is a small thing that tells you how the product is maintained.
The security and assurance evidence to demand before contract
Security in most software evaluations is a page of logos. Logos are not evidence. These nine items are, and asking for all of them before the second demo will shorten your procurement by weeks, because the vendors who can produce them do so in a day and the ones who cannot will tell you by going quiet.
Nine pieces of assurance evidence, and what a good answer contains
| Ask for this | What good looks like | Why it decides the contract |
|---|---|---|
| Cyber Essentials or Cyber Essentials Plus certificate | The certificate itself, with the certification body and expiry date visible. Cyber Essentials Plus is independently tested rather than self assessed. | Public sector and many enterprise procurement processes require Plus by name. A lapsed certificate is worse than none, because somebody stopped paying attention. |
| ISO 27001 certificate and scope statement | The scope statement naming the product and the hosting environment, not just the registered office. | A certificate scoped to corporate IT says nothing about the platform holding six years of your receipt images. |
| Data residency, in the contract | The region named in the data processing agreement, covering live data, backups and where support staff log in from. | A marketing page saying UK hosted is not a contractual commitment. Where data leaves the UK you need the transfer mechanism documented. |
| Current sub-processor list and change notice | A published list, plus a stated notice period before a new sub-processor is added and a right to object. | Your UK GDPR obligations follow your data into every sub-processor. You cannot assess a list you have never been shown. |
| Penetration test cadence and a summary report | At least annual, run by an independent firm, with a summary you can read under NDA and a note of what was remediated. | Every vendor says the platform is secure. The only difference between them is who has tried to break it and what happened next. |
| DPIA support | A completed processor questionnaire returned within days, not weeks, covering the points the ICO expects a DPIA to address. | You are the controller. If they cannot answer, the delay and the residual risk are both yours. |
| Access control and administrator logging | Role based access, enforced MFA, and an administrator action log you can export yourself without raising a ticket. | During an investigation you need to evidence who did what. A log only they can read is a log you cannot use. |
| Breach notification commitment | A stated timescale for telling you, written into the contract, that leaves you able to meet your own 72 hour obligation. | Your reporting clock starts when you become aware. If they take a week to tell you, you have already missed it. |
| Public sector route to market | A live listing on the G-Cloud Digital Marketplace through Crown Commercial Service. | For public sector buyers this removes a procurement exercise. For everyone else it is independent evidence the vendor has passed somebody else’s due diligence. |
One point on scope. Both certifications are commonly presented without their scope, and scope is the entire question. A Cyber Essentials certificate covers a defined boundary of devices and services. An ISO 27001 certificate covers a defined set of activities. Read both scope statements out loud and check the product is named. If it is not named, it is not covered, and the logo on the website is telling you about the vendor’s office network.
Exit and data portability, the section nobody writes
Nothing in the top ten search results for this query covers what you get back at the end of the contract. It is the last thing anyone negotiates and the first thing that hurts. Six questions, and the answers to insist on.
Six exit questions and the answers worth signing
| The question | The answer to insist on | The version that should worry you |
|---|---|---|
| What format does the data come back in? | CSV or JSON for claim, approval and posting data, with a documented schema. | A PDF report per claim. That is a printout, not a data export. |
| Do we get the receipt images? | Every image, in its original resolution, in a structured folder. | Images are available on request, or thumbnails only. |
| How do images link back to claims? | A manifest file mapping each image filename to its claim reference, date, claimant and amount. | The filenames are the claim numbers. Ask what happens where a claim has four receipts. |
| How long does extraction take? | A stated number of working days from written request, in the contract. | It depends on volume. That means it depends on how busy they are the month you leave. |
| What does it cost? | Nothing, or a capped fee stated in the order form. | Priced at time and materials on exit. This is the single most expensive sentence in most expense software contracts. |
| What happens to the data afterwards? | A defined retention window after termination, then documented deletion with a certificate. | Deleted 30 days after termination. Your VAT record has to survive six years, and it will not be sitting with them. |
The manifest question is the one people skip. Receipt images without a file mapping each image to its claim reference, date, claimant and amount are not a VAT record, they are a folder. Ask for a sample export from a real tenant during the evaluation, not a description of one, and open it yourself.
Expense management software comparison: the ten questions that separate vendors
Most expense management software comparison exercises are decided by whoever demos last and best. These ten questions are phrased as demonstrations because a yes costs a vendor nothing, and the gap between what a product does and what it can be shown doing is where every implementation disappointment lives. The widget generates a full list from whatever you have not yet scored; this is the short version for a first call.
- Photograph this receipt now, on the call, and show me the VAT number and VAT amount landing on the claim line without anyone typing.
- Have an approver on your side reject a claim with a comment, on a phone, screen shared.
- Put the phone in aeroplane mode, capture two receipts, reconnect, and show me both arriving.
- Submit a claim that breaks two policy rules and show me what the employee sees before they can send it.
- Log in as an administrator and try to approve your own claim.
- Enter 10,400 business miles for one employee and show me the split at 10,000.
- Break a posting to the finance system deliberately and show me where the error appears and who is told.
- Export the administrator action log for the last thirty days and open the file.
- Show me a sample data export from a real tenant, including images and the manifest that links them to claims.
- Quote our exact configuration on one page, then tell me what is deliberately not on that page.
Questions one to six are for the first demo. Seven to ten are for the second, which is the demo most evaluations skip and the one where claims turn into evidence. If a vendor declines a second session, that is itself a data point.
Pricing questions that change the total
Headline pricing in this market clusters closely enough that it rarely decides anything. What decides things is the definition of a user, the OCR allowance, which edition contains your finance connector, what an extra entity costs, and the annual uplift. Seven questions, each of which has moved a real quote by a material amount.
Seven pricing questions worth asking before you compare quotes
| The line you were quoted | The question that changes the number |
|---|---|
| Price per user per month | Is that per licensed user or per active claimant, and what is your written definition of active? In a 300 person business where 180 claim in a normal month, the difference is most of the invoice. |
| OCR or receipt scanning included | Included up to how many receipts per user per month, and what is the overage rate? Field teams submit at three to five times the office average. |
| Integrations included | Which named integrations, at which edition, and is the connector to our specific finance system one of them or a professional services item? |
| Implementation | Is that a fixed price with a defined scope, or an estimate? Which side builds the policy rules, the approval hierarchy and the cost centre mapping? |
| Support | Which tier is in this price, what are the response targets, and is UK business hours support standard or an upgrade? |
| Additional entities | What does entity two cost, and does adding one change our edition? Multi entity is the most common trigger for a mid contract uplift. |
| Annual uplift | Is there a cap, and is it in the order form or only in the standard terms you can vary at renewal? |
Run the same seven past every vendor and quote the answers side by side. If you want the cost of the current manual process to compare against, spreadsheets versus expense software models it, and the ROI calculator puts numbers against your own headcount.
What this looks like in Capture Expense
Since we are one of the vendors you might score, here is where Capture Expense sits against the eight themes, stated plainly enough that you can check it.
Mobile is the strongest claim we make. The mobile app is equivalent to the desktop rather than a reduced version of it: submit, approve, query and report from a phone, with no step that requires a laptop. Capture also runs through WhatsApp, Slack and Teams, which matters more than it sounds, because the app people already have open is the app they will actually use. If your workforce is field based, weight theme B heavily and make us prove it.
UK tax is the reason we exist rather than a localisation. Capture Expense is UK built and UK hosted, part of PSSG alongside Cintra payroll, which is why reimbursement through payroll is a first class route rather than a file you generate and hand over. AMAP rates, the 10,000 mile split, VAT handling on receipts and mileage, and P11D or payrolled benefit feeds are maintained as tax rules change, not at the next major release. The travel expenses module was built primarily for Irish Revenue compliance, which is why Ireland is a disproportionately strong market for us.
On assurance, Capture Expense holds Cyber Essentials Plus and is listed on the G-Cloud Digital Marketplace, which is the route most of our government and education customers use. The detail sits on the security page, and you should read it the way this article tells you to read everybody’s: scope statement first.
Where we are narrower than some alternatives. Capture Expense does one thing. It is not part of a wider finance suite, and it is not a corporate travel booking platform; it manages travel expenses, not travel bookings. If your requirement is a single vendor for procurement, invoices, payments and expenses, we are not that, and a scorecard weighted heavily towards theme F breadth will say so. Our own view is that staying in one niche is why the expense side works properly, but score it against your requirement rather than ours. Book a demo and bring the list from the widget; the second demo is the one worth booking.
Frequently asked questions
What should be on an expense management software checklist?
A usable checklist has three parts: the capability criteria, the weighting that says which of them matter to you, and a scoring scale that distinguishes what a vendor claimed from what you watched them do. Ours runs to 46 criteria across UK tax and VAT compliance, capture and mobile, policy and approval control, cards and reconciliation, mileage and travel, integration and data flow, security and assurance, and commercials including exit. A list of features with tick boxes is not a checklist, because every vendor ticks every box.
How do you compare expense management software fairly?
Weight the themes before you see a demo, not after. Vendors are good at making you care about the thing they are good at, and a weighting you set on Monday survives a demo on Thursday. Then score the same criteria in the same order for every vendor, using one scale, and record whether each score came from a claim or from something you watched happen on screen. Compare the weighted totals and the per theme breakdown, because a vendor that wins overall while losing badly on your heaviest theme is not the winner.
What questions should you ask in an expense management software demo?
Ask for demonstrations rather than answers. Instead of asking whether the mobile app supports approvals, ask an approver on their side to reject a claim with a comment on a phone while sharing their screen. Instead of asking whether OCR is accurate, send them a photograph of your own worst receipt during the call. Instead of asking whether it is HMRC compliant, ask them to enter 10,400 miles for one employee and show the rate splitting at 10,000. A yes and a demonstration are not the same evidence and should not score the same.
What UK compliance requirements should expense management software meet?
Written as tests rather than topics: it should derive recoverable VAT from a receipt of 250 pounds or less without anyone typing it, handle the 25 pounds no receipt concession, calculate VAT on the fuel element of mileage using advisory fuel rates, move data towards the VAT return through a digital link rather than a copy and paste, apply 55p and 25p AMAP rates with the 10,000 mile split, keep VAT records six years and PAYE expenses records three years, and feed P11D or payrolled benefits. Ask for each one to be shown, not confirmed.
Is Cyber Essentials Plus necessary for expense management software?
It depends who you are. Cyber Essentials is the minimum standard the government recommends and covers five technical controls, verified by self assessment with independent verification of the answers. Cyber Essentials Plus covers the same controls but adds hands on technical testing by the certifying body. If you are in the public sector, or you sell to it, Plus is frequently a contractual requirement. If you are not, treat Plus as evidence that the vendor has been independently poked at rather than trusted, and weight it accordingly.
How much does expense management software cost in the UK?
Most UK vendors price per user per month, typically in the low single figures of pounds, with the real variation hiding in the definition of a user, the OCR allowance, integration edition, extra entities and support tier. The honest way to compare is to ask each vendor to quote your exact configuration on one page and then ask what is deliberately not on that page. Our pricing page sets out where Capture Expense sits, and the free expense software post covers where the no cost options stop working.
What is the difference between an expense policy checklist and an expense software checklist?
A policy checklist is about what you will and will not reimburse and how a claim gets approved. It applies whether you buy software or not. A software checklist is about whether a product can enforce that policy, evidence it to HMRC and get the data into your finance system. Write the policy first, because the policy is the requirement and the software is the implementation. Our expense policy checklist covers the first job and this page covers the second.
How long should choosing expense management software take?
For a business in the 200 to 1,000 headcount range, six to ten weeks from first demo to signature is realistic: two weeks to write requirements and weights, three or four weeks of demos with two rounds each, two weeks for security review and references, and two weeks for commercials and exit terms. The two stages people compress are the security questionnaire and the exit clause, and those are the two that cost the most later. Anything faster than four weeks usually means somebody skipped the second demo, which is the one where claims turn into demonstrations.
Related reading
- The expense management buyers guide, the pillar for this cluster
- Your easy to follow expense policy checklist, the policy job rather than the software job
- Top considerations for CFOs choosing an expense management system
- The expense management app post, including the mobile parity test
- A guide to expense compliance in the UK
- HMRC mileage rates 2026-27 and HMRC advisory fuel rates 2026
- Phased payrolling of benefits in kind and 2026 expense tax changes
- HMRC record keeping and does HMRC accept digital receipts
- Free expense software in the UK and spreadsheets versus expense software