Kayako is a complete customer service help desk platform designed to improve support operations. Founded in 2001 and based in London, it serves over 50,000 customers in more than 100 countries. Notable users include Peugeot, De Beers, and NASA. Kayako features an AI-enabled help desk management system that changes how companies support their customers.

Kayako helps businesses manage inquiries through email, live chat, social media, and web forms, all from one dashboard. Its strong ticketing system lets support teams create, track, and resolve issues efficiently. Automation features take care of repetitive tasks, allowing agents to focus on complex problems. The platform also offers collaboration tools that help teams work together smoothly, breaking down barriers to enhance customer interactions.

You'll find Kayako useful if you want to reduce response times and boost customer satisfaction. It aims to eliminate "content friction," "contact friction," and "context friction." This makes it easier for customers to find solutions, reach out through their preferred channels, and avoid repeating information. With features like SingleView™, you can see a customer's full journey and interaction history in one spot for more personalized support.

Kayako is ideal for growing businesses looking to scale customer support without losing quality. Organizations of all sizes use the platform, from small teams of 10-50 employees to large enterprises with over 1,000 staff. If you're in IT, computer software, or e-commerce — key sectors for Kayako — you'll likely find its features match your needs. The platform's capacity to support growth makes it a reliable long-term choice for businesses planning to expand their support operations.

Kayako: Plans and pricing

Kayako has a tiered pricing model for different business sizes. But the company has recently changed its pricing structure. Before, there were three main tiers:

• Essential: $39 per agent per month
• Professional: $99 per agent per month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing, billed annually

The Essential plan offered core features like a ticketing system and unlimited AI-suggested responses. The Professional plan included knowledge base audits, a self-learning mode (limited to 100 tickets per month), multiple chatbots, API access, and integrations.

The Enterprise plan had the most features, such as unlimited self-learning mode, ticket summaries, ticket responses co-pilot, audio file transcriptions, multilingual content, powerful reporting, and the ability to change the Kayako/Atlas logo.

Now, Kayako has removed the Professional plan and updated the pricing for the Essential and Enterprise plans. The new pricing isn’t on the website, but you can schedule a call with their sales team to get a tailored quote.

There used to be a 30-day money-back guarantee, but it’s unclear if that still exists. Kayako also offered a 14-day free trial for new users, which now seems to have been replaced by an interactive demo during sales calls. This is disappointing, as a demo may not fully capture the platform experience like a trial would.

Kayako: Features

Kayako provides a full suite of customer service tools to streamline support and enhance experiences. It merges classic help desk features with modern, AI-driven capabilities across various channels. At its core, Kayako offers ticketing, live chat, self-service options, and collaboration tools. Together, these create a unified support ecosystem suitable for businesses of all sizes.

What makes Kayako unique is its SingleView™ technology. This feature visualizes the entire customer journey in one interface. With the new AI-driven ticket summaries and suggestions, support teams can offer personalized help. The platform balances automation with human interaction, allowing businesses to grow their support without losing quality or connection.

Ticketing system

Kayako's ticketing software turns traditional email support into a collaborative workflow that boosts team productivity. Agents can create, track, and resolve customer issues by quickly assigning tickets to the right people. Features like AI-suggested responses, ticket summaries, and smart workflows help teams reduce repetitive tasks and focus on high-value interactions.

The system also supports collaboration among agents, internal experts, and external vendors directly within tickets. Every input is saved for future reference, ensuring clear communication and thorough problem-solving. This, along with features like canned responses and internal notes, helps businesses resolve complex issues faster while keeping a complete record of all interactions.

Live chat features

Kayako Messenger delivers a user-friendly live chat experience that feels like chatting with friends. This real-time tool allows support teams to treat customers as individuals, fostering personal connections. The live chat function can handle multiple conversations at once, enabling agents to manage high inquiry volumes without losing quality.

Proactive engagement features help businesses convert website visitors into customers by starting conversations based on user behavior. It ensures timely support during key moments in the customer journey. Kayako also provides live chat support for mobile sites and apps, allowing customers to get help wherever they are, which boosts satisfaction and shortens resolution times.

Self-service portals

Kayako's self-service options let customers find answers on their own through an easy-to-search repository of articles, videos, and FAQs. The knowledge base lowers ticket volume by enabling customers to resolve common problems without agent help, especially when support teams are offline. The platform suggests relevant content as customers type, providing instant answers and cutting wait times.

The self-service portal is fully customizable, enabling businesses to create multiple Help Centers with tailored content and branding for different products or audiences. Help Center Analytics tracks search terms to spot gaps in content, leading to ongoing improvements. This not only raises customer satisfaction but also cuts operational costs by reducing agent ticket volume. Some companies report a 50% decrease in tickets after using Kayako's self-service tools.

SingleView technology

Kayako's SingleView™ technology offers a complete view of the customer journey in one easy interface. It combines all customer interactions and activities—including site visits, purchases, shipping history, support inquiries, and self-help searches—giving agents context for more personalized support. By avoiding the need to switch between systems, SingleView™ allows for quicker, more accurate responses.

A comprehensive view of customer data enables support teams to provide proactive, personalized support with every interaction. Agents can see when messages are read, view all active conversations for each customer, and access past events for better context. These features help businesses avoid repetitive questions and create seamless experiences that strengthen customer relationships and loyalty.

Automated workflows

Kayako's automation features save time by managing routine tasks like routing conversations, updating ticket statuses, and sending notifications. These processes ensure consistent handling of inquiries while allowing agents to focus on complex issues. The platform's macros and canned responses let teams send predefined, personalized replies to common questions with one click, improving response times.

SLA management tools help teams stay on track by monitoring performance against internal goals for response and resolution times. Automated SLA notifications remind agents of deadlines, ensuring they never miss critical timeframes. Smart routing prevents multiple agents from responding to the same issue by automatically combining inquiries across channels and directing them to a designated agent. These features have helped businesses cut response times by up to 40%, enhancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Kayako: Analytics

Kayako's reporting and analytics turn help desk data into useful business insights. It offers dashboards that show key performance metrics at a glance. This helps support managers track customer satisfaction, measure team performance, and find areas for improvement. With over 100 ready-made reports, businesses can quickly evaluate agent productivity and customer effort scores.

The analytics suite includes strong SLA management tools. These help teams track their response and resolution times against goals. Automated alerts notify agents of upcoming deadlines, so they never miss important timeframes. Kayako's reporting also gives detailed insights into customer behavior and support performance. Some organizations have seen CSAT score improvements of up to 18 points after using Kayako's analytics.

In addition to standard reporting, Kayako lets teams build custom dashboards for deeper analysis. The Help Center Analytics feature tracks search terms to find gaps in self-service content. This allows for ongoing improvements to meet customer needs. Some companies report a 50% drop in ticket volume after using Kayako's self-service tools.

With new AI features, Kayako's analytics are even more effective. The system can spot patterns in thousands of support tickets. It identifies issues before they affect customer satisfaction. This lets support teams tackle root causes instead of just symptoms. For instance, if the platform sees a customer frequently checking their order status, it can automatically suggest proactive communication strategies.

Kayako: Ease of use

The sign-up process for Kayako wasn’t as smooth as we would have liked. We got errors after filling in the registration form and couldn’t access our account. We had to email sales support to gain access, but it took a few days for the issue to be resolved.

However, while we weren’t very impressed by the sign-up process, we were very impressed by what we found when we were eventually able to log in. Kayako is one of the most user-friendly helpdesk solutions we’ve looked at. It’s also one of the fastest in terms of how quickly pages load and how user interface elements respond to interaction.

We liked the display of the customer journey for each ticket, which you can access by scrolling up from the latest message in any conversation you’ve selected. There are so many different elements that you can interact with for a conversation in terms of how you view or update it, but Kayako is designed in such a way as to not make it feel overwhelming. It’s the sort of interface that you can start using straight away, picking up new things as you go along.

It’s not just the conversations that feel this way—all sections of the Kayako dashboard are the same. Settings for web apps can sometimes be intimidating places that take some time to get used to, but here again with Kayako, everything is clear and easy to understand.

Kayako: Support

Unfortunately, we found the process of getting support as disappointing as the process for signing up for a Kayako account. The help widget in the dashboard says to use the form at support.kayako.com for technical support but doesn’t link directly to it.

Once there, you have to log in to be able to lodge a support ticket. We initially assumed we’d log in with the same credentials we’d used to log in to our dashboard, but we had to create a separate support account.

The verification email that arrived after filling in the support registration form linked to a page on a Zendesk subdomain with no mention of Kayako that we could see. We had to return to the Kayako support page and then refresh it to find that we were actually logged in. But we weren’t impressed by the fact that getting access to support from Kayako involved signing up for a service provided by a competitor.

Kayako: Security

Kayako has a lot of built-in security measures, including two-factor authentication (2FA), role-based access restrictions, DKIM and SPF authorization of outbound emails, spam filtering, password policies, and the ability to authenticate logins against your own systems and third-party apps.

Layers of security protect the platform, such as SSL encryption, DDoS mitigation, and disaster recovery and redundancy strategies. The physical security of data centers is maintained through backup generators, state-of-the-art fire suppression systems, and background checks on all employees.

Kayako: The Competition

The online helpdesk space is very crowded, and Kayako has many viable alternatives, including Zoho Desk and LiveAgent.

Zoho Desk also has an extensive array of features but offers a free plan in addition to paid plans. It can be used with three agents, while at the other end of the scale, the Enterprise plan, which costs $35/agent/month, can be used with unlimited agents. All paid plans come with a 15-day free trial.

LiveAgent also offers four plans, including a free one, and a 14-day free trial. The free plan has no limit on agents but does have a seven-day ticket history limit. The paid plans range in price from $15/agent/month up to $39/agent/month and have no limits on ticket history.

Kayako: Final Verdict

We found ourselves quite conflicted about Kayako because, on the one hand, it is one the best online helpdesk solutions we’ve used, but on the other, it also gave us one of the worst registration experiences.

Kayako’s well-designed user interface and the performance of the web app made it so easy to use. It also has a great feature set and reasonable pricing.

But we had to contact support to be able to create an account and had to wait several days for that process to conclude. And when it came to reviewing support options, we had to create a separate account with a helpdesk competitor.

Once the initial registration and setup issues were resolved, though, we found Kayako a pleasure to use. If you’re having similar trouble, it’s worth persevering with.

We've highlighted the best ITSM tool.

Chrome River Expense is just one of several productivity software packages available from this provider. In fact, Chrome River offers a wide range of business-focused options that cover everything from invoicing and corporate credit cards through to travel management and analytics software. Chrome River Expense is, unsurprisingly, tasked with helping your business make better use of the time spent on handling expenses.

• Want to try Chrome River Expense? Check out the website here

Being a SaaS based solution means that Chrome River is easily scaled if you need to use it more as your business grows. At the same time, it offers plenty of convenience for both administrators and managers, as well as employees. Indeed, the latter will find that the mobile edition of the software will allow them to stay on top of expenses no matter where they happen to be.

Other expense trackers in this marketplace include QuickBooks, Expensify, Hurdlr and Zoho Expense all of which are worthy of investigation.

Pricing

Anyone looking to move over to Chrome River Expense can get a guided tour of the package thanks to a demo option. Pricing, meanwhile, comes in three different variations currently, with something to suit any kind of business. It’s possible to base your costings on the volume of monthly expense reports that you expect to need, or the number of employees submitting expenses within your company. 

Larger businesses, however, will probably want to make use of the unlimited volume option that gives them the freedom to process as much as they want when it comes to expense admin. Whichever option appeals you’ll need to contact them and talk through the options after getting the demo as specific pricing details are not revealed until you do.

Features

There’s everything you need to get on top of expenses within the Chrome River Expense software framework. It features automated spend control, in-application feature training and assistance, plus automated approval routing too. You get embedded OCR technology, which means faster scanning of receipts, plus credit card integration for a more streamlined workflow. 

Another benefit with Chrome River Expense is that it can be integrated to work with other popular financial systems, which will be a bonus for businesses that ideally want a seamless transition if they sign up for it. The SaaS package can also work in harmony with other products in the portfolio, thanks to its modular system that enables the integration of purchase orders and so on. 

Employees can carry out the majority of expense-related tasks from their mobiles, and there’s the ability to get approvals on the go. Meanwhile, administrators can also authorise the likes of cash advances and personal expenses from anywhere while the whole system can be configured to suit individual business needs. There’s international appeal too, as the system can also support 173 different currencies.

Performance

The Chrome River Expense experience has been designed to be as smooth and seamless as possible, with a cloud-based SaaS philosophy that also includes excellent mobile appeal. 

In fact, the designers have made sure that you get the same experience no matter what device you’re using to access the system. For anyone going down the mobile app route there’s the option of using biometric authentication to log in to accounts. 

Better still, there’s no real crossover between using the desktop edition and the mobile app, so employees get the same experience with the system when they're out in the field. Being cloud-based also means that updates are automatic and can be applied company wide, so everyone is on the same page.

Ease of use

Employees who need to stay on top of their expenses invariably want convenience and the Chrome River Expense app takes a lot of hassle out of the equation. The software allows anyone within a company to carry out the same tasks and duties on the road in the same manner as they’d do it back in the office. 

Administrators can set everything up in advance, so the configurable business rules features allow employees to just get on with the job without having to worry about spending limits and so on. 

Chrome River Expense is certainly focused on speed and efficiency, with the Snap application for example allowing employees to get receipts digitized and into the system within seconds. In addition, much of the day-to-day work involved in filing expenses is done by the system itself, which makes it a very efficient all-rounder.

Support

Subscribers to Chrome River Expense will get all of the usual levels of support, including teams who are able to respond to queries via the phone and email. The package also comes with a large collection of instructional videos and other supporting literature aimed at getting business owners, administrators and staff alike familiarized with the workings of this cloud-based package.

Final verdict

Chrome River Expense is one of numerous products that sit under the Emburse umbrella, and what that gets business owners is consistency. It’s possible to run all of their cloud-based packages in tandem, which helps join up a lot of the dots when it comes to things like expenses, travel and reporting too. 

There’s also the benefit of being able to integrate the system with Emburse Cards, which allow businesses to roll all of their outlay into one place and make sure that spending limits and other company policies are all adhered to. 

However, there’s also card reconciliation for the likes of Visa, Mastercard, Diners Club, American Express and more. Another appealing aspect is the powerful reporting capabilities of Chrome River Expense, which allows finance departs and business owners alike to really drill down into company expenditure.

• We've also highlighted the best expense tracker apps and software

SalesTrip is a popular expense management and travel booking system that, despite the ongoing coronivirus crisis, will have a place in the workflow needs of many businesses. The big benefit, as is the case with many expense trackers, is that it can minimize the amount of manual effort needed to keep on top of claims, and process them and other administrative tasks with ease.

Better still, SalesTrip is listed on the Salesforce appexchange platform, and that brings it in line with other practical business software tools found there. Indeed, it might make sense in many cases to mate SalesTrip with the Salesforce CRM for a nicely rounded system. The bonus is that it provides a comprehensive experience for both employees, who need to file travel expenses, and administrators who have to make travel arrangements and more besides.

Variations on the expense tracking software theme include Certify, ExpensePath, ReceiptBank, Abacus, ExpensePoint, Pleo, Declaree, Spendesk, QuickBooks, Rydoo, Expensify, Hurdlr, Zoho Expense and Pocketguard. 

• Want to try SalesTrip? Check out the website here

Pricing

It’s currently possible to experience SalesTrip for yourself without actually signing on the dotted line. They offer 15 days of unlimited access to the service, which gives you time to experience every facet of the software. Or you can request a demo. 

If you feel SalesTrip is a good fit for your business then its subscription-based pricing starts out at $5 (£4) per user, per month. There’s actually a handy savings calculator on the Pricing page that lets you explore just how much you could potentially save by using a system that combines travel booking, ticketing and expense management all into one. 

In fact, it’s easy to see just how much time you can save if you explore the Opportunities tab within the system, that effectively allows you to work out travel arrangements, flights and all the rest of it, and pay within the space of a few minutes. As a timesaver it provides great value as a business can bypass using a standalone travel agency.

Features

There’s plenty to be impressed with as you pick through the feature set of SalesTrip, with a very well-rounded selection of options that could be useful. There is, of course, the full expense management setup, that’s native on Salesforce, which will be useful if you already use their systems. 

Employees can therefore submit and review their expense claims, while administrators can approve them. The benefit here is that the data can be analysed alongside your existing Salesforce information, although the service also integrates with the likes of Quickbooks and FinancialForce. 

In addition, you get corporate card reconciliation and import options plus automatic tax reclaim while the system is also GDPR/PCI compliant too. Employees will obviously find the unlimited receipt scanning functionality beneficial while there’s also the option of searching for travel and booking it when needed. Topping it all out is real-time reporting and lots of analytics.

Performance

Businesses that are already using the Salesforce appexchange platform should find that there’s a real benefit of running the SalesTrip system in that it can be combined with other packages in the collection. The added benefit is that the cloud-based platform that SalesTrip runs on is also native to Salesforce, so you can be confident that it comes with a good level of security and all of the other expectations that are a given for this brand. 

Adding to the appealing nature of SalesTrip is that it’s intuitive, both for administrators working back at headquarters and employees who have to dip into the mobile application when they’re out in the field.

Ease of use

Using SalesTrip offers a similar experience to many other expense trackers in this burgeoning marketplace. For the desktop, browser-based edition you’ll find that the dashboard is clean, simple and has all of the obvious features and functions right to hand. The main menu within the interface carries one-click access to the likes of Accounts, Trips, Expense and Bulk Expenses, which are all areas that are commonly accessed by administrators. 

The mobile aspect, meanwhile, allows employees to file expense claims on the move, with another clean and simple environment that makes uploading scanned receipts and the associated claim a quick and easy procedure. As for the bigger picture, business owners can easily use the analytics provided by the cloud-based solution to keep firm tabs on travel expenditure, which is more critical than ever given the current economic climate.

Support

The SalesTrip support hub follows a similar theme to many other systems in the expense tracker arena. It comes with an exhaustive collection of information that can talk you through all of the features and functions found in the system. You can also use this area to find out what’s new. 

Being a pretty dynamic operation as part of the Salesforce appexchange portfolio you can be pretty sure that there’ll be new improvements appearing here before long. That aside, users with other queries can submit a ticket to the support team if the issue isn’t covered by any of the topics contained in the online support hub.

Final verdict

SalesTrip might be finding demand for this kind of software service might have slumped during the coronavirus crisis, but this is a package that still has its place. The really useful thing is that SalesTrip can be used to combine a raft of business tasks including expense tracking, and using the data from what’s in the system can also be used to accurately forecast company spend moving forwards. 

Despite the fact that these are unpredictable times, and travel and expenses might be less of a concern for companies, this is a valuable aspect of SalesTrip. Of course, there are the day-to-day convenience trimmings too, such as OCR receipt scanning, integration with corporate and personal cards along with the ability to use the Salesforce hierarchy to maintain consistency for expense approvals and other common business tasks.

• These are the best expense tracker apps and software on the market

Yordex is a London-based business that only launched three years ago, but it has already built up a solid reputation with a portfolio of options designed to make your business more efficient. While Yordex can provide you with a service that can tackle expense management, it also offers services that cover purchase order approvals, invoicing and spend tracking. What's more, it’s particularly adept at helping you with spend forecasting. 

Add it all together and Yordex looks like a great solution. Better still, it has several different packages all with different sizes of business operations in mind. Ultimately, Yordex could help streamline your businesses workflow and cut down on that frustrating admin that can stifle many operations.

Variations on the expense tracking software theme include Certify, ExpensePath, ReceiptBank, Abacus, ExpensePoint, Pleo, Declaree, Spendesk, QuickBooks, Rydoo, Expensify, Hurdlr, Zoho Expense and Pocketguard. All are worth considering during the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

• Want to try Yordex? Check out the website here

Pricing

There are currently four different plans in the Yordex product portfolio to choose from. The cheapest and perhaps most basic is the Starter option, which does at least allow you to explore what Yordex has to offer and starts at $4 (£3). 

Next up is the Plus edition, which is aimed primarily at small businesses and that costs from $3 (£2.30). Larger businesses in the mid-sized bracket are encouraged to head for the Growth bundle from $2.60 (£1.99), which is able to cope with more transactional volume. 

Rounding it out is the Premium edition for $2.25 (£1.75), which is focused on larger businesses with more suppliers to contend with. According to the company, the pricing above works out as the effective per card/per month cost and monthly plan fees are therefore $45 (£35) for the Starter edition, $89 (£69) for Plus, $192 (£149) for Growth and $450 (£349) for Premium. 

All these are based on annual 12-month plans. Yordex does offer monthly pricing, though you’ll need to add on 20% for the as-you-go nature of this option.

Features

Alongside the flexible range of packages Yordex comes with a dazzling array of features. One of the big benefits of this service it that it’s possible to have either physical or virtual cards. For physical cards company employees can be issued with prepaid Mastercards. Virtual cards, meanwhile, can be used for things like online purchases and administrators can put limits on their spending capabilities. 

You get different allowances depending on which package you plump for, so Starter comes with 5 physical and 10 virtual cards. Premium, at the other end of the spectrum, offers 100 of each. You can therefore see the big difference between package options and costs actually seem to come down based on the volume of usage as outlined in the pricing section. 

Elsewhere, expenses are unlimited in all of the packages, plus there’s an iOS and Android app that can be used by staff for recording scans of receipts and tackling day-to-day expenditure. 

Extra convenience is provided by the ability of Yordex to produce OCR copies of invoices and receipts, which is free of charge and unlimited. Meanwhile, businesses that need it can also make use the automated payment run option. Not available for Starter, it can be added on for a fee to the other editions.

Performance

No matter where you happen to be within the Yordex framework the structure of this software service appears to be very robust. Considering that some of the beefier packages will doubtless have to deal with high volumes of data the Yordex engineers seem to have done a great job with making it resilient enough to cope with the demands of lots of users. All in all the Yordex system seems to do everything that’s expected of it and, perhaps, a little more besides.

Ease of use

Full marks has to go to Yordex and the UX designers for developing a system that’s definitely easy to master. The layout is fresh, functional and should make light work of all the tasks outlined in our opening paragraph. In the case of expenses, by way of an example, the layout is fuss free and lets you get the job done without any headaches. 

As for the day-to-day use factor, Yordex works so well because of its smart approval rules. These have been design to let you manage all those frequent tasks such as handling company cards, managing expenses, sending invoices and administering budgets with specific rules that help automate regular chores. Add on the modular construction of Yordex and you’ve got a system that is simple to learn and even more straightforward to operate.

Support

As you’d expect, Yordex comes with a solid support hub, which can be accessed from within the main site itself. This features a wealth of great do-it-yourself training, with a whole host of instructional videos, which can also be found on YouTube. Frankly, there’s not much left to learn about Yordex once you’ve picked your way through this exhaustive selection. 

Credit should go to Yordex for producing such a bumper crop of helpful guidance. Nevertheless, it is still possible you’ll want to contact support so there’s an option to submit a request to support team members via the site too. Lookout for the Community option in the website menu, which is another great way to get the inside deal on how Yordex works.

Final verdict

Yordex is in a very active marketplace with expense management tools sitting alongside billing and invoicing software, which is also alongside payroll and accounting packages. Yordex is therefore great as it does a little bit of everything from the above selection and certainly helps to streamline workflow, no matter if you’re a small concern or a larger business venture with multiple employees. 

Like many others in this arena, it’s easy to book a demo and see just how Yordex ticks. From there you have a good cross-section of packages too, with one to suit any kind of budget. All in all, Yordex is another one to add to your business wishlist.

• These are the best expense tracker apps and software on the market

Webexpenses is another expense tracker package that aims to do away with much of the drudgery involved in managing company costs. It’s been designed and built to help automate many of the expense management tasks involved with employees ongoing overheads. 

However, it's also a practical solution for tackling invoices too, and covers a lot of bases not normally associated with straightforward expense trackers. Headquartered in the UK, Webexpenses has expanded its Software as a Service (SaaS) operation so that it now has a global reach. With a growing team, the objective of Webexpenses is to help improve business efficiency and remove many of the tired manual processes involved in handling company expenses.

Variations on the expense tracking software theme include QuickBooks, Rydoo, Expensify, Hurdlr, Zoho Expense and Pocketguard. All are worth considering during the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

• Want to try Webexpenses? Check out the website here

Pricing

To ensure that your business can enjoy best value from its products and services, Webexpenses advises using its website to work out the value specific options can deliver. If you head to the pricing page there’s the option for requesting a custom quote, along with tools for calculating what Webexpenses can do for your business. There’s a return on investment calculator for example, which lets you work out potential benefits. 

Meanwhile, the value calculator is another option for working out what the SaaS can do for your business, with simple tools for getting a better idea of just how much use Webexpenses will be. There aren't any off-the-shelf packages on offer, although this custom route does seem to be a way of better tailoring the service to suit individual requirements.

Features

As you’d expect from a package like Webexpenses, it’s been designed to cover many different bases, not just expenses management. In terms of what employees get to experience then the app delivers everything needed to manage overheads when they’re out and about. This includes the ability to import receipt data as well as manage credit card transactions and all of the other day-to-day admin stuff. 

Employees also have the option of submitting their expense claims through any web browser while office administrators can process them with a high degree of automation. Indeed, Webexpenses uses its cloud-based system to handle everything such as mileage expenses, credit card expenditure, petty cash and mobile expenses. 

On top of that the Webexpenses system can also deliver sophisticated reporting and tracking options as and when they’re needed.

Performance

Webexpenses offers solid performance due to the software as a service package being accessible via any web browser on Windows or Mac. With the app also being available for either iOS or Android Webexpenses performs as you’d expect, just as long as you have a connection to the internet of course.

Ease of use

With Webexpenses being aimed at larger businesses there is a solid level of help available to get staff trained up to use this expense tracking system. However, the Webexpenses design team have also done a great job on the nuts and bolts of the interface, with a dashboard that is relatively easy to find your way around plus a supporting app for both iOS and Android that really impresses. 

However, like every other app out there, it’s something of a work in progress and some of the useability could perhaps be tweaked over time. While the Webexpenses app clearly works, there are some minor UX issues that could do with being improved to simplify its use. 

On the plus side, for employees who need to get lots of receipts digitized the Automatic Character Recognition feature means it’s both quick and easy to process higher volumes of paperwork.

Support

Webexpenses has a full suite of support options available to customers of all sizes. There’s a very good support hub online that packs a real punch thanks to a stack of tutorials on video, along with documentation and other training resources to boot. 

You can naturally contact them directly to talk to a member of support staff, with chat tools, email and phone access all being available to subscribers. The support hub is also useful in that it gives you all the latest news on any relevant software updates that occur during the year, with a calendar that outlines them all in one place.

Final verdict

Webexpenses ideally needs to be trialled in order to see if it’s a good match for your business as it might be more than a small or even mid-sized operation needs. The tools on the pricing page prove to be a great starting place to get an idea if the outlay for Webexpenses is going to be worth it. 

However, if your business needs a muscular expense tracking system that does a lot of other things as well, such as covering corporate travel, processing invoices, auditing and carrying out complex reporting, then it might be the perfect solution. 

Being able to integrate Webexpenses with other software tools and systems within your business is also a bonus. Ultimately though, you’ll need to get a custom quote from them to check if it’ll deliver a sufficient return on investment.

• These are the best expense tracker apps and software on the market

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EaseUS RecExperts: Pricing and plans

• EaseUS offer both subscription and perpetual licence options, satisfying people who like to rent their software, and those who prefer to own it

EaseUS offers various ways to pay for the software, whether you wish to subscribe or own it. You have two different subscriptions available: $20 a month or $50 for the year. This is a licence for a single computer and grants you upgrades for a month or a year respectively.

Alternatively, if you’re already struggling with the mountain of subscriptions you already have to deal with, you also have the option of purchasing the software outright for $80 for a single computer, and best of all, this includes a lifetime of free upgrades.

Businesses have a separate deal: an outright purchase of two licences for $120, which also includes free upgrades for life.

If you’re curious about the software, you can download a trial version for free, which lets you explore most features, but restricts your recordings to a single minute.

For alternatives without the price-tag, we've rounded up the best free screen recorders.

• Pricing & plans: 4.5/5

EaseUS RecExperts: Interface

• Very well designed interface, which is simple to navigate, and makes turning on the settings it needs to operate a breeze. You also have access to many parameters, if you like to control every aspect of your software

Every software designed to record your screen, webcam, capture your audio, etc, needs you to authorise these functions through your computer’s settings. You can either be shown how to do it, or the software can take you to the right preference’s location, leaving you to toggle the feature on yourself. RecExperts was able to do most of this automatically for you; all you have to do for most requests was to simply click on ‘grant access’ within the RecExperts software. Couldn’t be simpler. Only once did we have to toggle the feature in the computer’s settings, but when that happened, RecExperts had taken us to the right place, making this almost an effortless process.

The interface itself is very simple and well designed: a small rectangular window offers you all the information you need, with a sidebar for the video, audio, webcam, and ‘enhanced’ mode. The latter is a feature that enables you to capture encrypted footage from websites which frustratingly don’t usually allow you to do so, namely Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime and others. RecExperts will make this possible, as long as you’re using Google Chrome.

Top right is a hexagonal button which leads you to the app’s settings. You have access to many parameters, such as the output format and quality for the video and audio, setting up hotkeys, and having the ability to see when the mouse is clicked, among others.

You’ll also find options in the webcam setting to use AI to blur or replace your background. Sadly the results proved very subpar for us. If cutting out your background is your preference, we’d recommend making use of a green screen (which this software supports). On a more positive note, you have full control over where to place the webcam video (even in the middle of the screen if you so wish), as well as its size.

You will undoubtedly bump into some features reserved for those who have paid for the software. For instance the microphone has a couple of options which you can’t evaluate during your trial: 'microphone noise reduction’ and ‘microphone boost’.

Once you’ve explored the various settings, it’s good to know the main features are prominently displayed: turning your webcam, system sound, and microphone on or off is done with three large, impossible to miss, buttons. When it comes to the screen, the default option is to record all of it but clicking on the ‘Region’ button lets you create a rectangular area which RecExperts will focus on, ignoring the rest (this area is easily resizable until you’re happy with it, prior to recording).

Once you’re ready, click on that big ‘Rec’ button on the right.

• Interface: 4.5/5

EaseUS RecExperts: Performance

• Set up what you wish to record (audio, video, webcam, mic) and away you go. Everything you do on screen will then be recorded. You have few editing options, but also have a series of interesting ‘pro’ tools

Recording full screen, you lose all visible control buttons, and have to pause or stop the recording through keyboard shortcuts. When you set a specific area, a control bar can be found just below that area, although the keyboard shortcuts still work. As you’d expect, everything you do will be recorded, including the system audio, your microphone, and your webcam if you’ve selected them.

Once you’re done, you’re taken to another window which contains a list of all your previous recordings. If you’re in the trial version, you’ll only be able to see the first minute of any recording. However the whole recording is actually saved should you decide to upgrade. It’s jus not accessible to you until you pay.

There is also an editing section, but this too is not available for trial users. What you can do for free, is alter the footage’s speed, take a screenshot, and change its volume. If you wish to do more advanced editing, the recordings are saved straight to your computer (by default as mp4), so it’s a simple matter of dragging those to a proper video editor and continue your work from there.

We found the screen capture works very well, and were impressed that we could indeed record videos from Netflix and others, although we did experience the image freezing at times, and the odd rendering artefact appearing every now and then - for those websites. Videos that aren’t encrypted had no such issues.

Be aware that unlike some other screen recorders like ScreenFlow or ScreenPal, you cannot remove your webcam footage from the recording. It was there when you were recording, and it remains there in the final video.

Some tools that looked interesting are Auto Split, Auto Stop, and Task Scheduler. Their titles are pretty self explanatory: if a recording goes on for too long or its file size becomes too big, RecExperts will automatically stop it and seamlessly start a new one; you’re able to stop recording after a set length of time, file size, or at a specific date and time; and you can automate your recording process so the software will start and stop on its own without you even needing to be at your computer. Those are pro features.

All in all, RecExperts is very well designed with a good number of very useful features which makes using it easy for newcomers, while also feeling full featured for more advanced users. It’s only let down by a poor selection of editing tools, and the inability to manipulate the webcam footage after the fact, as it’s burned into the recording.

• Performance: 4/5

Should I buy EaseUS RecExperts?

ExpensePoint is a cloud-based mobile expense management tool that allows business owners and their employees to keep track of costs on the go. With its keenly-priced service options ExpensePoint offers good value, particularly for small businesses with lower volumes of expense claims to process each month during the coronavirus crisis.

• Want to try ExpensePoint? Check out the website here

However, ExpensePoint has also been suitably well-built to allow larger companies with multiple employees to harness its suite of power tools to tame relentless expense claims. In fact, its back end administrator tools will definitely appeal to accountancy specialists. The service works with multi-currencies, can be accessed via any kind of device and with its ability to allow submitting, approval and reporting of expenses from one location makes it a great one-stop option.

Pricing

When it comes to pricing then ExpensePoint has tried to keep things straightforward and fuss free. It currently offers an ‘all in’ option that gets you all of the features in the ExpensePoint arsenal for $7.50, which includes unlimited monthly expense reports. This also gets you the use of ExpensePoints Receipt Reader team, which is a group of real individuals who pick over your paperwork when it is uploaded into the system.

Features

ExpensePoint comes packaged with all you’ll need to cover every aspect of processing expenses. It offers convenience with multi-device access, an innovative receipt imaging system, credit card integration, provides lots of spending data and delivers swift employee reimbursement via Automated Clearing House (ACH) batch processing when needed. 

ExpensePoint can also work with multiple currencies and is safe, secure and compliant. Once you’ve got an account you’ll be able to create and submit expense claims along with getting them reviewed and approved by administrators. Expense controllers can also wrangle the data from these claims and produce detailed reports based on the securely collected information. 

Interestingly, ExpensePoint even allows you to fax scanned receipt images into reports, along with slightly more modern methods such as email and digital uploads.

Performance

Thanks to its cloud-based setup ExpensePoint is perfect for office administrators as it allows them to receive automatic updates when reports are submitted for approval. This lets them view both the report and any receipts that have been uploaded by employees out in the field and a click to approve system means that claims can be processed quickly and efficiently. 

Employees should find the app helps speed up the process as the entire expense report can be produced on the go. Receipts can be placed in a Receipt Wallet feature, including those that have been captured on a mobile. 

In addition, these are read by the receipt reader team, real people in other words, rather than relying on OCR, and get input into the system while credit card transactions arrive in a My Transactions folder. This means that everything can be pulled in together to produce a claim that includes the likes of dates, vendors, taxes, amounts and much more besides.

Ease of use

It’s easy to see the appeal of ExpensePoint, due in the main to its capacity for being used anywhere. The cloud-based service can be accessed using desktop or laptop machines, along with mobile devices. Adding to the appeal is the mobile app edition, which offers a full suite of supplementary features for employees on the move. 

Office administrators will find that ExpensePoint comes with plenty of tools for processing claims too, while its reporting tools are simple but powerful. Better still, ExpensePoint can be used in tandem with popular accounting packages, such as QuickBooks and Sage.

Support

You’ll find that support for ExpensePoint comes in the usual form of help via the website that includes a rather annoying live support chat option. This is a good idea if you're in need of help, but the fact that it kept popping up while we were making our first exploration of ExpensePoint and its features soon became annoying. 

However, the cloud-based service seems to offer a pretty good standard of assistance aside from that. There’s a blog too, that gives some useful insights into all manner of ExpensePoint’s feature set.

Final verdict

ExpensePoint seems like a pretty good value proposition if you're in need of an expense claim system that will handle varying volumes of claims. While there’s obvious appeal with the competitive pricing, especially considering the report producing side of things, ExpensePoint is also beefy enough for bigger businesses. 

The desktop interface is more suited to those who use accountancy tools on a regular basis, but the app delivers a decent enough experience if you’re looking to stay on top of your expenses when you’re out and about. 

For the money ExpensePoint has plenty to recommend, particularly thanks to those key features that include the mobile convenience, the ability to import credit card transactions alongside receipts, plus strong controls for approval by administrators. That said, however, rivals such as QuickBooks, Rydoo, Hurdlr, Zoho Expense and Pocketguard are worth looking at too.

• We've also highlighted the best expense tracker apps and software

Abacus is a cloud-based expense reporting package that is available to US businesses of all shapes and sizes. Designed to automate many aspects of the expense process and increase efficiency, Abacus can be tailored to suit different business needs thanks to custom variants of its packages for larger volume customers.

• Want to try Abacus? Check out the website here

There’s a stylish browser-based dashboard and supporting app, which makes Abacus look bang up to date and offers users easy control of expense management. The software comes with appeal for both employees and employers, having lots of tools and functionality aimed at smoothing the normally tedious job of expense filing. A chore made even more laborious due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Pricing

There are three different Abacus plans to choose from, with something to suit all levels of business user. A Starter edition costs just $9 per active user, billed monthly and this is based on a minimum of 2 users. It’s aimed at small businesses that need to keep an effective track on what’s going out, and subsequently reimburse employees promptly. 

Next up is a Professional package, for which Abacus advises you’ll need a custom quote. You can schedule a demo too. This is aimed at companies with higher volumes of expenses to monitor and is billed annually. Finally, there’s an Enterprise edition, which again requires a customer quote from Abacus. Billed annually, this targets companies with more complex expense tracking requirements.

Features

There are two core aspects of Abacus to explore, with a dashboard that allows administrators and employees to handle expense tasks, plus an app. The mobile side of things will find most favor with employees as it allows them to submit expenses the moment they happen. 

Users can take a photo of a receipt and the resulting file, or files can be dynamically approved by system administrators. Abacus has an app for both iOS and Android, which offers all of the convenience of being able to keep tabs of receipts and other expenses while you’re on the go.

Expense administrators will love the ability to quickly compile receipts and card transactions along with other data from within Abacus. They can also preset expense policy rules in advance too. Meanwhile, the ability to organize transactions into live reports means the process of reimbursing employees is more efficient. 

On another practical note, Abacus works and indeed syncs with the likes of QuickBooks, Xero and NetSuite accounting software, which is a boon for businesses that use these programs. It can also be integrated to work alongside tools such as Slack and popular HR systems.

Performance

While some users have reported one or two bugs with the app editions of Abacus recent updates seem to have largely corrected any minor faults. Alongside the mobile edition of Abacus, which company employees will see most of, the dashboard side of the experience is equally as zesty. 

In fact, with its modern look and feel, plus an interface that’s been designed with a slimline feature set on show, the web browser edition of Abacus seems to draw praise from all and sundry. Abacus also keeps a keen eye on security, requiring users to get their accounts verified in order to prevent abuse of reimbursement payments.

Ease of use

Expense tracking packages invariably have to satisfy the needs of numerous, and sometimes many users. In that respect Abacus has gone for a funky modern feel with its interface and overall design, which makes it appealing to start with. For administration tasks the dashboard is clean, simple and works as expected. 

Mobile users, meanwhile, will find the app similarly well thought out, with nothing tricky to get to grips with. Taking a picture with your phone and getting the ball rolling with administrators able to approve expenses on-the-fly means money can be paid back both quickly and easily.

Support

The support side of things with Abacus tends to follow a similar theme to many expense tracking packages. There’s a comprehensive knowledge base that can be tapped into in order to gain a better understanding of the features and functions. Outside of common queries, or if you develop a problem, then it's possible to raise and submit a ticket via an online support form.

Final verdict

Abacus does a grand job of refining the often laborious expense tracking process by creating a much more dynamic link between employees submitting receipts and office administrators approving them. Abacus also provides businesses with a great overview of trends based on the data it captures, allowing business owners to better calculate budget spends moving forwards. 

The company has gone the extra mile to make the app and dashboard experience more appealing too, with great layouts, simple menus and sensible tool options along with an overall design that just works. At the lower end of the package scale the Starter edition looks like a little bit of a bargain too. Abacus has rivals however, such as QuickBooks, Rydoo, Hurdlr, Zoho Expense and Pocketguard.

• We've also highlighted the best expense tracker apps and software

ExpensePath is an expense reporting tool that is suitably lean and affordable so that it’ll appeal primarily to small businesses, especially during coronavirus. Perhaps the best thing about this software as a service product is its flexibility, with pricing that will suit smaller ventures that don't need all of the trimmings that some other rivals provide at a higher price.

• Want to try ExpensePath? Check out the website here

With a strong presence on the app front ExpensePath is also tailored to suit employees looking to get on top of expenses while they're out and about, with a learning curve that won't put them off either. In fact, ExpensePath has lots to offer employees and office administrators alike, thanks to its simple-but-effective arsenal of features and functions, designed to basically get the job done in no-frills fashion. Similar products include QuickBooks, Expensify, Hurdlr and Zoho Expense.

Pricing

ExpensePath appeals largely because of its pricing plans, which are highly competitive and there’s a strong start with a trial period too. You can request a demo, which can be quickly set up so you can peruse what’s on offer. As for spending money then pricing is based around the number of users you have and the amount of reports generated. 

It’s the lesser of the two and the system can dynamically adjust this based on expense reports that are produced moving forwards. This effectively means that pricing is very keen, with overheads starting out at around $5 per month. Overall, the Expense Path pricing seems pretty fair in that you’re only really paying for what gets used.

Features

While ExpensePath doesn't come with lots of tools that you might not ever need, the slimmed down and highly intuitive feature set works a treat for the smaller business owner. ExpensePath does a great job of letting office administrators set up expense criteria, which employees can then follow when they’re out in the field. 

ExpensePath also has the capability to work with other business tools, including the likes of SageIntacct, NetSuite, Netchex, Quickbooks and more besides. For small business users who spend much of their time in something like Quickbooks, the integration possibilities are very useful for pulling different batches of data together. 

The software as a service also ties in easily with Mastercard, Visa and American Express too, so there’s plenty of ways to join up the dots of your business activities.

Performance

With its pretty basic interface and user-friendly persona ExpensePath doesn't have too much baggage to cause performance issues. While the desktop administration aspect seems largely faultless, there are some minor obstacles on the performance front via the app. 

You’ll need to input more details manually than you might have been expecting, even though the system does let you capture images of receipts like so many others in the expense software marketplace. The lack of OCR capability mean that some aspects of the expense filing process are rather more labored. But, smaller companies that need to process relatively minimal expense claims shouldn’t find this too offputting for their employees.

Ease of use

Getting to grips with ExpensePath is certainly easy with a neat and tidy interface that provides novice users with little in the way of obstacles. Office-based users, or indeed those on laptops can dip into the web dashboard, which delivers a quality experience thanks to no-nonsense menus that cover all of the main expense topics, along with options for producing those all-important reports. 

Administrators can have a field day with the configuration tools inside here. Employees should also revel in the app, a version of which is available for both iOS and Android. 

This has been very nicely put together and works without fuss. Just what you want so that employees don't let their expense tracking duties slip over time. Usefully, they can get receipts and the associated information into the system from wherever they may be, which means receipts get filed in a timely fashion.

Support

Despite the fact that ExpensePath doesn’t deliver too much in the way of a steep learning curve, the support options within your chosen package might prove useful. You get the usual phone and email options, plus a knowledge base to pick through if there’s an outstanding query you’re looking to solve on your own. ExpensePath gets off to a strong start too, with a guided demo being the first thing you experience from the support team, plus help with getting up and running during the initial stages.

Final verdict

ExpensePath keeps things simple on all fronts. If you're a small business owner that needs to keep a tight reign on overheads then this is a package worth exploring. The pricing comes across as very reasonable, given that you only really pay for what you use. The boffins have also done a very good job with the design of ExpensePath with a desktop dashboard that offers up plenty of tools for office administrators. 

Similarly, the app has been improved to make expense reporting on the go even more easy than before. There are one or two rough edges, such as the lack of OCR for speedier expense filing. However, the trade-off is that ExpensePath remains very affordable, and will probably offer many SMBs almost everything they need to keep track of costs.

• We've also highlighted the best expense tracker apps and software