With the rise of digitization across fields and industries, receipt scanning and finance management apps have hurtled to immense popularity. For many, they have even become indispensable tools to help them manage their businesses and organize their lives better.
You may feel yourself standing at a crossroads while deciding which app to choose to automate your accounting tasks. It may be as monumental a decision as selecting a spouse to spend your whole life with…or almost. Two of the leading apps in this domain are
SparkReceipt and Expensify – both powerful, AI-powered toolkits that intelligently read your receipts and sort them out for you as neatly as any seasoned accountant.
Both of these apps possess different advantages and disadvantages of varying relevance for individual users, which we’ll lay out for you here to help you make the best possible decision.
Common Features
OCR scanning: SparkReceipt and Expensify make use of cutting-edge OCR technology to scan your receipts and digitize them. The apps read the information by themselves and then extract and classify it smartly so you can ditch the tedious data entry.
AI pre-accounting: All your data will be intelligently classified into categories to prepare your periodic financial records, tracking your income, expenses, taxes, and more. For example, SparkReceipt is powered by the revolutionary technology of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Your pre-accounting tasks will be fully taken care of! (Read this article to understand what that means for you)
Data analytics: Gain incredible insight into your spending trends and make better financial decisions for the future, thanks to these apps.
Multiple user types: These apps can be life-changing for the targeted audiences – which include individuals, businesses, and freelancers. Expensify focuses heavily on employees and reimbursement processes as well.
Multiple platforms: Both SparkReceipt and Expensify are available across major platforms, namely Android and iOS, and also offer a fully-fledged web version.
Global reach: The highly efficient technologies update exchange rates in real-time and cater to most currencies around the world, allowing users from almost anywhere in the globe to benefit from both of these apps.
Easy receipt management: Because the whole point of these apps is to reduce stress and fuss, they make it very easy for users to upload their receipts for management. Users can upload PDFs or email their receipts to the apps to digitize them automatically.
Collaborative: Users can build teams on both apps and collaborate on financial management smoothly and seamlessly. Accountants can be connected to user accounts. The functions can be centralized and managed by admin accounts. This is great for businesses, smaller teams, and even households.
SparkReceipt is a new and quickly developing option, but that also means you might encounter some growing pains.
Pros:
- Uses a freemium pricing model, which means many important features are completely free to use for anyone.
- Highly powerful and efficient OCR technology so you don’t have to do anything manually. Scanning and data extraction are very quick processes and errors are rare.
- Focuses on pre-accounting and, additionally, business document management. You won’t have to worry about any frills or fuss, and all of it is very straightforward and user-friendly.
- Understands and categorizes different tax types, such as GST, VAT, and HST.
Cons:
- Many features are still in the works – including travel management, mileage calculation, integrations with third parties, etc.
- Offline support is limited and a working internet connection is required for most features.
- Expensify’s Pros and Cons over SparkReceipt
- Expensify is an established and popular option, but its age is starting to show.
Pros:
Includes integrations with third parties such as QuickBooks, NetSuite, Xero, and more, even going beyond accounting and into the domains of human resource management.
Offers a comprehensive system to manage employees and employee reimbursements, which is one of the main focuses of the app. Also offers its own physical Visa Card.
Travel management and mileage tracking are established features. They’re coming soon for SparkReceipt users as well!
Useful offline mode is in place.
Cons:
Complaints about how slow the scanning process is are frequent and errors in data extraction are reported to be unfortunately common.
Expensify charges you after a short free trial period or a more limited number of scans per month for even basic features. Going off of reviews, the pricing model has been reported by users to be complicated and even misleading.
Serious data leaks and privacy breaches have made the headlines.
The Final Verdict
Which app you decide to choose from the two of them depends a lot on your personal requirements. To make an optimum decision, you must ask yourself first what you are looking for. Also, make sure to check which pricing model and cost range work best for you and your needs.
Are you a larger business looking for advanced features like human resource management extensions and a complex system to handle endless employee reimbursements? You might want to check out Expensify in that case.
Are you looking for a no-fuss financial management app and a way to organize your receipts and documents in a more efficient way? Are speed and error-free results important to you? If so, SparkReceipt is tailor-made for you, and you will revel in how powerful the scanning and data extraction functions are.
