Save the end-of-month chase for receipts. Your team puts receipts and mileage on one claim, you approve it once, and the bill lands in QuickBooks or Xero.
SparkReceipt is expense reimbursement software for small teams. Whoever paid for a business cost with their own money puts the receipts and business trips on an expense claim, a Supervisor, Admin, or Owner approves it, and you mark it paid once the money has gone out.
Business Owners in 175 Countries Trust SparkReceipt
Same receipts, same team, a very different end of the month
The person who paid opens a new claim and adds the expenses they paid themselves and their completed business trips. Expenses marked as paid by the company stay off claims, so nothing gets paid back twice.
They submit the claim and everyone who can approve it gets a push notification and an email. A Supervisor, Admin, or Owner approves it in one step, or rejects it with a reason the claimant can fix.
Pay the person back by bank transfer or through payroll, then mark the claim paid with the date and a reference. Publish the approved claim to QuickBooks Online or Xero as one bill, or export it as PDF, Excel, or CSV.
An expense claim collects everything one person is owed for a trip, a project, or a month. Add the receipts they paid with their own card or cash, scanned on a phone or pulled from their inbox, and add the business trips they drove from the mileage tracker. Each trip is priced at your mileage rate, and the claim shows the distance and the rate behind the amount.
A claim can mix currencies, with a separate total for each one, so a conference abroad doesn't need a conversion by hand. An expense that is only partly for business shows its business use, so the approver sees the split before saying yes. Each receipt can be on one claim only, which keeps duplicate reimbursement out of the picture.
Small teams don't need a three-level approval chain in their expense reimbursement software. They need someone with the authority to say yes, and a record of who said it. In SparkReceipt a Supervisor, Admin, or Owner approves each claim, from the claim itself or straight from the list. If something is off, they reject it with a reason, and the claimant reopens it, fixes it, and submits again.
Every claim keeps a history of who created it, submitted it, approved it, sent it back, and marked it paid. Admins and the Owner can approve their own claims. A Supervisor can't, so another approver signs off on theirs. Contributors see only their own claims, and your accountant joins free and sees all of them.
Each claimant saves their payout details once: account holder, account number or IBAN, routing number or sort code, and bank name. The claim keeps a copy when it is submitted, and only the claimant and the people who review the claim can see it. Account numbers are stored encrypted.
When you have paid the person back, through your bank or with the next payroll run, open the claim and mark it paid with the date and a payment reference. The claimant gets a notification, and the claim moves to Paid. SparkReceipt doesn't move the money itself. It keeps the record of what was owed, who approved it, and when it was settled.
An approved claim publishes to QuickBooks Online or Xero as one unpaid bill, payable to the person who made the claim. Each receipt goes on its own line with its category and tax, the receipt images are attached, and trips are booked to the mileage expense category you choose. The bill carries the claim number, so your accountant can trace it back. Claims also publish to Procountor and SimplBooks.
Using different accounting software? Export the claim as a PDF with every receipt after the summary, or as Excel or CSV, and record it there. The expense reports you already run are unaffected: reports cover your spending, and claims cover what you owe the people who paid for it.
Owners pay for business costs with a personal card all the time. An expense claim gives you a clean record of what the business owes you: add those receipts and the business miles you drove, submit the claim, approve it yourself as the Owner, and mark it paid once the business has transferred the money. The claim's PDF and its history show exactly what was paid back and when.
If you run an S corporation in the United States, reimbursing yourself under an accountable plan has its own rules about substantiation and timing. SparkReceipt keeps the receipts, dates, and approvals those rules ask for, and your accountant decides how the plan is set up.
Expense reimbursement is how a business pays back someone who covered a business cost with their own money: the flight booked on a personal card, the client lunch, the miles driven in their own car. The process has four steps everywhere. Someone collects the proof, someone approves the claim, someone pays the money, and the books record it. Expense reimbursement software holds all four in one place so nothing depends on memory or a shared spreadsheet.
In a team of three to twenty people, the hard part is rarely the approval. It is the paper. Receipts get lost before anyone asks for them, mileage gets estimated after the fact, and the owner pays back a total without knowing what is in it. SparkReceipt starts with the receipt: every expense is scanned and read by AI the moment it is captured, every trip is logged with its distance, and an expense claim gathers the ones a person paid for. The approval and the payment record sit on top of proof that already exists.
A simple employee expense reimbursement process works for most small businesses:
Reimbursements under an accountable plan generally stay out of the employee's taxable wages in the United States, which is why the proof matters. Ask your accountant how your plan is set up. SparkReceipt doesn't decide tax treatment. It keeps the receipts, the dates, the business purpose, and the approval together so the paperwork holds up.
Large companies buy travel and expense suites with corporate cards, policy engines, and payout rails. A small team needs less, and the things it needs are easy to check:
What SparkReceipt leaves out is deliberate. There are no multi-level approval chains, spending limits, policy rules, per diem calculations, or corporate cards, and SparkReceipt doesn't send payouts. If your team needs those, a spend-management platform is the better fit. Our comparison with Expensify sets out the difference.
The two are related and easy to mix up. An expense report in SparkReceipt is an export: a PDF, Excel, or CSV of any set of expenses, for your accountant, a client, or your records. An expense claim is a request to be paid back. It belongs to one person, holds only what they paid for, goes through approval, and ends when it is marked paid. Use reports to see where the money went. Use claims, the expense reimbursement software side of SparkReceipt, to settle what the business owes the people who spent it.
Claims, approval, mileage, and publishing to QuickBooks Online or Xero on both plans. Try them in the 7-day free trial and cancel any time.
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“I used to send my accountant a bag of slips every month hoping they capture everything in order for me to be refunded for business expenses. With SparkReceipt I now have a realtime view of how much the business owes me and I have a clear picture for what business expenses I pay for.”
Daniel Esterhuizen
Esterhuizen Consulting · South Africa
Join 38,283 businesses that chose SparkReceipt — 4,620,044 receipts processed and counting.
Get StartedAn expense claim is a request from one person to be paid back for business costs they covered with their own money. In SparkReceipt it holds the receipts they paid themselves and their business trips, goes to an approver, and is marked paid once the money has been paid back.
Have each employee capture receipts as they spend, then submit the ones they paid themselves on an expense claim, together with their business trips. A Supervisor, Admin, or Owner approves the claim, you pay the employee by bank transfer or through payroll, and you mark the claim paid. The approved claim can go to QuickBooks Online or Xero as one bill.
No. SparkReceipt doesn't move money. You pay the person back the way you already do, by bank transfer or with payroll, and then record the payment on the claim with the date and an optional reference. The claimant gets a notification when the claim is marked paid.
Not necessarily. Many small businesses pay claims by bank transfer, and others add them to the next payroll run. In the United States, reimbursements under an accountable plan are generally kept out of taxable wages either way. Ask your accountant how your business should handle it. SparkReceipt records the claim, the approval, and the payment date whichever way you pay.
A Supervisor, Admin, or the Owner can approve, reject, and mark as paid other people's claims. Admins and the Owner can also approve their own. A Supervisor can't approve their own claim, so someone else signs off on it.
Yes. Completed business trips from the mileage tracker go on the claim next to the receipts. Each trip is priced at your vehicle or account mileage rate, plus any passenger rate, and the claim shows the distance and the rate behind the amount.
Publish the approved claim from SparkReceipt. It arrives as one unpaid bill payable to the employee, with each receipt as a line and the receipt images attached, and trips booked to your mileage expense category. When you pay the employee, record the payment against that bill in QuickBooks Online or Xero. Marking the claim paid in SparkReceipt doesn't create the payment there.
Creating and submitting expense claims is included in Pro and Elite, and you can try it in the 7-day free trial. Every plan includes 1 user, you add teammates for a flat fee per user, and your accountant joins free.
Yes. Invite your accountant with the Accountant role at no cost. They see every claim in the account, can export claims as PDF, Excel, or CSV, and can publish approved claims to your accounting software.
It fits small teams and owners who want receipts, mileage, approval, and a bill in QuickBooks Online or Xero in one place, with one approval step and nothing extra to pay per claim. If you need multi-level approvals, spending policies, corporate cards, or payouts inside the tool, a larger spend-management platform suits you better than this expense reimbursement software.
Log business trips and price them at your rate
Scan receipts with AI in seconds
Generate reports in PDF, Excel, or CSV
Publish approved claims as bills with receipts attached
Send approved claims to Xero as bills
One receipt app for a team of two to five
Expense management for teams of five to twenty
