Two Giants Of Expense Management—But Are They Holding Your Business Back?
When it comes to expense management, Expensify and Concur are two names that often rise to the top. They promised to streamline the reporting process, automate workflows, and simplify tracking expenses. However, the reality doesn’t always match the promise.
Both tools have their quirks and frustrations that often leave users looking for a better solution.
In this blog, we’ll compare Expensify and Concur based on real user reviews, uncover their benefits and limitations, and find out if there’s a smarter, more flexible choice out there for you.
Expensify–More Frustration Than Automation?
What Expensify Promises
Expensify claims to offer:
- One-click receipt scanning and automated expense approval workflows.
- Discounts and perks if users adopt their proprietary card.
- Plans starting from $5 per user per month–but reality tells a different story.
What Users Are Really Saying
Expensify aims to offer seamless expense management, but businesses often find themselves struggling with hidden challenges. Let’s dive deeper into the most common user frustrations and what they mean for businesses:
Unpredictable Pricing
Expensify’s pricing model can change without notice, with some users reporting unexpected increases as high as 80% to 4x their original rates. These hikes are often communicated vaguely, such as through spam emails or feature updates, catching businesses off guard.
What this means for businesses: Budget planning becomes difficult when price increases happen without consent, leaving companies stuck in long-term contracts with no option to downgrade or modify plans.
Penalties for Not Adopting the Expensify Card
Expensify’s pricing incentives are tied to the adoption of their proprietary card. Companies that don’t meet the card usage threshold face “unbundling fees,” driving up their subscription costs. As one frustrated user put it:
What this means: Businesses that want to continue using their existing credit cards have to pay more, leading to higher costs, lost rewards, and fewer options for managing expenses.
Poor Customer Support and Cancellation Challenges
Expensify’s Concierge service is intended to offer quick, helpful responses, but users often report slow service and unresolved issues. Worse, canceling or modifying an account becomes nearly impossible, leaving businesses stuck paying for services they no longer need.
What this means: When support is slow, and cancellation policies are rigid, businesses waste valuable time managing issues and dealing with unplanned expenses.
Concur–Complexity Wrapped in a Slow Interface
What Concur Promises
Concur positions itself as an all-in-one travel and expense management solution aimed at streamlining expense reporting, reducing manual work, and facilitating international operations. Some of the key features it promotes include:
- E-receipts and direct credit card integration, reducing the need for manual data entry.
- Multi-currency and multi-language support, making it ideal for businesses with global operations.
- Automated workflows to enhance visibility and control over spending.
What Users Are Really Saying
While Concur offers a comprehensive platform, many users struggle with outdated technology, slow interfaces, and rigid processes. Here’s a closer look at the most common frustrations and their impact on businesses:
Outdated UI That Wastes Time
Concur’s interface feels clunky and outdated, making even simple actions like saving or editing reports painfully slow. Users often have to repeatedly save entries, waiting for the system to catch up with every action.
What this means for businesses: These delays reduce employee productivity, forcing finance teams to spend hours on tasks that should take minutes, pulling them away from more strategic activities.
Excessive Manual Work and Complex Workflows
Concur’s processes are overly complex, requiring the same data–like GL codes or attendee lists–to be entered multiple times across different fields. Users report confusing workflows and high chances of introducing errors during data entry.
What this means: These inefficiencies increase the workload on finance teams, leading to unnecessary delays in expense reporting and slowing down financial reconciliation.
Delayed Implementation and Overpromising
Concur’s implementation timeline is often much longer than initially promised. In some cases, businesses that signed contracts were later told that the timelines were unrealistic, forcing them to scramble to meet deadlines.
What this means for businesses: Delays in setup and missing features can significantly impact operations, especially when businesses are promised smooth integrations that never materialize. Teams are left scrambling to meet deadlines while waiting on the platform to become fully functional.
Frequent Outages and Performance Issues
Concur’s platform is prone to frequent outages and server downtime, making it difficult for businesses to submit reports or track expenses in real time. These outages cause significant disruptions, especially for companies with tight deadlines.
What this means for businesses: Frequent outages disrupt workflows, causing missed deadlines, delayed reimbursements, and inaccurate financial tracking.
Rigid Cancellation Policies and Limited Support
Concur enforces a strict 90-day cancellation policy, preventing businesses from quickly switching to alternative providers. Additionally, users report poor support and unresponsive account executives, leaving them with little help when issues arise.
Impact: Businesses are often locked into long-term contracts without flexibility, forcing them to continue using a solution that no longer meets their needs. This stifles operational agility and leaves companies frustrated.
Expensive and Full of Hidden Costs
Many businesses have found that Concur misrepresents its pricing, often claiming certain features are included, only to inform clients later that they’ll need to pay for upgrades to access them. These hard-sell tactics leave companies feeling misled and frustrated, especially when key features don’t function as promised.
“They constantly misrepresented what features were included in pricing, then tried to upsell us to pay more for features we thought were included."
What this means for businesses: This type of bait-and-switch pricing can significantly increase the overall cost of using Concur, making it unaffordable for smaller companies or businesses working with tight budgets.
Why Businesses Are Moving Away from Legacy and Card-Locked Expense Tools
The way businesses manage expenses is evolving, and tools like Concur and Expensify are getting left behind. Whether it's legacy platforms that take months to implement or card-first tools that force companies into rigid contracts and card usage, finance teams are realizing these systems weren’t built for how modern businesses operate.
Today’s finance leaders want flexibility. They want tools that integrate easily with their existing workflows, not ones that require retraining employees or changing banks. Card-first models like Expensify and Ramp can limit cash flow flexibility by offering charge cards with no rolling credit and tying pricing to card usage. Meanwhile, legacy systems like Concur slow down teams with outdated interfaces, rigid processes, and long onboarding timelines.
That’s why businesses are shifting towards platforms like Fyle—tools that offer real-time expense visibility without dictating how you operate. As companies prioritize scalability, transparency, and control, the one-size-fits-all, high-friction tools are becoming a thing of the past.
Fyle: Because Expense Management Should Be Easy
In the search for a suitable expense management solution, businesses are left juggling between price hikes, rigid processes, outdated interfaces, and clunky integrations, leaving them frustrated and searching for better alternatives.
This is where Fyle steps in. No hidden fees, no forced card adoption, and no need to wrestle with complex workflows—just seamless, real-time expense management built to make your life easier. Let's look at how Fyle outshines the competition and delivers true flexibility to businesses.
Real-Time Credit Card Feeds On Your Existing Cards
- Fyle works with any Visa, Mastercard, or American Express card—no need to switch to proprietary cards.
- Employees receive instant text notifications the moment they swipe their cards. They just need to reply with a picture of the receipt for AI-powered automated reconciliation.
No Hidden Fees or Complex Pricing
- Transparent, no-surprise pricing model—only pay for users who create an expense in a month or have a business credit card attached to Fyle with an active transaction.
- No lock-in contracts or hidden fees, giving you the freedom to scale up or down as needed.
Seamless Integrations with Accounting Software
- Self-serve integrations with QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, Sage 300 (beta), Xero, and NetSuite.
- Setup takes just 12.6 minutes on average, ensuring a smooth connection with your accounting software.
Real-time expense sync ensures your books are always updated without manual effort.
Best-in-Class Customer Support and Easy Onboarding
- 24/7 customer support* with a 95% CSAT rating and response times under 30 minutes.
- Go live within 3 weeks with smooth onboarding that doesn’t waste your team’s time.
*For Business Plan users
Why Should You Settle for Less?
Both Expensify and Concur promise streamlined expense management, but user experiences tell a different story.
From predatory pricing and poor customer service to outdated interfaces and rigid processes, these platforms often create more problems than they solve.
Fyle, on the other hand, offers the freedom and flexibility that businesses need. With real-time card feeds, seamless integrations, transparent pricing, and excellent support, Fyle ensures that managing expenses is smooth, simple, and hassle-free.
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