Bento for Business vs. Emburse SpringAhead

Our organization runs a lot of short-term or one-off programs where the program staff need to buy supplies -- Bento is perfect for these scenarios. The staff who make the purchases are not staff who would typically have a company card, so we wanted a solution other than giving them a credit card. Bento was perfect because it makes the purchasing & bookkeeping processes for these programs easy and efficient for both the staff and the finance team

Incentivized

It's definitely well suited for all organizations with knowledge workers who use computers to do their work and are able to log in and enter their time on a regular basis. I've always had access to it as part of my job and love using SpringAhead. It may be less appropriate in a role where the worker does not have regular access to a computer to enter their hours digitally.

Incentivized

• Track expenses by employee
• Restrict purchases based on amount and category
• Import transactions directly into QuickBooks

Incentivized

• Allows for tracking of time very easily. Users can add all their project's time in one place instead of drilling into each project.
• Managers can approve their team's time all in one place. We do not need to drill down to find the info and approve. Users who don't report to the manager but are part of the project can still be approved by the project manager.
• Reports are easy to read when looking at historical information. Reports can be run with multiple parameters that the user needs.

Incentivized

• easier way for employees to access their statements without setting them up as admins
• monthly statements generated by card
• monthly fee needs to be added to one of the card statements

Incentivized

• Automated reminders to employees would be great
• A more modern and up-to-date user interface
• The approvals system for projects vs. users could use some work

Incentivized

If you are looking for prepaid business care or a business expense card, I highly do not recommend using Bento for Business. Do yourself and your business a favor and use a more customer service orientated services such as Pex, Wex, or Expensify. Bento for Business is bad business. Just don't do it.

We selected SpringAhead because of price and usability. This tool is easy to set up and configure. It is a cloud application allowing access from anywhere. There were no training requirements. When you have a small use case this tool is the way to go. We moved off SpringAhead to get more functionality and it has required a lot more training and effort to maintain and utilize

Incentivized

• Saving time by eliminating reimbursements
• Allowing many staff to have a card to make purchases without worrying about financial control/risk of too many people having a company card
• Efficiently synchs with Quickbooks

Incentivized

• Positive - tracking return on project investments
• Positive - being able to plan on future projects
• Positive - being able to manage costs and attendance

Incentivized