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How to Choose Expense-Management Software for a University Finance Team

By TheFinanceBase Team 12 min read

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Choose university expense-management software by starting with the workflows and controls your institution needs—not with a vendor feature list. Map travel authorization, reimbursements, purchasing-card reconciliation, approvals, reporting, and procurement boundaries; then require each shortlisted system to demonstrate your actual fund coding, ERP and card integrations, campus user roles, and exception handling. University deployments show that several platforms can support higher-education workflows, but they do not establish one universally best system.

What should a university expense-management system handle?

First decide which processes the system must own and which will remain in procurement, accounts payable, or a separate travel service. “Expense management” can mean anything from reimbursement processing to a connected set of travel, card, approval, and reporting workflows; a vendor comparison is meaningful only when every candidate is assessed against the same boundary.

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Map the workflows before evaluating software

List the processes your finance team wants to handle, and identify the system of record for each:

  • Travel: pre-travel authorization, booking, expense reporting, and policy review. UMass Dartmouth describes a workflow that includes authorization, booking, reports, approvals, and bank-card reconciliation. Florida describes travel requests, booking, receipt capture, expense reports, and approvals.
  • Employee reimbursements: expense submission, supporting documentation, approvals, and payment-status visibility.
  • Purchasing-card reconciliation: card transaction feeds, receipt collection, coding, review, and resolution of missing documentation. The University of Illinois System and the University of Michigan describe systems used for card-related workflows.
  • Other payments: invoices, special requests, or payment requests, if those belong in the same platform at your institution. GW describes Concur use within a service suite covering expenses, travel, invoices, and special requests.
  • Procurement: purchasing goods and services, including requisitions and purchase orders. Do not assume that expense software should replace this process. The University of New Mexico says goods and services generally fall under procurement and are typically paid by P-card or requisition/purchase order, subject to exceptions.

For each process, write down who initiates it, which office owns the policy, where approvals occur, and where the final financial record must land. If teams disagree about whether a transaction belongs in expense management, procurement, or accounts payable, settle that boundary before comparing products. The University of New Mexico’s guidance illustrates why: exceptions exist, and the right route can depend on the transaction rather than the software label.

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Include the funding source in the workflow map

University spending may involve distinct requirements depending on the source of funds. GW notes that procurement actions can vary between university funds and federal grant or contract funds. Ask finance, procurement, and grant administrators to identify the fund types, restrictions, documentation rules, and additional reviews that must be reflected in the process. Do not assume one approval path or set of required fields will fit every expense.

How should we compare ERP and card integrations?

Require a live demonstration of how data will move between the expense platform, your financial system, card providers, and identity service. A general statement that a product “integrates” is not enough: the relevant question is whether it handles your institution’s configuration, coding, and exception cases reliably.

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Ask for a transaction-level demonstration

Have the vendor show a transaction from its start through its financial-system handoff. Check whether the demonstration covers:

  • Mapping to your chart of accounts and the coding fields your institution actually uses.
  • Fund, project, department, and other required dimensions, including split coding when an expense is allocated across funds.
  • Card transaction imports, receipt matching, and the handling of late, missing, or unmatched transactions.
  • Identity and single sign-on requirements, where applicable, and the path for employee or nonemployee accounts.
  • The file, interface, or other export/import route into your financial system, including how errors are surfaced and corrected.

Ask the vendor to use your terminology and a representative sample of your coding structure. A polished standard demonstration may show a feature exists but does not establish that the feature can be configured to meet your chart-of-accounts rules or operating process.

Does expense software integrate with Banner or PeopleSoft?

PayMyTuition announced integrations with Ellucian Banner, Ellucian Colleague, PeopleSoft, and Workday. That announcement is vendor-authored evidence; it does not establish that a particular institution’s configuration, data flow, or requirements are supported. Treat each named integration as a question for technical diligence, not as confirmation that the implementation will work without configuration or validation.

The University of Illinois System lists financial-system and credit-card integration among the capabilities of Emburse Enterprise. For any product, ask for a technical review with the staff who own the ERP, identity, card, and financial interfaces. Confirm which data moves in each direction, what must be mapped or maintained, and how a rejected or incomplete transaction is handled.

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Which controls and approval rules should the platform support?

Test policy configuration against your actual approval and documentation rules. A university team needs to know not only whether a transaction can be submitted, but also whether the system can route it to the right people, flag exceptions, preserve an audit trail, and support the review required for its funding source and purpose.

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Turn policy into demonstrable scenarios

Ask vendors to show how they would handle:

  • Pre-approval before travel or another covered expense.
  • Approval routing that changes by department, fund, amount, or other local rule.
  • Spend controls, audit flags, and required supporting documents.
  • An exception that needs a secondary approver or correction before posting.
  • Policy reminders that appear at the point a user needs to act.
  • A usable history of submissions, approvals, changes, and exception resolution.

Illinois describes automated routing and spend control in its Emburse Enterprise use. Arizona describes policy reminders, audit rules, and defined approval workflows. UMass Dartmouth describes travel workflows involving policy, export-control, and cybersecurity considerations. These are examples of institutional requirements and product use, not proof that every campus has the same rules or that the software automatically enforces every policy.

For grant-funded or otherwise restricted spending, involve the offices responsible for those funds in the demonstration. Ask what happens when a trip or purchase has an unusual funding source, incomplete documentation, or a policy exception. A control that is easy for administrators to configure but confusing to submitters can create workarounds; test both sides of the process.

Can one system handle travel, P-card reconciliation, and reimbursements?

Some university deployments use one platform across several of these workflows, but the exact coverage depends on the institution’s setup. Compare the processes you need, not the assumption that all related work must be consolidated into a single product.

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GW describes Concur use for reimbursement, P-card statements, and travel advances, alongside its broader use for travel, expenses, invoices, and special requests. UMass Dartmouth describes travel authorization, booking, expense reporting, approvals, and bank-card reconciliation. Denver describes travel booking, P-card transactions, reimbursements, receipt uploads, approval tracking, and reporting. These examples show that broad workflow coverage is used in university settings; they do not establish that every institution should put all of those functions in one system.

Ask vendors to demonstrate the full sequence from the traveler’s request or card transaction through approval, coding, reconciliation, and reporting. Then compare that sequence with your current process. A combined system may reduce handoffs if it fits your requirements; a separate procurement or travel process may still be appropriate where ownership, rules, or institutional systems differ.

How should we evaluate employees, students, guests, and delegates?

Map user types before choosing a platform, because campus expenses are not limited to employees submitting their own claims. Michigan describes distinct employee and nonemployee workflows and separates employment-related student expenses from expenses tied to academic pursuits.

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For each role, check how a person gets access, submits or reviews a transaction, provides documents, and receives status updates. Include supervisors, business officers, delegates, cardholders, students, and guests where they participate in your process. Ask who can act on another person’s behalf, what permissions that delegation grants, and how the institution can review or revoke access.

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Test the user experience on the devices and through the channels your campus expects people to use. Florida describes mobile receipt capture and approvals. Illinois lists in-application assistance and training resources. Those examples make mobile use and user support reasonable evaluation areas, but they do not establish that a particular interface will suit your campus. Have representative users try the relevant tasks during demonstrations, including a nonemployee or student scenario if those users are in scope.

What reporting should finance and departments be able to see?

Define the information each role needs before accepting a dashboard tour. A finance team may need to track work still awaiting approval, card transactions that have not been submitted, reimbursement status, fund or department spending, aging, and exceptions; authorized business officers may need a different view than central finance.

Illinois lists dashboards for its Emburse Enterprise use. Arizona describes custom dashboards and reimbursement-status visibility. Denver describes reporting tools for authorized business officers. Ask vendors to show how a user with the appropriate permissions would find the information you need and whether it can be viewed at the required level of detail. Confirm which data is available in standard reports, which requires configuration, and how users can investigate a total back to its transactions.

Reporting should also support oversight of process health, not just totals. Ask whether your team can identify recurring documentation gaps, aging approvals, or unresolved card transactions and determine who can see those exceptions. The system’s usefulness depends on whether the reported data is timely and coded correctly, so include the underlying transaction flow in the reporting demonstration.

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Which expense-management systems have university examples?

University examples help establish that a product has been used in a higher-education setting, but they are not a head-to-head performance comparison. The available examples describe different institutions and workflows, so use them to build a shortlist for diligence rather than to declare a winner.

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Option University use described What the example establishes What to validate
Emburse Enterprise The University of Illinois System lists automated approval routing, spend controls, mobile approvals, financial-system and credit-card integration, training, and dashboards. Michigan reports upgrading to Emburse Enterprise in August 2024 for employee reimbursements and P-card reconciliation. Use in university reimbursement and card workflows, with capabilities described by the institutions. Whether your ERP mapping, card feeds, user roles, approval rules, reporting, and implementation needs are supported.
SAP Concur GW describes Concur within its iBuy+ service suite for expenses, travel, invoices, and special requests. UMass Dartmouth describes authorization, booking, reports, card reconciliation, and policy workflows. Florida describes travel requests, booking, receipt capture, expense reports, and approvals; Denver and UC San Diego also describe Concur in travel, expense, and card workflows. Use across several travel, expense, and card-related workflows at named universities. Which functions are in scope in your institution’s proposed configuration, how they connect to your financial systems, and which processes remain elsewhere.
PayMyTuition Expense and Spend Management The vendor announced a higher-education-focused expense and spend product on April 29, 2025, and listed Banner, Colleague, PeopleSoft, and Workday integrations. A candidate marketed for higher education with vendor-announced integrations. Deployment history, technical fit, support model, workflow depth, and outcomes through institution-specific diligence. The announcement does not independently verify product results or savings.

The examples do not provide comparable independent performance results, current prices, implementation costs, or contract terms. PayMyTuition’s announcement states that its spend capabilities can deliver “up to 20% savings on spend programs,” but the announcement does not provide supporting methodology; treat that as a vendor claim, not an established outcome for your institution.

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How do we run a useful software demonstration?

Give every shortlisted vendor the same scenarios and ask them to show the complete workflow, including failures and corrections. Scripted demonstrations make it easier to see whether products meet your requirements instead of rewarding the most polished generic presentation.

  1. Write the scenario and expected result. For each case, state the user, transaction, funding source, policy rule, approval path, documentation, and financial-system outcome you expect.
  2. Use campus-specific test cases. Include a grant-funded international trip; a P-card purchase with missing documentation; a student or guest reimbursement; an expense split across funds; and an exception requiring a secondary approver.
  3. Ask the vendor to show normal and exception paths. Watch what the user sees, who is notified, how the issue is resolved, and whether changes remain visible to reviewers.
  4. Verify the data handoff. Follow a completed example through coding, card reconciliation where relevant, and the export or integration route to the financial system.
  5. Have campus users perform tasks. Include the staff and nonemployee roles that will actually submit, approve, reconcile, or review expenses.
  6. Record gaps and follow-up evidence. Note what was demonstrated, what depended on configuration, what was not shown, and which technical or policy owners must validate the answer.

Run the scenarios against local policy rather than a generic university template. The university examples above document different rules and workflows; their variety is a reason to test your own cases, not to assume another institution’s design will transfer unchanged.

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What should the implementation and support plan cover?

Require an institution-specific plan for migration, configuration, training, support, and change management. The operating model matters as much as the feature list: a system must be configured and adopted across the groups who submit, approve, reconcile, and oversee transactions.

UMass Dartmouth describes moving from five systems to two integrated platforms and requiring training for specified user groups. Arizona describes implementation resources and campus ambassadors supporting local adoption. These examples show that implementation and training can be substantial campus activities; they do not establish how long or how much a deployment at another institution will require.

Ask vendors to identify the institution’s responsibilities, the vendor’s responsibilities, the decisions needed before configuration, and how issues will be handled after launch. Request references from institutions with relevant workflows, then ask how closely their operating context matches yours. Validate claims against your transaction volumes, policies, ERP configuration, user mix, and available implementation staff.

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How should we make the final selection?

Score vendors against the same requirements and distinguish demonstrated fit from claims that remain unverified. A sensible decision gives the most weight to workflow coverage, integration, control configuration, usability for campus roles, reporting, and implementation support.

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  1. Set the scope. Agree which processes the platform must own and which remain in procurement, accounts payable, or separate travel services.
  2. Mark requirements by importance. Separate essential controls and integrations from useful but optional features.
  3. Run identical scripted demonstrations. Use the same campus scenarios and ask every vendor to show the same transaction handoffs.
  4. Validate the technical and policy fit. Include ERP, identity, card, finance, procurement, grants, and relevant campus representatives.
  5. Assess implementation readiness. Compare the proposed migration, configuration, training, support, and change-management responsibilities.
  6. Document unresolved questions. Do not treat pricing, security certifications, implementation costs, contract terms, or performance as established unless the vendor supplies evidence you can evaluate.

The strongest choice is the system that fits your institution’s actual workflows and can demonstrate its financial, policy, and user-role requirements—not simply the one with the broadest feature list or the most university logos.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does university expense-management software cost?

The available university examples do not state current license prices, implementation costs, or contract terms. Request a cost breakdown for the institution’s expected scope and users, and distinguish recurring charges from one-time implementation or integration work.

What security certifications should a university require?

The university examples summarized here do not establish vendor security certifications. Have your information-security and privacy teams define required evidence, review data handling and access controls, and assess the proposed service under your institution’s procurement process.

How can we compare expense software when vendors use different pricing models?

Normalize proposals to the same workflow scope, user populations, transaction assumptions, interfaces, and support obligations before comparing totals. Ask vendors to make exclusions and usage assumptions explicit so a lower headline quote does not conceal required services.

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Is a university reference customer enough to approve a vendor?

No. A reference confirms a reported institutional use case, not that the customer has the same ERP configuration, policies, scale, or outcomes as your campus. Ask references about implementation and support as well as how their workflows compare with yours.

Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.

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