Since day one, Apron has been about simplifying business payments. A vital part of our success so far has been the trust and feedback we’ve built up with our Partners: accountants and bookkeepers.
They’re the backbone of financial operations for countless small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), and we recognise the pivotal role they play in shaping the future of Apron.
Apron is now a fully integrated financial operations platform that brings together invoice capture, supplier payments, advanced bookkeeping, payment cards and employee spend management tools into one platform.
With the addition of expense cards, we’re closing the gap between bookkeeping and payments, making Apron the go-to platform for accountants and bookkeepers to manage their clients’ financials more efficiently than ever before — whatever level of involvement or collaboration they have.
What inspired us to get to this point? You could say that it was literally a waste of time.
The problem: Managing business payments shouldn’t be a hassle
No one gets their professional qualifications and enters the world of bookkeeping or accounting to spend hours each week processing payments and chasing receipts. In fact, many finance professionals we’ve spoken to find managing accounts payable and employee spend tedious, especially when working with SMBs who often lack the tools, resources and skills they need to effectively manage them.
Shaun Ellis, a Qualified Accountant at SA LEDGERS, summed it up perfectly:
“As someone with 5 years of training on accounting of complex tax structures, handling payments is not something I relish.”
Small businesses are often forced to juggle payments manually, dealing with clunky tools and time-consuming processes. This puts a significant strain on business owners and their finance teams, whether those teams are internal, or external.
What we’ve done about it: Simplifying accounts payable for Accountants and Bookkeepers
At Apron, we’ve built market leading bill pay and invoice capture solutions that have streamlined the accounts payable process for thousands of finance professionals and their clients.
By digitising and streamlining invoice capture, supplier payments, and reconciliation, we’ve eliminated the need for multiple apps and disconnected systems.
We’ve built a simple, functional layer that integrates with existing accounting tools, client banks, and emails. This ensures that payments happen seamlessly from start to finish.
With tens of thousands of pounds in transfer fees saved, and countless hours reclaimed for important work, it’s been an exciting journey so far.
And with the launch of expense cards, we’re making our all-in-one platform vision a reality.
No more juggling multiple apps or chasing clients for missing documents. Practices and their clients can do it all in Apron.
Automation where accountants and bookkeepers need it. Control where clients want it.
What’s new at Apron: Expense cards and more
Expense Cards: simple, affordable, and anywhere
When we launched Apron Bill Pay in 2023, we saw an unexpected yet welcome shift: many of our customers started using Apron for expense claims, too.
Why did this surprise us?
Expense cards like Pleo and Spendesk have been around for a decade. However, our customers told us something key: the existing options were often complicated and expensive, especially for small businesses.
So, we listened, and got to work on Apron Card: affordable, intuitive expense cards that simplify spending for businesses of all sizes.
The Apron Card is designed to be used anywhere, for anything, while being affordable enough for even the smallest businesses. It makes spend management simpler, more efficient, and more transparent.
What makes our Apron Card so exciting?
AI-powered receipt collection — Let our powerful AI track down missing receipts for you, saving you from chasing clients.
Effortless reconciliation — Apron matches every receipt to the correct transaction, so that your books are ultra-clean and up to date.
Built-in custom limits — Set daily and monthly spending limits for each card, giving employees what they need, while you stay in control of your cash flow.
No more spreadsheets — Say goodbye to spreadsheets and manual approvals. Speed up reimbursements by bringing them together in Apron.
Complete employee spend overview — All of your employee spending insights together in one place.
Real-time alerts — See who’s spending what, when, and where, at a glance.
Improved bill pay workflows
We’re also introducing some powerful new automation features to help speed up bill paying workflows.
Payables inbox — Connect Apron to your email, and we’ll automatically pull invoices into your Apron account. We’ll extract the relevant data and organise invoices by supplier and payment terms — saving you time and reducing errors.
Powerful approvals — Bring your entire approval process into Apron. Whether it’s invoices, payments, or expenses, you can define who needs to sign off on what, keeping workflows smooth and free from delays.
Pay cycles — Automatically organise bills by paydays for easier planning. With Apron, payments can be made in seconds, while you maintain full visibility over upcoming payments.
New and improved Capture workflows
Apron’s popular invoice capture workflow is also receiving some updates, making it faster and easier to get financial documents uploaded, recorded, and reconciled.
AI-generated document descriptions — Upload a document via Capture, and Apron’s AI will scan it to produce a choice of three AI-generated descriptions that can help give the whole team more context. For example, Apron might suggest that a document is about ‘Air conditioning unit maintenance’ or ‘Bill for redecorating the office.’
Auto-matching bank transactions — If Apron spots a receipt with a transaction that appears to have been paid already, it can automatically mark it as paid in the app, helping to keep your payables clean.
Bank statement extraction — Convert PDF bank statements from your clients into spreadsheets in Apron. So you don’t need to jump between extraction tools just to close the books.
Empowering Accountants and Bookkeepers to focus on what matters most
With Apron’s comprehensive financial operations platform, accountants and bookkeepers can stop chasing clients and get back to what they do best: offering strategic advice and helping businesses grow.
The addition of expense cards and our improved workflows means fewer manual tasks, less human error, and more time to focus on long-term planning and sustainable business relationships.
In real terms, that means being able to reduce the number of apps that practices and their clients need to rely on.
It means better integration of the entire accounts payable workflow, reducing unnecessary importing and exporting.
As a result, data is more accurate, and month-end financial reporting is faster for practices.
For business owners, the experience is equally transformative. With Apron, they gain control over their entire outgoings while saving time on financial administration. Automation handles the heavy lifting, while visibility and control are always at their fingertips.
Get early access to Apron Expense Cards
Accountants and bookkeepers are invited to join our waitlist today to secure early access to the Apron Expense Card, and experience the next evolution in spend management.
As always, thank you for being part of the Apron journey. We couldn’t do it without you. Let’s keep simplifying the future of finance, together!
