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Paylocity payroll and expenses

Paylocity expense management and Paylocity expense reimbursement compared with Airbase, Ramp and Expensify

Unlike ADP, Paylocity sells its own expense module, and since buying Airbase it sells cards and bill pay too. You can also connect an outside tool from its marketplace. The question that decides it: who repays the employee, and does the money land on the Paylocity paycheck?

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Department budget alerts on the cards you already hold, flat per month whatever your Paylocity headcount.

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Set a department budget and see the day it would have warned you

Paylocity tells you what was spent once a report is approved and what was paid on payday. Neither tells a department head on the 12th that the month is already 70 percent gone. Pick a budget and thresholds, replay a month of card spend, and watch when the alert fires. It runs in your browser and nothing is uploaded.

Short answer

Does Paylocity have expense management?

Yes. Paylocity sells its own expense module under Paylocity for Finance, and since its October 2024 purchase of Airbase it also sells corporate cards, bill pay and procurement. Prices are quoted after a demo. If you would rather keep a tool you know, Ramp's Paylocity connector sends approved expenses back to Paylocity payroll, while Expensify and Concur sync the employee roster only.

If your HR shortlist also includes BambooHR, see our BambooHR expense management guide for outside expense tools and the difference between employee sync and reimbursement.

Four ways to run expenses on Paylocity

Paylocity expense reimbursement routes, and where the money lands

Taken from Paylocity's own expense management page and from the vendor listings on the Paylocity Marketplace. Where a listing is silent on payroll, the table says so instead of guessing.

Swipe the table sideways to compare all columns.

Option What it covers Link to Paylocity payroll Cards Price
Paylocity expense module AI receipt capture and coding, budget limits by role and expense type, mileage, audit trail, TravelPerk booking Native. Same system as payroll Your existing Visa and Mastercard corporate cards, via Direct Card Expenses Quote after a demo
Airbase by Paylocity Bill pay and AP, expense management, procurement, approval workflows Native. Part of Paylocity for Finance since the 2024 deal Its own physical and virtual cards with spend controls Quote, old pricing page redirects to Paylocity
Ramp Cards, expenses, bill pay, approvals by reporting line Writes back. Listing says approved expenses flow back for payroll reimbursement Ramp's own card Free tier $0, Plus $15 a user plus fee
Expensify Receipts, reports, approvals, its own card Roster in. Payroll return not stated on the listing Expensify Card or your existing cards Collect $5 a member
SAP Concur Travel booking and expense reporting Roster in. Adds, updates and terminations only Your existing cards Base from $7 a report

The surprise in that table is Ramp. On ADP, Ramp's connector is listed as read-only and Ramp repays people itself. On Paylocity, the marketplace listing says approved expenses flow back into Paylocity for payroll reimbursement. Same vendor, different payroll, different answer. If you are comparing notes with a peer who runs ADP, that is why your experiences will not match. The ADP side is laid out on our ADP expense management page.

The native route has one real advantage that no connector matches: there is nothing to sync. A new hire, a manager change or a termination in Paylocity is already true in the expense module, so a departed employee's card and approval rights do not linger for a day waiting on a nightly feed. Ramp's own help center describes a daily check of the HR system for exactly this reason.

Paylocity spend management after Airbase

What Airbase by Paylocity changes for a buyer

Paylocity announced its purchase of Airbase on September 4, 2024 and closed it on October 1, 2024, for about $325 million. Airbase was a spend management platform in its own right, with bill pay, cards, expenses and purchase requests, and it is now sold as part of Paylocity for Finance. Paylocity's expense page now cites the Spend Matters Spring 2025 ranking that named Airbase by Paylocity the top expense solution for companies under $100 million in revenue.

For a company already on Paylocity payroll, that is a genuine one-vendor option: payroll, expenses, cards and AP from the same login, with no roster to keep in sync. For a company that bought Airbase on its own and runs payroll elsewhere, the picture is different. The standalone pricing page now redirects to a Paylocity demo form, renewals happen inside a larger HR suite's sales process, and that is the moment many of those customers look around. Our Airbase alternative comparison covers that case.

One thing to pin down before you sign: whether the expense module, the Airbase cards and bill pay are separate line items or one bundle, and whether the price is per employee, per filer or per transaction. Paylocity does not publish it, and the meter matters more than the rate.

Controller comparing two printed software renewal quotes next to a laptop, a corporate card and expense receipts
Put the Paylocity quote next to a standalone one, priced on the same headcount and the same number of filers.

Same company, every meter

Yearly software cost, 30 filers out of 50 staff

Ramp Free Card-funded $0
Expensify Collect $5 a member $1,800
Concur Base From $7 a report $2,520
Concur Plus From $11 a report $3,960
Ramp Plus $15 a user, plus fee $5,400+
Expensify Control $18 an active member $6,480
Paylocity module or Airbase No published meter Quote

Our arithmetic on each vendor's published entry rate. Ramp Plus adds a platform fee Ramp does not publish. Excludes your Paylocity payroll fee.

What Paylocity expense management pricing has to beat

Take one company on Paylocity payroll with 50 employees, 30 of whom file one expense report a month. The bars on the left are each alternative on its own published meter. The Paylocity line is dashed because there is no meter to plot: Paylocity quotes its finance products after a demo.

That range is the useful part. A quote under about $1,800 a year for 30 filers beats Expensify Collect outright and keeps everything on one login. A quote between $2,500 and $4,000 sits where Concur does, and is easy to justify if it removes a roster sync and a second vendor review. A quote well above $5,000 is charging for the bundle, so ask what you would lose by taking only the expense module.

Ramp's $0 is real but conditional: it is funded by interchange on Ramp's card, so it only stays $0 if your card spend moves there. Detailed rates and their fine print are on our Ramp pricing, Expensify pricing and SAP Concur pricing pages.

Paylocity expense reporting, matched to how you spend

Which Paylocity expense setup fits your company

Mostly out-of-pocket

Field staff, mileage, personal cards

Reimbursement is your main flow, so the paycheck route matters most. Paylocity's own module is the shortest path, and Ramp is the outside tool whose listing says it writes back to payroll.

Mostly company cards

Cards for every buyer, few reimbursements

Reimbursements are rare, so where they land matters less than card controls and receipt matching. Compare Airbase by Paylocity's cards against Ramp's or Brex's on price, and check which cards your bank already issues.

Travel heavy

Booking and expenses together

Paylocity pairs with TravelPerk for booking. Concur bundles both but only syncs the roster from Paylocity. Our travel and expense management software comparison covers the field.

Whichever you pick, check one setting before the first payroll: the earning used for reimbursements. Under an accountable plan, meaning a business purpose, receipts within a reasonable time and any excess returned, a reimbursement is not wages even though it rides on the paycheck. If that earning is set up as taxable, employees are taxed on money that was never income. Our accountable plan guide covers the rules.

And ask the expense vendor, in writing, when its sync runs against your payroll cutoff. A report approved an hour after cutoff waits a full cycle, which is two weeks on a biweekly schedule, whichever tool sends it.

The gap every route leaves

Spend alerts before payday, next to any Paylocity expense tool

Every route above is built to repay people correctly and record the spend. None is built to warn a department head mid-month that a budget is on pace to overshoot, because an expense report counts a dollar once it is submitted and approved, and payroll counts it on payday. Card spend shows up in the bank feed days or weeks earlier.

01

Budget on pace to overshoot

A department at 60 percent on the 10th, projected forward, sent to the person who owns the budget.

02

Renewal at a higher price

A subscription that comes back above last time's amount, the expense tool included.

03

New recurring merchant

The first charge from a vendor nobody approved, on any card, the day it posts.

Where SpendNotify fits, and where it does not

SpendNotify does not run payroll, reimburse anyone or connect to Paylocity, and it has no relationship with Paylocity or any vendor named here. It takes in charges from the cards and bank accounts you already use (forwarded bank transaction emails, an iPhone Shortcut for Apple Pay, or a CSV, OFX or QFX statement) and alerts the budget owner by email, Slack or webhook when one of the three things above happens. Plans are flat per month, from $199, or $99 a month billed yearly, so the price does not climb with headcount. How the alerts work is on budget alerts, and the plans are on pricing.

See plans

Questions buyers ask

Paylocity expense management, answered

Does Paylocity have expense management?

Yes. Paylocity sells expense management as part of Paylocity for Finance, with AI receipt capture, budget limits by role and expense type, mileage, and Direct Card Expenses that link Visa and Mastercard corporate card transactions to expense reports. Since buying Airbase in October 2024 it also sells cards, bill pay and procurement. Prices are quoted, not published.

How do I submit an expense report in Paylocity?

If your company bought the module, you photograph the receipt in the Paylocity mobile app or upload it on the web, and Paylocity reads and codes it into a report. Mileage is entered as a start point and one or more destinations. The report routes to your approver. Menu names can differ by company setup, so check your own Paylocity home screen.

Can Paylocity reimburse expenses through payroll?

Yes, two ways. Paylocity's own expense module repays approved expenses for you. And on the Paylocity Marketplace, the Ramp listing says approved expenses flow back into Paylocity for payroll reimbursement, so out-of-pocket spend lands on the next paycheck. The Expensify and Concur listings describe employee data syncing only, so ask those vendors before you assume the same.

How much does Paylocity expense management cost?

Paylocity does not publish a price. The expense module and the Airbase spend products are quoted after a demo, and the old Airbase pricing page now redirects to that demo form. For scale, a 50 person company with 30 filers pays about $1,800 a year on Expensify Collect and about $2,520 on SAP Concur Base, and Ramp's base tier is $0.

What happened to Airbase after Paylocity bought it?

Paylocity announced the deal on September 4, 2024 and closed it on October 1, 2024, for about $325 million. Airbase is now sold as Airbase by Paylocity, inside Paylocity for Finance, and its standalone pricing page redirects to a Paylocity demo request. Existing Airbase customers who do not run Paylocity payroll are the ones most often shopping for an alternative.

Does Ramp integrate with Paylocity?

Yes. Ramp is listed on the Paylocity Marketplace. The listing says it syncs employee demographic and reporting data into Ramp, routes approvals by reporting line, and sends approved expenses back to Paylocity for payroll reimbursement. That differs from Ramp's ADP connector, which ADP lists as read-only, so the payroll you run changes the answer.

Does Expensify integrate with Paylocity?

Yes. Expensify is on the Paylocity Marketplace, and the listing describes employee demographic and employment data flowing from Paylocity into Expensify so people and approvers stay current. It does not say approved reimbursements go back to Paylocity payroll. Expensify normally repays employees itself by ACH. Collect is $5 per member a month.

Can SpendNotify replace Paylocity expense management?

No. SpendNotify does not reimburse employees, run payroll or connect to Paylocity. It reads charges from the cards and bank accounts you already use and alerts the budget owner when a department budget is on pace to overshoot, a subscription renews at a higher price or a new recurring charge appears. It runs next to whichever expense tool you choose.

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Related pages

Pick the Paylocity route that repays people the way you want. Know the day a department is on pace to overshoot, whichever you buy.

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