Find your fit
Who it is for
An Australian SME with staff making regular purchases can assign each person a card and budget instead of sharing one account. Before rollout, finance should decide which purchases need controls, who owns each budget and what to do when a card is lost.
Bookkeepers who use Xero can collect categories and receipts alongside transactions. The help guide requires settled, categorized transactions before sync; changes after syncing may need a separate correction in Xero.
The work it supports
Core capabilities
Create a budget with an amount, start or expiry date, reset cycle and assigned users. Choose whether a team shares the limit or each person has an individual cap, then test the selected plan’s allowed cycles.
Issue an individual physical or virtual card tied to spending rules. Budgetly describes budget, category, merchant, currency and time controls, plus a card-freeze action for administrators. Confirm the exact controls in the purchased tier.
After a purchase, cardholders can attach a receipt from the mobile app. Finance can also edit receipt, GST, category, budget, tags and notes in the transaction record before reconciliation.
Connect to Xero and review transactions that are settled and categorized. The help guide describes syncing eligible transactions with receipts; a receipt uploaded later can go across on the next sync.
Budgetly edits after a Xero sync do not update that Xero record. Treat Xero as a separate ledger that may need manual correction if coding or GST changes later.
Optional AI Bookkeeping can apply categories and tags, extract GST and check receipts. Review unclear or incorrect results rather than assuming automation has settled the accounting judgment.
Understand the offer
Pricing and getting started
The current Australian pricing page offers Essentials, Premium and custom Enterprise. Essentials includes four cards and Premium ten; Enterprise advertises 50-plus cards with custom terms.
The captured AUD rates are $99 per month for Essentials and $279 for Premium when billed annually, or $119 and $299 on monthly billing. Prices exclude GST; check the active checkout rate and contract term before committing.
Both named paid tiers list $10 per month for each extra card. AI Bookkeeping has separate transaction-volume pricing with a plan-dependent free allowance, so estimate active cards and monthly transactions together.
Budgetly’s own pages disagree about the free trial. The pricing page offers 14 days without a card, but its help checkout guide says there is no free trial. Ask Budgetly which current offer applies before treating a trial as part of the purchase decision.
The pricing page labels multi-layer bill approvals and line-by-line bill or receipt coding as “Soon.” Exclude those from current requirements until the vendor confirms they are released.
Look a little closer
Before you choose
Test with a small approved spending group before issuing cards broadly. Configure budgets and spend restrictions, verify receipt prompts, and check how a declined purchase or frozen card appears to the cardholder and administrator.
Map categories and review a few settled transactions in Xero before automating the routine. Check how missing receipts, late receipts, GST corrections and locked accounting periods are handled.
For a cost comparison, count the required active cards, any add-on AI transactions and GST in addition to the base subscription. Confirm the trial offer and exclude roadmap features from the decision.
10 distinct sources behind this profile. Research observed Oct 26, 2026. Features and offers can change.
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