Navan
All-in-one travel and expense management platform.
About Navan
Navan combines corporate travel booking and expense management in one system, not as two products sharing a login but as a genuinely integrated workflow. When an employee books a flight through Navan, the expense is already categorized, matched against policy, and visible to finance in real time — before the trip happens, not three weeks later when the credit card statement arrives. Corporate cards feed directly into the same ledger, so reconciliation is largely automatic. Receipt matching runs on OCR, and multi-currency conversions are handled at transaction time. It fits mid-market and enterprise finance teams managing 50+ travelling employees where travel spend is a meaningful budget line. Companies replacing a Concur plus separate corporate card setup will see the clearest gain. If your travel volume is low or your team is under 20 people, the platform is overkill. The main friction points are real: pricing is quote-only with no published tiers, so you cannot evaluate cost without a sales call. Switching from an entrenched stack — especially Concur — involves data migration and retraining. Policy configuration is powerful but takes setup time to get right, and out-of-the-box rules will not match most firms' edge cases without customisation.
Best for
Mid-to-large companies wanting unified travel and expense management
Key Features
- Real-time expense tracking with corporate cards
- Automated expense policy enforcement
- Unified travel booking and expense management
- Multi-currency expense handling
- Automated receipt matching and categorization
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Policy enforcement triggers at booking time, blocking out-of-policy travel before money is spent rather than flagging it afterward
- Corporate cards, travel booking, and expense reporting share a single data layer, eliminating reconciliation between separate systems
- Real-time spend dashboard shows committed and actual travel costs simultaneously, useful for quarterly close and budget monitoring
- Receipt matching is automatic for card transactions, reducing manual expense submission for road-heavy teams
- Multi-currency handling converts and categorises at transaction time, practical for teams with European or APAC travel
- Native integrations with NetSuite and Workday push approved expenses directly to GL without manual export steps
- Audit trail is complete from booking through approval to posting, which simplifies internal and external audits
Cons
- No published pricing — every evaluation starts with a sales conversation, making it impossible to budget-check before committing time to a demo
- Implementation and policy configuration require dedicated setup time; firms expecting plug-and-play will be disappointed in the first 60 days
- If you already run Concur or Expensify with a separate card programme that works, the migration cost in time and disruption is significant
- Smaller firms under 50 employees will pay for platform depth they will not use, and simpler tools like Expensify or Ramp will cover their needs at lower cost
- Customer support response times have been inconsistent for non-enterprise tiers based on user reports, particularly for complex policy disputes
- Vendor lock-in risk is real: once travel history, card data, and expense data live in Navan, extracting and migrating that data is a project, not a download
Ledger Brief Take
Navan's strength lies in genuinely unifying corporate travel booking with expense management rather than bolting them together—eliminating the usual reconciliation headaches between separate systems. The real-time spend visibility and policy enforcement work at booking time, not after the fact, making it particularly valuable for companies where travel represents significant expense volatility. Enterprise-focused with custom pricing that reflects its positioning as a comprehensive platform replacement rather than a point solution.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions accountants ask about Navan.
How does Navan pricing work and what does it cost?
Navan does not publish pricing. All plans are custom-quoted based on employee count, travel volume, and modules selected. There is no free plan and no self-serve trial. Expect a sales call before you see a number. Budget accordingly if you are mid-procurement cycle.
Does Navan integrate with QuickBooks?
Yes. Navan integrates with QuickBooks Online, pushing approved expenses to your chart of accounts automatically. NetSuite and Workday integrations are also native. Concur and Expensify are listed integrations, but running Navan alongside either makes the unified-platform case weaker.
How does Navan compare to Concur?
Concur is older, more configurable for complex enterprise workflows, and has a larger implementation partner ecosystem. Navan is faster to demo and has a cleaner UI, but Concur has deeper ERP customisation for multinational entities. If your finance team already has a Concur administrator, switching has a real cost.
Is Navan suitable for small accounting firms or bookkeeping practices?
No. Navan targets companies with significant employee travel spend, typically 50-plus travelling employees. A small firm with occasional client travel should use Expensify, Ramp, or even a simple corporate card with a receipt app. Navan's feature set will be largely unused and its pricing will reflect the mismatch.
How does Navan handle data security and compliance?
Navan is SOC 2 Type II certified and supports SSO via SAML. Card transaction data is PCI-DSS compliant. For firms in regulated industries, confirm data residency terms in the contract — particularly for EU employee data under GDPR — before signing.
What happens to expense data if we leave Navan?
You can export historical expense and travel data, but the process requires coordination with Navan's support team and is not a simple self-serve export. Factor migration effort into your total cost of ownership before committing, especially if you have multi-year travel history you need to retain for audit purposes.