Certify is travel and expense management software developed by the company of the same name in Maine, which merged with Chrome River in 2019 to form Emburse.
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Emburse SpringAhead
Score 10.0 out of 10
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SpringAhead is an expense reporting, billing, and time tracking platform that was owned and supported by Certify Travel and Expense created from the 2017 merger of Certify, Nexonia, and other companies, and now from Emburse, the company formed from the merger of Certify and Chrome River Technologies in March 2019.
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Pricing
Emburse Certify
Emburse SpringAhead
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emburse Certify
Emburse SpringAhead
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
$8 Expense report
No setup fee
Additional Details
Certify AP has volume based pricing based on processed invoices
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Emburse Certify
Emburse SpringAhead
Features
Emburse Certify
Emburse SpringAhead
Expense Management
Comparison of Expense Management features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Certify
7.6
Ratings
12% below category average
Emburse SpringAhead
-
Ratings
Employee Expense Reporting
8.20 Ratings
00 Ratings
Corporate Card Reconciliation
7.00 Ratings
00 Ratings
Payment Management
Comparison of Payment Management features of Product A and Product B
[Emburse] Certify seems to have been designed with large organizations in mind, particularly those with corporate card programs as opposed to "small business" cards. The integration with American Express Business accounts failed after less than a year, and was not reestablished before we pulled the plug on the whole project. Even worse, [Emburse] Certify's support team wasn't able to offer alternatives.
It's definitely well suited for all organizations with knowledge workers who use computers to do their work and are able to log in and enter their time on a regular basis. I've always had access to it as part of my job and love using SpringAhead. It may be less appropriate in a role where the worker does not have regular access to a computer to enter their hours digitally.
Customer service/support: They have an incredible team. We are fans of the chat option and 99.9% of the time our issues are solved within a 5-minute window.
Listening to customers: they are always looking for ways to improve their product. They have free conferences sprinkled around various cities. They are worth trending. They provide "what's new in Certify" as well as round-table discussions specifically addressing how their customers are using the product and what they have learned along the way.
Keeping their product up to date: Certify takes back various suggestions from the conference to enhance their product. I have been at every conference they have had and have actually seen customer suggestions get implemented into the program.
The ability to add a receipt after a report has been submitted would be helpful. This would simplify processing as opposed to disapproving the report and sending it back to the user for correction and re-submission.
Though not a fault of Certify, our users drive multiple destinations every day, rather than occasional trips from city A to city B. Therefore, capturing mileage is a time-consuming process for our users.
The reporting is not perfect. When I am trying to find history for one person it is very cumbersome to get the info you need.
At the current use there is no integration with an expense tracking tool. We had a separate app to track expenses vs. time.
Only resources on the project can view time. External customers could not log in to see users' time against the project. Instead they waited for invoices or status reports.
I am very used to Certify's components. But some users that I manage still have a hard time fixing their expense reports no matter how many times I try to teach them. The Editing expense Report and Adding Expense Report option sometimes gets confusing and causes some employees to enter transactions twice. There should be a better layout to make it easier for them to edit and finish their expense reports. I try to teach Certify as much as I can, but the usability should be a bit easier so it is less confusing.
The measure of support is how well they respond when you really need them, like when the system is not performing correctly. We have been on the platform less than a year, and there have been at least 2 instances, where the platform was down. The 2nd time was the day before out fiscal year end. And they need a development website. When they are making changes to your LIVE instance, and things go wrong, the client is the first to know about it! I've come to understand that Certify has tiers of support. Those in tier 1, barely know more about the software than the users. I sent a request for a report that shows expense reports currently pending approval and after 5 days of back and forth I was told to build it myself.
We used Concur prior to Certify. It cost 5x as much and was not worth the money. We also looked at Expensify, which had minor issues compared to what we are dealing with in Certify. Certify does not compare to Concur. The platforms are in two different leagues. Expensify is a good comparison and it is compatible with major ERPs like Sage Intacct. Nexonia, is actually also an Emburse product and likely would have been a better fit given it's integration capabilities with Sage Intacct.
We selected SpringAhead because of price and usability. This tool is easy to set up and configure. It is a cloud application allowing access from anywhere. There were no training requirements. When you have a small use case this tool is the way to go. We moved off SpringAhead to get more functionality and it has required a lot more training and effort to maintain and utilize
