Emburse Certify vs. ExpenseNet

[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.

Incentivized

ExpenseNet is well suited to a large organization with many travelers or purchasing cards holders. It allows the entire expense reporting process to be done electronically. For employees who are not based on site or not based at the same site as their manager and accounting, it really streamlines the process compared to having paper or even e-mailed expense reports. The wholly electronic process also enables easier reporting and auditing. ExpenseNet would likely be less appropriate for small organizations with few travelers.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Integration with expenses posted to the employee's corporate card account.
• Feature that allows an employee to take a picture of their receipt and then send it to their ExpenseNet account via e-mail.
• Ability to view and save a copy of the expense report with or without the receipts.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Overall the look and feel is dated and the navigation is clunky. Even employees who travel a lot will only go into the system once a month to do their expense report. A more user-friendly interface would take some of the chore out of it.
• The feature to take a picture of a receipt and then e-mail it to your ExpenseNet account is great, but it does not always work, which can be frustrating to redo
• It would be handy if just as the charges from the corporate card are imported, the statement could be as well. This would eliminate the need for the employee to go into their corporate card account to download and save the statement and then attach it in ExpenseNet.
• It is senseless that once you add a receipt to the queue, you cannot delete it until after you have submitted the given report. Sometimes, a duplicate receipt will be loaded or a receipt will be loaded in error. To have to work around it in the queue is rather annoying.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• We have reduced the amount of time our operations department has to spend booking flights to 0.
• Hotel bookings have been greatly streamlined and we are looking to eliminate human interaction with this process once CC authorisations are handled.
• We have eliminated the wait time between operational travel research and client approval time -- it can all be handled in one single step now.

Incentivized

• Enables fully electronic expense reporting process
• Easier reporting
• Easier to audit / provide audit documentation

Incentivized