Emburse Chrome River vs. Emburse Abacus

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Emburse Chrome River
Score 7.5 out of 10
N/A
Chrome River EXPENSE is expense management software, from Chrome River Technologies in Los Angeles, California.N/A
Emburse Abacus
Score 6.9 out of 10
N/A
Abacus is a web and mobile application that helps manage employee expenses and reimbursements. Some key features include: Real-Time Expense Submission, Integrated ACH Payments, and Dynamic Custom Reporting. Abacus was acquired by Certify in summer 2018 and is now part of Emburse, formed from the merger of Certify and Chrome River March 2019.
$9
per active user/per month
Pricing
Emburse Chrome RiverEmburse Abacus
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starter
$9
per active user/per month
Professional
Custom Pricing
Enterprise
Custom Pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emburse Chrome RiverEmburse Abacus
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsWe offer three cost-effective, subscription-based pricing models: A transaction-based model, priced according to expense report volume A submitter-based model, priced according to an average number of monthly submitters An enterprise-level model that includes unlimited expense reports. Pricing for this model is based on total employee headcount Feel free to contact us to discuss the best one for your organization.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Emburse Chrome RiverEmburse Abacus
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Emburse Chrome RiverEmburse Abacus
Expense Management
Comparison of Expense Management features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Chrome River
8.8
3 Ratings
9% above category average
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Employee Expense Reporting8.73 Ratings00 Ratings
Corporate Card Reconciliation9.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Payment Management
Comparison of Payment Management features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Chrome River
8.0
3 Ratings
0% below category average
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Customizable Approval Policies8.33 Ratings00 Ratings
Financial Document Management5.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Payment Status Tracking9.03 Ratings00 Ratings
Payment Audit Trail9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Duplicate Bill Detection8.33 Ratings00 Ratings
Advanced OCR8.52 Ratings00 Ratings
Electronic Funds Transfer8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Emburse Chrome RiverEmburse Abacus
Small Businesses
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
BILL Spend & Expense
BILL Spend & Expense
Score 8.8 out of 10
BILL Spend & Expense
BILL Spend & Expense
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Webexpenses
Webexpenses
Score 8.5 out of 10
Webexpenses
Webexpenses
Score 8.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Emburse Chrome RiverEmburse Abacus
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(123 ratings)
2.8
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.3
(18 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(107 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(113 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(7 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Emburse Chrome RiverEmburse Abacus
Likelihood to Recommend
Emburse
The Emburse Chrome River is well suited for tracking expenses and reimbursement. The compliance part of the software makes the task very easy to ensure all the reports that are being used within the company are updated and easy to verify. The Automating invoice processing makes some redundant task easy to execute.
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Emburse
Emburse Abacus is well suited for mid-market organizations that are open to - or embrace - the concept of real-time processing of expense transactions. Emburse Abacus takes a radically different approach from other platforms that rely on modeling paper-based monthly (or periodic) expense reports containing multiple expenses submitted simultaneously. Emburse Abacus allows each transaction to be very rapidly processed individually so that approving managers and accounting professionals are able to perform review tasks and identify potential problems throughout the entire month, relieving the massive monthly influx of large numbers of expense reports simultaneously.
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Pros
Emburse
  • [Emburse] Chrome River listens to its customer's needs and does its best to match current products to those needs, or collaborate internally to determine if an enhancement can be made available that will not only benefit that customer, but will be a good use case for all Chrome River customers.
  • The [Emburse] Chrome River customer service team is great. Unlike most companies, you can speak to a liver person!
  • [Emburse] Chrome River's training offerings are relevant and pertinent to the day to day operations of the software.
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Emburse
  • User-Friendly Interface: Reviews from our employees (ages ranging from 20s-70s) are all positive in regards to the ease of submitting an expense and getting reimbursement on Abacus
  • Timely Reimbursement: After final approval, money hits user accounts within 2 days
  • Approval routing: ability to set up multi-tier complex approval routes
  • Syncs with Sage Intacct: pushes entries on a day to day basis in to Intacct and it hits our GL accordingly
  • Abacus is competitively priced compared to the competition
  • Abacus utilizes "by expense" management. Getting rid of expense reports and batch reports (they do have an option where you can batch if need be)
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Cons
Emburse
  • Would be great to have pre-saved templates available to apply to line items at the expense report header level rather than having to go into each line.
  • Would be nice to have a mass upload functionality for things like cost codes, allocations, and credit card users.
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Emburse
  • When you upload a receipt to abacus it would be great to port in the information from the receipt to the text fields.
  • It would be good to have a more automated way for Abacus to integrate in with other payroll systems.
  • It would be nice to have more levels of permissions, e.g. manager level, administer level and employee level.
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Likelihood to Renew
Emburse
Chrome River is easy to use. We needed little training for our users and instead pointed them to Chrome River's Help Guides which are clearly written and easy to understand. With tools SNAP and the ability to email receipts means we can be completely remote when submitting reports.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Usability
Emburse
I would rate Chrome River Expense a 10 because, as I mentioned before, it is very simple and easy to use. This is important from an administrative point-of-view as well as for the field employee. Being a general contractor, it makes it all the better for our employees to use a program that is easy to understand and requires little time and effort. It has made tracking expenses very simple and has been well received by the entire company.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
Emburse
The software is always running effectively. I use many Cloud based systems and never had issues with Chrome River
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Performance
Emburse
System runs normal pretty much all the time. Does not slow any other systems down.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Emburse
This has been easy for me because we have a rep that contacts the supporters for this product to correct any issues we may have with the software or changes needed to help out employees use Chrome River easier. This from my understanding has been a hit or miss kind of interaction with our rep and Chrome River.
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Emburse
I have never had to contact Abacus support and have not heard stories from any of my colleagues having to do so either. Our accounting department stresses the ease of Abacus and has not voiced any concerns with the software or the product support team or the product support process.
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Online Training
Emburse
The software is very user friendly, so the online training was easy to pickup for everyone.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Emburse
Before implementation begins, make sure you have a plan on how you would like your workflow and platform setup for a system like Chrome River. It will speed the process and eliminate the need to make changes when you go live.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Emburse
It's the [industry-leading] software for Enterprise level organizations with [large-scale] teams and financial responsibilities. The software has the most robust set of tools and pays for itself with the amount of time it saves. Many newer alternatives have sprouted up but I don't know that we would ever trust another software to do our Expense Tracking and Management.
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Emburse
I chose Abacus because of its ease of use and flexible billing. The billing is based on the number of submissions rather than users in the system. Because we reimburse committee members, we have a lot of users in the system, but the activity can vary widely from month to month.
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Scalability
Emburse
It's very easy software to design to your needs.
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Emburse
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Emburse
  • We have seen a return on approver time of nearly 60% meaning our approvers have tripled their output.
  • We have had feedback from our users that time spent creating expenses has gone from an average of 2 hours to perhaps 20 minutes, tops.
  • We have seen in our dashboards that the Emburse Certify Suite of tools has returned an average savings of over $500K a year.
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Emburse
  • It is giving reliable services.
  • I am happy with its user-friendly services. Since I have issued the virtual and physical cards, I am getting real-time, and end-to-end control over my employee expenses. They can now easily go to visits and this has built their trust too. Further through receipts and expense details, I can easily control the pre-set budgets and easily configure rules to control spending.
  • I will also like to praise their customer care team they are very helpful and always ready to assist.
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ScreenShots

Emburse Chrome River Screenshots

Screenshot of A consistent experience across any screen size or operating systemScreenshot of Simple, customizable tiles for expense entryScreenshot of Approve expenses directly from your inbox with a single click

Emburse Abacus Screenshots

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of