Emburse Abacus vs. Expensify

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
Expensify
Score 7.2 out of 10
N/A
Expensify automates the entire spend management process. Scan receipts, track mileage, submit and approve expenses, manage corporate cards, reimburse employees, pay bills, send invoices, and book travel. Built for individuals and companies of all sizes, anywhere in the world.
$0
per month
Pricing
Emburse AbacusExpensify
Editions & Modules
Starter
$9
per active user/per month
Professional
Custom Pricing
Enterprise
Custom Pricing
Collect
$5
per month per user
Control
$9
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emburse AbacusExpensify
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Emburse AbacusExpensify
Considered Both Products
Emburse Abacus
Chose Emburse Abacus
I used expensify in my last role, however it was at a bigger company so I was not involved in the process besides being a user. Abacus seems easier to use from a user perspective. It would be great to have a better integration with our payroll system, but it seems like with all …
Chose Emburse Abacus
We originally migrated from SAP Concur. We made the decision to switch to Abacus because Concur does not sync directly with Sage Intacct and it was less expensive. Expensify seems to be what most companies recommend, however, it was out of our price range
Expensify
Chose Expensify
Expensify was simply the easiest to use. It picked up emails and scanned receipts with the least amount of hassle and setup with the least amount of clicks. By far the quickest and easiest.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Emburse AbacusExpensify
Expense Management
Comparison of Expense Management features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Expensify
7.0
9 Ratings
13% below category average
Employee Expense Reporting00 Ratings7.79 Ratings
Corporate Card Reconciliation00 Ratings6.34 Ratings
Payment Management
Comparison of Payment Management features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Expensify
6.9
8 Ratings
15% below category average
Customizable Approval Policies00 Ratings6.97 Ratings
Financial Document Management00 Ratings7.24 Ratings
Payment Status Tracking00 Ratings6.66 Ratings
Payment Audit Trail00 Ratings7.85 Ratings
Duplicate Bill Detection00 Ratings6.77 Ratings
Advanced OCR00 Ratings7.18 Ratings
Electronic Funds Transfer00 Ratings5.94 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Emburse AbacusExpensify
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 AbacusExpensify
Likelihood to Recommend
2.8
(17 ratings)
5.1
(97 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(9 ratings)
8.5
(42 ratings)
User Testimonials
Emburse AbacusExpensify
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
Read full review
Expensify
Expensify has been incredibly useful to me for many years. Considering I am using the free version, it's hard to find a better value! If your company does not have a good expense-capturing system, Expensify will save you hours on submitting reports. You can take a picture and toss the paper receipts right at the point of sale without worrying about losing them during your travels. If you have a small business, you can use it to track and organize regular expenses to make billable expenses and end-of-year taxes a whole lot easier.
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Pros
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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Expensify
  • Submitting expenses. It's easy to enter an expense, choose a category, enter the dollar amount and submit it. That's about it.
  • Uploading receipts. You can send receipts to Expensify from your phone, or upload them from your computer.
  • Entering hours worked. It's simple to move from expenses over to timesheets to submit the hours that you've worked.
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Cons
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.
Read full review
Expensify
  • Make it easier to submit multiple receipts/files in one expense
  • Often times I get a warning that the value of a receipt doesn't match what I manually I inputted. So making Smart scanner a little smarter, essentially.
  • It would be fun to see stats about my expenses
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Likelihood to Renew
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Expensify
We like using the tool and we receive positive feedback from employees and management who use the tool. It saves time and helps us concentrate on the value adding activities so we are very likely to keep using Expensify in the future
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Usability
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Expensify
Mobile works great, but let's be honest. It's just a photograph. Their OCR and human turk technology works great to scan that photo and enter the proper information. The web interface is decent and allows you to work with single expenses in great detail. What's missing is the ability to mass update expenses, and this sometimes hurts, especially if you're a heavy user of the system.
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Support Rating
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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Expensify
Our rep has been amazing. He has built custom reports for us that have been very time consuming and difficult. Our reps are also currently looking into new submission solutions for us that we are excited about. They came up with this and recommended it on their own without me complaining about an issue. They are about our success and are very excited about the product they offer.
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Alternatives Considered
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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Expensify
Concur was a great product as well but Expensify offers the ability to quickly upload expenses and submit reports just the same. There is no free version with Concur, so for a small business that's interested in keeping costs down I would highly recommend Expensify.
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Return on Investment
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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Expensify
  • Our organization no longer spends countless hours per month orchestrating the consolidation of data (MS Excel, typically) into our general ledger.
  • Our accounting department is no longer tasked with making sure the correct individuals have approved submitted reports.
  • Our accountants have a much easier time coding the reports that have been submitted by users. For the most part, we rely on users to code their submissions to the correct accounts.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Emburse Abacus Screenshots

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

Expensify Screenshots

Screenshot of the Expensify financial management app for expenses and corporate cards.Screenshot of The Expensify Card, which offers up to 2% cash back and 50% off the monthly Expensify bill. It includes realtime alerts, spend limits, and auto-reconciliation.