Certinia ERP Cloud automates financial management on the Salesforce platform. The customer-centric ERP software includes a general ledger, automated billing processes, and financial intelligence.
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Microsoft Dynamics GP
Score 7.3 out of 10
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Microsoft Dynamics GP is an ERP software with accounting capabilities. It includes various packs for customizability and features tailored to specific industries’ needs. GP is offered as a perpetual license or subscription.
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Pricing
Certinia ERP Cloud
Microsoft Dynamics GP
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Certinia ERP Cloud
Microsoft Dynamics GP
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
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Community Pulse
Certinia ERP Cloud
Microsoft Dynamics GP
Considered Both Products
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Chose Certinia ERP Cloud
Compared to other accounting software FinancialForce Accounting has its good and bad aspects but overall it is a good option. Reporting directly from FinancialForce Accounting can be difficult to do, but standard accounting tasks are straightforward and not time-consuming to …
For accounting systems, users and/or evaluators often want to see some type of matrix or "heads up" comparisons of specific features and functionality of a system in key areas such as: 1) General Ledger 2) Order to Cash cycle 3) Purchase to Pay cycle 4) Cash management 5) Inventory and/or Cost Accounting (Projects/Jobs, etc) 6) Revenue Recognition 7) Fixed Assets management 8) Budgets 9) Tax 10) Reports and Analysis It would be great if this kind of matrix existed to be filled in by reviewers so that others could benefit from their perspectives about the applications and how they address or handle the specific features/functionality. With respect to FinancialForce, the company has found that nearly all the key features it needed were available from the application.
A large company where users have one function- for instance, where someone only receives or works in payables. That minimizes the number of windows they need. A smaller company where one user does multiple functions will require a lot more training and user knowledge to navigate, and it makes it harder to secure users. You also have to understand that GP started life as Great Plains, designed for accountants. The other modules were added on after Microsoft bought Great Plains, which means that modules like Manufacturing are red-headed step children with much smaller support ecosystems. So, if you're starting fresh, you may want to look at something built for the mobile world. D365 and Business Central are a lot more money, buggy, and hard to customize and essentially still vaporware. Microsoft is heavily investing there, leading to the previously mentioned question about the future of GP. If I was starting today I would be hard pressed to justify jumping into GP in a world where Salesforce ties in with so many programs. GP has MRP but it is limited so it's hard to justify a manufacturer starting with GP today.
Able to be extended into multiple areas of your business
One feature we have been using for a few years is EFT for payables - it has significantly reduced the time spent paying vendors and reduced our check printing and mailing costs. It is very easy to setup and use.
Since SalesForce was not made with accounting in mind, building FinancialForce as a module on top of SalesForce gives problems because the overarching architect of SalesForce cannot facilitate all the accounting requirements.
The FinancialForce integration team was not very good, and did not help us set up our FinancialForce very well. Their customer support is also lacking and takes a long time to respond and troubleshoot our problems.
FinancialForce doesn't actually build financial statement reports. We were only able to run a trial balance, and we had to build the statements ourselves in Excel.
With respect to the allocations, once the expense is entered into the allocation account, you lose the ability to run any detail on just the total of the expense. It would be nice if you could run a trial balance on the allocation accounts the same way you can with regular accounts.
I've always thought security set up could be a bit simpler. It actually has gotten better through the years. Specifically, with eight separate entities, it would be nice to have a "master" setup where you could call up one group entity, assign the users rights, and then be finished. Currently, whenever I have a new user, I have to call up each individual entity and select all of the features I want the user to have. That means I have to do eight steps for each user.
The company has now converted its legacy, "home grown" operations system and built it on the force.com platform, and the integration between it and FinancialForce is deeply entrenched. No other application would be able to replicate this functionality, and the company will be able to scale and leverage the force.com platform as it grows.
Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.
Change management is always an issue, but the evidence of the application's usability is that both long-time employees (used to the legacy systems for many years) and newer employees have been able to learn the system and improve their business processes.
Though it is a basic accounting package, I believe some users do not find the old style menus and navigation options intuitive. There is also a great lack of training resources in the market, so users have to learn the product without guidance a lot, resulting in inefficient workflows and misuse or misunderstanding of many features.
Unless the internet is completely unavailable - which has not happened yet - the application is always accessible. Since FinancialForce is built on the force.com platform, it's uptime is tied to Salesforce security and system performance standards
The response time for FinancialForce is exemplary. Immediate acknowledgement of the support request by automatically logging a case/ticket on the provider side, then less than 24-hour follow up by a support team member with specific questions, information or resolution for the issue.
Through its Xtra login website available to its customers, FinancialForce offers a complete set of online, video tutorials, training and documentation. Each tutorial is "bite-sized", meaning it imparts instructional, step-by-step information in 2-3 minute narrated videos. For a particular cycle or process, like invoices to payments for example, each tutorial builds on the last so that the user can get a complete picture of the steps and process in less than 10 minutes.
The company decided to run parallel for three months in order to soften the impact of the change from the legacy "system" - which users had been interfacing with for over a decade - to FinancialForce. While not recommended, this did provide time for the in-house "super user" team of 2 people to become completely familiar with the application, and thus provide hands-on training and be a resource for the users who would be processing the daily accounting transactions.
Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.
FinancialForce Subscription & Usage Billing has more features, more useability, and manages higher numbers of customers. The systems I have used in the past are easier to navigate but couldn't handle this number of customers.
I come from a strong background of using SAP. SAP doesn't have the flexibility of GP, an example would be SAP doesn't allow core mods, if they catch you, you lose support. Microsoft doesn't really care about mods, but they will be quick to have the vendor you used support your issue if it is caused by those mods. With SAP your company adapts to the software, where with GP you adapt the software to you.
Microsoft Dynamics GP allows my clients to move from a paper or spreadsheet based company to an integrated, electronic, streamlined business. I love being able to help clients gain efficiencies through the use of Microsoft Dynamics GP.
Microsoft Dynamics GP allows for better customer service because everything is at our fingertips. If someone calls questioning an invoice, we can easily look it up. If someone calls stating they paid an invoice with a certain check number, we can quickly run a query to find that particular check number to see where it was applied.
Having everything on a single platform provides ease of use for upgrades, backups and end user training. There is only one software to learn!
