Emburse Abacus vs. Zoho CRM

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
Zoho CRM
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Zoho CRM is a simple, very low-cost CRM option for the smaller end of the SMB segment. The product has several useful integrations with other products, including QuickBooks, and Google Apps and Google Docs. The product also has an integrated project management module.
$14
per month
Pricing
Emburse AbacusZoho CRM
Editions & Modules
Starter
$9
per active user/per month
Professional
Custom Pricing
Enterprise
Custom Pricing
Standard
$14.00
Per User/Per Month
Professional
$23.00
Per User/Per Month
Enterprise
$40.00
Per User/Per Month
Ultimate
$52.00
Per User/Per Month
Plus
$57.00
Per User/Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emburse AbacusZoho CRM
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup fee$14 /user/month
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
Emburse AbacusZoho CRM
Sales Force Automation
Comparison of Sales Force Automation features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.7
274 Ratings
0% above category average
Customer data management / contact management00 Ratings8.3266 Ratings
Workflow management00 Ratings7.8253 Ratings
Territory management00 Ratings7.4186 Ratings
Opportunity management00 Ratings8.2240 Ratings
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)00 Ratings7.5239 Ratings
Contract management00 Ratings7.6191 Ratings
Quote & order management00 Ratings7.6190 Ratings
Interaction tracking00 Ratings7.9237 Ratings
Channel / partner relationship management00 Ratings7.3182 Ratings
Customer Service & Support
Comparison of Customer Service & Support features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.1
210 Ratings
6% below category average
Case management00 Ratings7.2203 Ratings
Call center management00 Ratings6.9163 Ratings
Help desk management00 Ratings7.2181 Ratings
Marketing Automation
Comparison of Marketing Automation features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.1
253 Ratings
7% above category average
Lead management00 Ratings8.2248 Ratings
Email marketing00 Ratings8.0210 Ratings
CRM Project Management
Comparison of CRM Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.9
251 Ratings
4% above category average
Task management00 Ratings8.1236 Ratings
Billing and invoicing management00 Ratings7.7171 Ratings
Reporting00 Ratings7.8230 Ratings
CRM Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of CRM Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.9
246 Ratings
4% above category average
Forecasting00 Ratings7.6206 Ratings
Pipeline visualization00 Ratings7.9224 Ratings
Customizable reports00 Ratings8.1237 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.9
265 Ratings
4% above category average
Custom fields00 Ratings8.4263 Ratings
Custom objects00 Ratings7.9210 Ratings
Scripting environment00 Ratings7.3170 Ratings
API for custom integration00 Ratings7.8193 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.4
253 Ratings
1% above category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings8.4220 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings8.4248 Ratings
Social CRM
Comparison of Social CRM features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
8.1
158 Ratings
11% above category average
Social data00 Ratings8.1157 Ratings
Social engagement00 Ratings8.0149 Ratings
Integrations with 3rd-party Software
Comparison of Integrations with 3rd-party Software features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.6
200 Ratings
6% above category average
Marketing automation00 Ratings7.8197 Ratings
Compensation management00 Ratings7.5130 Ratings
Platform
Comparison of Platform features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho CRM
7.7
219 Ratings
3% above category average
Mobile access00 Ratings7.7219 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Emburse AbacusZoho CRM
Small Businesses
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Dext Prepare (with Receipt Bank)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Salesmate
Salesmate
Score 9.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
BILL Spend & Expense
BILL Spend & Expense
Score 8.8 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Webexpenses
Webexpenses
Score 8.5 out of 10
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Emburse AbacusZoho CRM
Likelihood to Recommend
2.8
(17 ratings)
8.3
(298 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
3.5
(33 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(168 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(9 ratings)
5.0
(65 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(10 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(110 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(21 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(7 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Emburse AbacusZoho CRM
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
Zoho
For customizing a CRM without needing specialist support, Zoho CRM is great. The admin UI is pretty intuitive and easy to use. Zoho CRM also works great for tracking contact records and relationships to other records. For instance, we run 10+ different programs, and we need to track every contact's relationship to any and all of our programs. Besides the program relationship, we also track organization/employer relationships, host site relationships for interns, team relationships for several of our programs, and we are starting to track grant disbursement as well. Zoho CRM's "joiner modules" handle all of these different connection points fairly well, though the data import process can be a pain.
Read full review
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)
Read full review
Zoho
  • Zoho CRM has so much space to capture lots of information.
  • Zoho CRM can be customized for your organization's needs.
  • Zoho CRM is great for running reports to help make business decisions.
  • We love all the different dashboards we can create.
Read full review
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
Zoho
  • our team found it very challenging to integrate directly to our wordpress site
  • while there may be a way to integrate to the SMS system, we have not discovered how a sales rep would be able to get an sms when customers leave their contact info (not through the app)
  • we have one team member who still works with outlook calendar. it was easy to integrate with google calendar, but a second calendar, depending upon the user
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Zoho
Zoho has been a wonderful tool for us for several years and there is so much more we can do with it. New features are released often which give a team like us the option to further fine tune our business process management techniques. I honestly couldn't imagine running our business not on Zoho.
Read full review
Usability
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Zoho
The methodology of the 'out of the box' user interface is fairly easy to learn. In some cases however, the interface is not consistent throughout the software. Upgrades to the interface has certainly improved some of this--- but now we are seeing the same kinds of inconsistencies across Zoho apps, particularly those more recently added to their platform. This issue is not major in that everybody on staff seems able to learn how to work the programs--- it's just annoying and less than efficient when inconsistent user interfaces or inconsistent terms are used in the programs and/or the requisite documentation.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Zoho
We did the training and that was a huge waste of money. The information provided was basic and the instructor was sloppy (he even forgot to turn off his mic when he used the restroom - no one should ever hear what we heard). I offered up a 9 because we were able to find what we needed on your website.
Read full review
In-Person Training
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Zoho
It was harder to learn when there were mostly real estate users in the room. We are sales solely.
Read full review
Online Training
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Zoho
Online training is tough, but Zoho and their partners do a good job of explaining things.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Zoho
When you switch CRMs, you can automatically assume everything isn’t going to match up correctly. We had used Salesforce for 10+ years and had a ton of data and customizations. It was not a clean transfer, but we were able to sort it all out. The only issue that really bothered me was Zoho support. Even simple questions couldn’t be answered over chat, and we would have some team members try for hours to find the right answer
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Zoho
Zoho is the only product we have used. Our company is fairly new and before purchasing Zoho a few years ago, client files were only saved and looked at through our company server. Because of how great Zoho has been, we have never considered looking for another product because there really is no need
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Zoho
I think Zoho CRM is priced at a reasonable amount. Simply put, you get what you pay for and Zoho does not disappoint. My organization is comfortable with what we pay and pleased with continually renewing the software. The billing frequency is just right. There are no complaints on our end
Read full review
Professional Services
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Zoho
In addition to being a user of Zoho CRM, we are a reseller as well. Often, at times our Partners request for on-boarding the platform configuration for them. During such requirements, we have utilized the Professional services team directly from the Zoho CRM team. Our partner feedback was quite positive, throughout.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Zoho
  • ROI is good, providing your entire team is involved with the program and uses it
  • During busy season, Zoho keeps the flow going with reminders for quote follow-ups
  • Our company saw an estimated 20% gain in closing sales that went through Zoho as compared to quotes not answered through Zoho
Read full review
ScreenShots

Emburse Abacus Screenshots

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

Zoho CRM Screenshots

Screenshot of Deals - Cash in on all opportunities. Close more deals. Great sales management is all about prioritizing, tracking, and monitoring the deals in your pipeline. Zoho CRM gives you everything you need to manage deals across territories and sales structures.Screenshot of Activities - Keep track of all the tasks, meetings, calls, events, or activity records. Neatly organize the numerous records along with the activities associated to them such as follow-up, pre sales and post sales activities, phone conversations etc.