Emburse Abacus vs. Zoho Expense

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Emburse Abacus
Score 6.0 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 Expense
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Zoho Expense is online expense reporting software, tailor-made for businesses worldwide to automate expense report creation, streamline approvals and make swift reimbursements.
$5
per month per user
Pricing
Emburse AbacusZoho Expense
Editions & Modules
Starter
$9
per active user/per month
Professional
Custom Pricing
Enterprise
Custom Pricing
Free
$0
Standard Plan
$5
per month per user
Premium Plan
$9
per month per user
Custom
Get a Quote
per month per user
Custom
Get a Quote
per month per user
Custom
Get a Quote
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emburse AbacusZoho Expense
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details20% discount for annual pricing.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Emburse AbacusZoho Expense
Features
Emburse AbacusZoho Expense
Expense Management
Comparison of Expense Management features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho Expense
7.5
3 Ratings
9% below category average
Employee Expense Reporting00 Ratings8.13 Ratings
Corporate Card Reconciliation00 Ratings6.93 Ratings
Payment Management
Comparison of Payment Management features of Product A and Product B
Emburse Abacus
-
Ratings
Zoho Expense
7.2
3 Ratings
10% below category average
Customizable Approval Policies00 Ratings7.93 Ratings
Financial Document Management00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Payment Status Tracking00 Ratings7.93 Ratings
Payment Audit Trail00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Duplicate Bill Detection00 Ratings7.53 Ratings
Advanced OCR00 Ratings5.62 Ratings
Electronic Funds Transfer00 Ratings5.83 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Emburse AbacusZoho Expense
Small Businesses
Dext
Dext
Score 9.6 out of 10
Dext
Dext
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Precoro
Precoro
Score 9.3 out of 10
Precoro
Precoro
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Emburse Chrome River
Emburse Chrome River
Score 8.0 out of 10
Emburse Chrome River
Emburse Chrome River
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Emburse AbacusZoho Expense
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(17 ratings)
7.9
(7 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(9 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
Emburse AbacusZoho Expense
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.
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Zoho
easy of use for the end users as well as to manage. The option to add new categories (expenses) and have the end users use them immediately is wonderful. The ease of creating a new user as well as customer support has been great. The customer support while having issues has been quick to resolve any issues
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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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Zoho
  • The program will notify users if they have entered a duplicate charge.
  • Once the end-users understood that receipts were mandatory, attaching those receipts has become second-nature. The app makes it very easy to do so.
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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.
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Zoho
  • Could have more default options. Instead of making my users select payment method, allow us to default it to one of the options.
  • More room for customization by department. My service department needs different categories of expenses then my sales department.
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Usability
Emburse
No answers on this topic
Zoho
Ease of use for the simple basic options. I wish the there was an option for reimbursement to be marked separately. Example for all corporate credit expense reports with $0 reimbursements still have to be marked as reimbursed in order to be removed from pending reimbursement section. For the cost the features offer benefits
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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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Zoho
The only reason I give Zoho a 9 is because of the issue with the Chart of Accounts skewing every time I export/import. I believe this is due to the fact that I use sub-accounts and Zoho cannot differentiate. Still hoping. :)
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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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Zoho
We selected (switched) to Zoho Expense because it had similar features at a lower price and we were able to receive a discount through our partner relationship with another software company. We have considered moving from Zoho Expense to something else recently due to continued issues with being able to accurately import credit card charges and organize them correctly be team member. Creating some confusion among users.
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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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Zoho
  • We have had some issues with the credit card reconciliation process which has made our monthly accounting / close process. This has been a negative
  • Positive ROI is that team members spend less time on expense reports due to the ease of reporting
  • Positive ROI is that substantial training and onboarding is not needed due to the features and simplicity.
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ScreenShots

Emburse Abacus Screenshots

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