Certify is travel and expense management software developed by the company of the same name in Maine, which merged with Chrome River in 2019 to form Emburse.
N/A
TravelBank
Score 4.0 out of 10
N/A
TravelBank, headquartered in San Francisco, offers their travel management for businesses, featuring booking management, travel policy management, spend tracking and management, and other features.
$12
per user/per month
Pricing
Emburse Certify
TravelBank
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Expenses
$12
per user/per month
Travel
$15
per month
Premium Expenses and Travel
Custom Pricing
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Emburse Certify
TravelBank
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
$8 Expense report
No setup fee
Additional Details
Certify AP has volume based pricing based on processed invoices
Certify is not well suited for multi-dimensional ERPs. Although Certify 'offers' general ledger dimensions GLD, the use of them is extremely limited. Filtering on any GLD can only be done once. There is not the possibility for creating hierarchies with the dimensions. The only method of exporting is via a flat file or the open API, which I understand is quite limited. This software is for a smaller scaled business that is not trying to track across dimensions or create hierarchies. Data flow is one directional. I cannot emphasize enough the shortcomings of the reporting. The parameters are mostly based on expense dates rather than expense reports. There are entirely too many of them, and some of them perform the function!
The company-wide implementation of TravelBank greatly increased the efficiency of our expense reimbursement process. It mitigated many pain points such as errors, inconsistencies, and missing information in our manual Excels that were very hard to version control and track through the approval/reimbursement process. Overall, TravelBank has made all of our lives easier!
Integration with Amtrav or other travel booking systems. Certify has a tight integration with travel systems that makes it feel nearly like one cohesive tool.
Easy expense options. Use OCR on receipts, import from credit cards and merge items, approve and inquire about expenses. Track your submissions.
Easy UI. Friendly and easy to navigate without getting lost.
TravelBank encourages employees to book lower cost flights and hotels. Employees receive half the difference between the average cost for the service and the cost the company is paying in the form of vouchers for Amazon/Airbnb etc. For example, if the average cost of a flight from SFO to JFK is $500, and the employee books a $400 flight, the employee gets $50 and the company saves $50.
Reporting: I would like to see more chart availability from the program. We include various data points from Certify in our monthly financial statement package. Currently, we export data from the program and create our own pivot tables to create charts.
Dashboard feature: It would be nice to be able to use the data for a specific date and then be able to print that information.
Can't think of another one. As stated before, they listen to their customers so prior issues have been addressed and implemented.
I have trouble using the user interface and wish I could store my common searches easier bcecauseI usually only travel to one place.
They need to have a better search tool. Like, if a hotel is unavailable it still needs to come up in the search bar -- not necessarily on the map or home screen, but it would help to see all options if I search because for some reason a ton of hotels that I know have open rooms do not show up.
If the integrations with our card programs had succeeded, I expect [Emburse] Certify would have worked well for expense submitters and approvers. During the short time that the American Express Business integration was active, transactions flowed smoothly, and the expense reporting and receipt matching functions were quite good. The [Emburse] Certify mobile app was particularly powerful and easy to use.
The measure of support is how well they respond when you really need them, like when the system is not performing correctly. We have been on the platform less than a year, and there have been at least 2 instances, where the platform was down. The 2nd time was the day before out fiscal year end. And they need a development website. When they are making changes to your LIVE instance, and things go wrong, the client is the first to know about it! I've come to understand that Certify has tiers of support. Those in tier 1, barely know more about the software than the users. I sent a request for a report that shows expense reports currently pending approval and after 5 days of back and forth I was told to build it myself.
The TravelBank team came in for a Lunch and Learn, which was great! Our account team spent a lot of time walking through all of the features and capabilities of TravelBank, as well as tips and tricks for using the online platform and the app. This was tremendously helpful! Also, whenever we need to contact customer support if we are experiencing and difficulties, they are beyond responsive and very helpful!
Before Certify, there was only manual expense reports entered for our company. This took too much time for employees too finish and caused a delay of efficiency. With Certify, it is easier to access and finish each report with the right amount of effectiveness and efficiency it needs. Certify is really helpful in saving a lot of time for employees that do not have time.
It is much easier to use than Concur, but typically Concur is mandated to use. We also quickly tried other apps but found that TravelBank was the best. Other apps had issues in trying to recognize the amount if a tip was added and often failed. This is why I like entering in the actual value.
The organization and automatic flow of the expense report to approvers and then AP saves time for all. The user has agreed that it is easier and quicker to prepare the expense report and the managers and AP department finds the automated process to be quicker and more efficient. Time saved is money saved.
Certify can recognize if a duplicate expense is submitted or if an expense is submitted too late to be reimbursed according to our policies. This prevents us from reimbursing an expense in error.
We use a customized report to track a specific type of expense that gets submitted by our sales team. There is a limit on what can be spent on specific expenses that fall into an entertainment category and the report helps us to stay within the limits. Previously, without this tool, we had spent so much more time manually tracking these expenses and had gone over the limits, creating a deficiency in our processes.
I'm not in the finance department, but I'd guess our travel spend per employee has reduced since we started using TravelBank.
We now have one travel supplier, with flights and hotels paid from a central account, rather than everyone booking through a variety of channels with their own card. In case of emergency, the company knows which flight you're on, which hotel you're staying at.
