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Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify) vs. OpenAir PSA

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/AEmburse Professional (formerly Certify) aims to help make expense reporting easier with its automated expense report creation and mobile receipt capture. Employees, managers and accountants can create, submit and approve expense reports, check the status of expense reports and access reports on demand.N/A

    OpenAir PSA

    Score5.5 out of 10
    N/ANetSuite OpenAir is a cloud-based Professional Service Automation (PSA) product which includes capabilities around project management, resource management, project accounting, etc.N/A
    Pricing
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)OpenAir PSA
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)OpenAir PSA
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup Fee$8 Expense reportNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsCertify AP has volume based pricing based on processed invoices
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)OpenAir PSA
    Considered Both Products
    Emburse
    Chose Emburse Professional
    Concur is doing very well too but Certify seems to be better positioned because of its unified process and even more easier if not harder work flow management.
    Incentivized
    NetSuite
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    63%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    60%
    Would buy again
    3 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    75%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    60%
    Happy with the feature set
    3 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)OpenAir PSA
    Expense Management
    Comparison of Expense Management features of Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify) and OpenAir PSA
    Feature
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)
    7.6
    2 Ratings
    9% below category average
    OpenAir PSA
    -
    Ratings
    Employee Expense Reporting8.12 Ratings00 Ratings
    Corporate Card Reconciliation7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Payment Management
    Comparison of Payment Management features of Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify) and OpenAir PSA
    Feature
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)
    7.7
    2 Ratings
    4% below category average
    OpenAir PSA
    -
    Ratings
    Customizable Approval Policies9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Financial Document Management9.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    Payment Status Tracking9.12 Ratings00 Ratings
    Payment Audit Trail5.52 Ratings00 Ratings
    Duplicate Bill Detection7.32 Ratings00 Ratings
    Advanced OCR6.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Project Management
    Comparison of Project Management features of Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify) and OpenAir PSA
    Feature
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)
    -
    Ratings
    OpenAir PSA
    7.3
    15 Ratings
    5% below category average
    Task Management00 Ratings8.015 Ratings
    Resource Management00 Ratings7.515 Ratings
    Gantt Charts00 Ratings8.09 Ratings
    Scheduling00 Ratings6.012 Ratings
    Workflow Automation00 Ratings6.09 Ratings
    Team Collaboration00 Ratings8.012 Ratings
    Support for Agile Methodology00 Ratings6.07 Ratings
    Support for Waterfall Methodology00 Ratings7.08 Ratings
    Document Management00 Ratings8.56 Ratings
    Email integration00 Ratings7.09 Ratings
    Mobile Access00 Ratings7.512 Ratings
    Timesheet Tracking00 Ratings7.014 Ratings
    Change request and Case Management00 Ratings8.010 Ratings
    Budget and Expense Management00 Ratings7.514 Ratings
    Professional Services Automation
    Comparison of Professional Services Automation features of Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify) and OpenAir PSA
    Feature
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)
    -
    Ratings
    OpenAir PSA
    8.6
    10 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Quotes/estimates00 Ratings8.05 Ratings
    Invoicing00 Ratings9.07 Ratings
    Project & financial reporting00 Ratings8.59 Ratings
    Integration with accounting software00 Ratings9.07 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)OpenAir PSA
    Small Businesses
    Brex
    Score9 out of 10
    Any.do
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Expensify
    Score9 out of 10
    KanbanFlow
    Score7.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Emburse Enterprise
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Microsoft To Do
    Score7.9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)OpenAir PSA
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (57 ratings)
    8.5
    (20 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (41 ratings)
    9.4
    (4 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    4.9
    (5 ratings)
    5.5
    (6 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)OpenAir PSA
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Emburse
    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!
    Incentivized
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    NetSuite
    This product is well suited for an organization that is focused on client services, project delivery, time tracking, expense reporting, and revenue recognition. From a pure project management perspective, this product is not as feature rich as say Microsoft Project Server. For organizations that are looking for detailed complex project plan and resource management (along with resource leveling, etc.), this is probably not the best suited product
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Emburse
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    NetSuite
    • Netsuite OpenAir PSA is highly configurable and has a large ecosystem of assets to work with.
    • Tasks are easily designed to automate processes in your business workflow.
    • OpenAir is designed in such a way that it can communicate and receive information from external systems without having to re-engineer your systems to make them work if you are following standard business practice.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Emburse
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    NetSuite
    • Compared to QuickArrow, setting up reports to reflect the data accurately seemed to require a bit more consultant time and collaboration. Getting the numbers correct is essential, so budget extra time for this iniative. We also learned that certain calculations can not be displayed in the executive dashboards. Ask these questions upfront to ensure your dashboards are complete for your needs (again, working backwards in the preparation stages).
    • Compared to QuickArrow, NetSuite OpenAir PSA falls short in the resource management capabilities. UI, flexibility, and scheduling options all could be improved. This is on their roadmap, timeline yet to be defined. Scheduling is vitally important to our company and this is THE area where we feel is the applications weakest. However, the application does provide everything critical to scheduling and provided the elements we needed in order to be successful. We altered our scheduling process accordingly.
    • During our System Administration 3 day online training, when a question was asked about detailed functionality, sometimes the trainer would share..."Yes, OpenAir has a configuration for that. Just inquire with your consultant and they can flip that flag in your instance." The responsibility for obtaining these special application configurations was placed on the System Admin [in training] to ask and to take notes. If your company needs the application to work a certain way, speak up and ask your OA consultant. There seems to be MANY flags that can be flipped in the background to allow for the system to meet your needs. My complaint is that these are not published, rather made available if one inquires.
    • OpenAir is able to generate invoices directly and we strongly encourage using this feature to keep everything housed under one application. However, this did not work for our organization and we leveraged a financial integration. A bit of a pioneer integrating with Softrax -- the integration works well, however is quite fragile. We do receive appropriate support when needed, but would prefer the integration to be a bit more stable. We recommend integrating with their stated supported financial systems, as staying the course will likely net a more stable integration.
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Emburse
    No answers on this topic
    NetSuite
    It all depends. We are still looking at moving our consultants to Oracle PAC, in order to get our financial systems in line (we use Oracle Financials currently). We are feeling a lot of pain with integration and segmented systems.

    Ultimately,it depends on how much pain is felt there. OpenAir has given us a path to follow on from QuickArrow. I foresee either moving onto Oracle PAC by end of calendar, or staying on OpenAir.

    OpenAir to Oracle integration is not easy. From a reporting and process perspective, there’s been pain from being in different systems
    Read full review
    Usability
    Emburse
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    NetSuite
    In this day and age I should not have to read a manual to understand a product. It should be intuitive to administrate and perform basic tasks. It feels like a ton of intelligence was poured into making OpenAir feature rich but no where near as much attention was given to the user experience.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Emburse
    No answers on this topic
    NetSuite
    The system up time was reliable and that was never anything we ever had any concerns/issues with.
    Read full review
    Performance
    Emburse
    No answers on this topic
    NetSuite
    The performance was acceptable. If you had a very large data set you were working with it might take a little longer, but within reason.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Emburse
    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.
    Incentivized
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    NetSuite
    As an admin, I've had more contact with OA support than most. I've found their response to tickets typically timely and helpful, however many of the responses to tickets are "we will file an enhancement request" and then I never hear about it again. So not terrible, but not a very fulfilling experience.
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    Emburse
    No answers on this topic
    NetSuite
    Very knowledgeable and able to articulate how other customers configured the solution to meet their needs as well as the best practices they recommended.
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Emburse
    No answers on this topic
    NetSuite
    We did a 3 day online remote course back in April. NetSuite prefers training to occur before migration. We went over the functionality of tool and three months later we migrated. Personally, I didn’t find it that beneficial. Certain parts of it were beneficial as they applied to me – talked a lot about invoicing capabilities that didn’t apply to me. They also have knowledge base / e-learning assets, but I haven’t referred to them
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    Implementation Rating
    Emburse
    No answers on this topic
    NetSuite
    It went fine. Everything came over the way we wanted. In addition to migrating the current projects we wanted to migrate historical data – did that seamlessly. The finished product looked pretty good – just needed to tweak – and they helped us with that
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    Alternatives Considered
    Emburse
    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.
    Incentivized
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    NetSuite
    OpenAir accurately reflects changes in real-time as well as lends itself to see where a draw is at, when payment is expected and what percentage of the contract has been billed or approved to date. This helps with project billing and tracking as well as cash flow. Quickbooks lacks the ability to show progress draws, approved changes, and pending changes on a given project where OpenAir excels.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Emburse
    No answers on this topic
    NetSuite
    Once the system is setup, it's easy to manage and maintain.
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Emburse
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    NetSuite
    • It covers our requirements for time tracking and project/resource management better than the previous solution we used.
    • Project managers are happier having this tool for their job and also because it is running on the cloud as opposed to running on-prem.
    • It doesn't help in any way improving the "chasing" of the people that don't submit their time-sheets in time. This one stayed the same as before.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Certify Homepage - User interface for all users that includes a quick view of their expenses, pending expense reports and approval requests.Screenshot of Certify Mobile - Snap photos of receipts on the go and upload them instantly to your virtual Certify Wallet.Screenshot of Certify Travel - Now, corporate travel is even easier. Introducing Certify Travel, your end-to-end corporate travel solution to simplify bookings for employees while helping your company manage travel practices and costs. All for one low monthly fee and no booking fees! Certify Travel is easy to use, yet it is also a powerful enhancement to your company’s expense management system.Screenshot of Certify Reporting & AnalyticsScreenshot of Certify AP- manage cashflow with accounts payable automationScreenshot of Certify AP- streamlining employee purchasing