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Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify) vs. Emburse Spend

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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

    Emburse Spend

    Score6 out of 10
    N/AEmburse Spend is a Spend Management platform for small and growing businesses that monitors and controls card purchases, employee reimbursements, receipts, approvals, and expense policies. It connects to supported existing corporate and business card programs, so finance teams can add spend controls without replacing their current cards. Emburse Spend replaces the former Emburse Abacus. Abacus was acquired by Emburse in 2020. That application's capabilities are now completely superseded by…

    $9

    per active user/per month

    Pricing
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)Emburse Spend
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Starter
    $9
    per active user/per month
    Professional
    Custom Pricing
    Enterprise
    Custom Pricing
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)Emburse Spend
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    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)Emburse Spend
    Considered Both Products
    Emburse
    Chose Emburse Professional
    Originally we selected Certify because of favorable pricing and it met our basic needs. 5 years in we are again evaluating other products seeking direct integration with our accounting system, Intacct and potentially a solution that also offers time tracking.
    Incentivized
    Emburse
    Chose Emburse Spend
    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.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    63%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    85%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    75%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    78%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    Features
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)Emburse Spend
    Expense Management
    Comparison of Expense Management features of Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify) and Emburse Spend
    Feature
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)
    7.6
    2 Ratings
    9% below category average
    Emburse Spend
    -
    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 Emburse Spend
    Feature
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)
    7.7
    2 Ratings
    4% below category average
    Emburse Spend
    -
    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
    Best Alternatives
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)Emburse Spend
    Small Businesses
    Brex
    Score9 out of 10
    Brex
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Expensify
    Score9 out of 10
    Expensify
    Score9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Emburse Enterprise
    Score8.3 out of 10
    Emburse Enterprise
    Score8.3 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)Emburse Spend
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.3
    (57 ratings)
    6.0
    (17 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (41 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    4.9
    (5 ratings)
    9.0
    (9 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify)Emburse Spend
    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
    Read full review
    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.
    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
    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)
    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
    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.
    Incentivized
    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
    Emburse
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    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
    Read full review
    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
    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

    Emburse Spend Screenshots

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