We had a Time Consuming Manual Process!
Updated August 25, 2022
We had a Time Consuming Manual Process!
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Emburse Chrome River
Our entire organization uses Emburse Chrome River for travel & expense reimbursements for employees, students and non-employees. We also utilize Chrome River's dynamic programming to reconcile our company issued PCards and Non-PO vendor payments. We were looking for a solution to simplify these processes, the tool needed to be flexible, route documents electronically, integrate with our PCard system, and we needed the ability to access the tool from anywhere and at anytime. We needed to solution to our time consuming paper intensive manual process. We were constantly chasing paper from office to office, checking in documents in one office and then checking them out so another office could check them in. We used databases to track where the paper was in the approval process which sometimes left us vulnerable if the person(s) responsible for the database was out unexpectedly.
- Completely Configurable when it comes to Messages and Warnings. You decide when and where to fire the message. You decide what the message reads. You can add, remove, and/or edit these messages at any time.
- Configure warnings and messages to match your company policy and update as often as needed. With a recent enhancement we can now add hyperlinks in our warning messages pointing our users directly to your policy.
- Use messages and warnings to guide your users so that they can submit a correct and complete report the first time, greatly reducing denials.
- Easily electronically track documents from submit to approval.
- At go, live reporting was lacking. Since our go-live on 12/1/2016, Emburse Chrome River had made significant updates to reporting. Emburse is now moving to a new reporting tool that doesn't appear to have the same robust, user friendly functionality that we have today.
- Some releases have caused issues on our side. Emburse Chrome River does fix issues caused by releases but it would be helpful if they engaged clients with testing of upcoming enhancements and releases.
- There is always pain with growth, Emburse Chrome River is no different. As Emburse Chrome River enhances existing features we are sometimes left in the dark until decisions have been made. There are customer advisory boards, those members should be called upon to provide input before going life.
- Time is money, we have saved lots of time with Chrome River. 51% of our expense and Non-PO invoice reports were submitted and exported to our ERP system within 5 days of submission.
- 94% of our expense and Non-PO invoice reports were submitted and exported to our ERP system within 20 days of submission.
- We have recorded over 900 expense reports being submitted and exported the same day!
- 89% of our PCard reports were submitted and exported to our ERP system within 10 days.
- We have seen a 95% reduction in journal entries in our ERP System due to PCard transactions being allocated incorrectly. With messages and warnings, our users get it done right the first time!
- At the end of our first Fiscal Year End after going to Chrome River we only had 1/10 of 1% of our PCard dollars un-reconciled.
Chrome River provided us: Paperless process Electronic routings Realtime status Configurable to fit our business policies. The implementation team understood our needs and accepted the challenge of making sure those needs were met. At the time we when live, Chrome River offered us a perfect solution for our needs. Now, Emburse Chrome River has several products available to help us manage Travel and Expense.
Using Emburse Chrome River
2500 - Over 13,000 have access but about 2,500 of those are the ones doing the work. The business functions represented are PCard reconciliations, Out of pocket expense reimbursements and Non-PO Invoices.
3 - We have 3 administrators, one of those is solely in charge of CR support the other two are back ups. For our end users, we have a team of users we call Chrome River Champions they are the first line of support for their areas.
- Ease of use
- Reporting
- Approvals
- Exporting Data
- Importing Data
- Ability to pay users without having to be on site.
- Allowing me to manage my rules
- Mobile Access ease of use
- Fine grain access
- Pre Approvals
- Robust Reports
Evaluating Emburse Chrome River and Competitors
Yes - Home grown system that was paper intensive and challenging to navigate.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- The ability to create submit compliance rules was a big win for our organization.
- We were able to incorporate our policies into the process to help our users submit correct reports the first time
- By including compliance rules we eliminated a lot of the back and forth of approvals and denials
Chrome River did a great job understanding our business needs. I'm not sure we would have changed the selection process.
Do you think Emburse Chrome River delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Emburse Chrome River's feature set?
Yes
Did Emburse Chrome River live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Emburse Chrome River go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Emburse Chrome River again?
Yes
Emburse Chrome River Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - Since Chrome River is easily configurable I would recommend you go live with the rules you use the most. Once you are in the system and your users are submitted reports you can add rules to help your users submit reports timely and efficiently.
- Get everyone in the room to agree
- Program for the 99%
- Make sure your team understands their deliverables and their timelines.
Emburse Chrome River Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Knowledgeable team Problems get solved No escalation required Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | Not kept informed |
Yes, after almost five years using Chrome River we want to make some changes. It's more efficient for us to have premium during this time. Someone who knows us and knows our business needs is helpful when make sure changes are done right.
We made a change to a rule and it broke another rule. A high priority case was entered and Chrome River was immediately there to help us revert the changes and make sure we were up and running again.
Using Emburse Chrome River
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- SNAP - Adding Receipts
- Approvals
- Viewing Reports - Draft, Submitted, Returned
- Reports - Mercury Canned Reports
- Adding additional information on a returned report
- Analytics
- Identifying reports you key as a delegate
Yes - It works well, it has the same look and feel as my desktop so I don't spend a lot of time trying to navigate the system via a mobile device.