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Emburse Certify Review
May 03, 2021

Emburse Certify Review

Carla Lottie | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 5 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Emburse Certify

We are currently using Emburse to process T&E expense reports for employees and corporate cards as well. The platform is being used across the whole organization. We have <50 employees and about 1/2 of them process expense reports on a regular basis. This solution is simple. It is compatible with QuickBooks and NetSuite. We do not use either of these platforms for our ERP. The platform does not integrate with any other ERP. It is addressing the issue of double data entry and the cost associated with our last solution. Previously AP would have to manually enter the data from the old expense management system into the ERP. Certify does at least allow us to import the reports into our ERP via the API.
  • Tracks for duplicate receipts - Based on receipt date and amount, Certify will flag duplicate receipts and with a click drill down to the report it has matched to duplicate to.
  • Split Expenses - The split expense function is easy to use and understand. Certify allows for multiple splits by amount or percentage.
  • Report Executive - Allows for the automatic building of expense reports based on a predetermined time.
  • Credit Cards - Merge receipts option. This option will merge together receipts and expense lines based on date and amount.
  • Unsophisticated - This platform is too simple for a system anymore robust than QuickBooks.
  • Reporting - There are over 50 reports in the system and not one of them will yield a report showing "current expense reports awaiting approval". The Custom Report Builder is limited in scope. Once a report is written, it is stifled by preset parameters.
  • Navigation - There is not a "Save" button anywhere in the platform. "Return" is not a universal term for "Save". It's clunky to use. Navigational icons change meanings depending upon how/when they are used. When creating a report, that entering a receipt date range is mandatory, is a complete waste of time and useless.
  • Wizards - Throughout the software "wizards" are referred to as the list of red colored instructions one encounters upon having left out needed information. A wizard is not a list instructions. It is a guided set of instructions that lead to the correct result.
  • Support - The first tier of support in Certify is not knowledgeable of the software. Our system has been put into chaos on more than one occasion due support having not something correctly. There is no obvious way to call them. They don't even have people in chat anymore. It's a stupid bot.
  • Certify has eliminated the double data entry we were doing, but any platform we chose would have accomplished that.
  • Due to the limited reporting functionality, Certify has not been helpful as an expense management reporting tool.
We used Concur prior to Certify. It cost 5x as much and was not worth the money. We also looked at Expensify, which had minor issues compared to what we are dealing with in Certify. Certify does not compare to Concur. The platforms are in two different leagues. Expensify is a good comparison and it is compatible with major ERPs like Sage Intacct. Nexonia, is actually also an Emburse product and likely would have been a better fit given it's integration capabilities with Sage Intacct.

Do you think Emburse Certify delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Emburse Certify's feature set?

No

Did Emburse Certify live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Emburse Certify go as expected?

No

Would you buy Emburse Certify again?

No

For our needs this software is lacking basic amenities. The support is not at all up to par. The written support is outdated, the training sessions are so high level that the trainers can rarely answer a question that is off script. The flat file only method is outdated. The navigation is clunky, distorted and sometimes makes no sense. For an organization using QuickBooks, this software is probably perfect.
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.
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!