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Emburse Expense Professional (formerly Certify Expense)
Travel and expense report management software
Last updated: February 2024
Value for money rating
4.6
/5
1.2K
Price starts from
12
/user
Per month
What users say
Price starts from
150000
/user
One-time payment
Pricing model
Free trial
Price starts from
999
Per year
Pricing model
Free trial
Price starts from
3900
Per year
Pricing model
Free trial
Price starts from
7
/user
Per month
Pricing model
Free trial
Price starts from
39
/user
Per month
Pricing model
Free trial
Emily R.
Printing, 51-200 employees
Used other for less than 6 months
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We spent many weeks researching the best options for what we were looking for in an expense tracking software. We tried several trials and lastly ended with choosing Certify for the job. Talking with our sales rep, it sounded like a dream! He addressed each of our concerns and assured us everything we were looking for was within their app. After we signed the contract, we experienced our first taste of what was to follow in how we were to be treated. We set up our first meeting to get started, and after confirming verbally, via email, and google calendar invite, our Account Manager was a no-show. No, follow up, emails, or calls to let us know either. We waited in the meeting link for 30 minutes before we reached out asking what had happened. The response we received was not of an apologetic one, but more of an “oops, I guess I forgot”. With this sort of response, we asked that an honour would be placed in that if the software was to not work for us, we could exit our contract without a penalty. Our sales rep agreed that this was a reasonable request, and confirmed we would have an exit option without penalty if their software did not work out for us. We contacted our reps and let them know the software was not working for us. We tried, but it left us doing more work than our prior manual process. After requesting our account to be terminated, we were given penalties to be paid for exiting our contract agreement early. They would not honour any other agreements.
They were willing to work on pricing before we signed up.
Their system is outdated. The software could be good, but it seems they are not willing to update to get there. They use a 3rd party linking system which will result in you having to manually reconnect your cards to the system weekly, or your reports will not pull in transactions correctly. The way the users are set up, it makes no sense and has a very hard flow to things. You constantly have to ghost another user to approve expenses billed to a card that is added to your user. They are not a customer-focused company who is concerned with their product or how their customers are treated and focused more on filling their pockets. Certify has a great sales team, but that seems to be where the customer service ends and loads of issues begin.
Brian L.
Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees
Used daily for 2+ years
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Our experience with Certify has been great. Before using Certify, our 20 company credit card holders submitted monthly expense reports with hard copies of receipts. Having to collect receipts for a month was a burden for the employees and created quite a task for accounting to review and verify them when matching to the credit card statement. And if copies were needed to submit with a customer invoice, it would have to be scanned. Certify is an easy-to-use solution to these issues and saves our company many hours a month. Customer support is top-notch when a problem does arise.
Reasonable price and the ability to upload receipts and it's ability to "read" the receipts and autofill saves time. Receipts can then be accessed at a later time if necessary. Initial integration was supported by Certify to insure success.
Usually it imports credit card transactions automatically but, if we need to import them manually, most times it takes several attempts to bring in credit card transactions. Could be our bank but it can take a few tries. Isn't a huge issue at all.
Madison T.
Information Technology and Services, 51-200 employees
Used daily for 6-12 months
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A huge business problem that certify has to help me to fix, is cutting unnecessary cost in our company. With its easy to use software, I was able to see what cost I could cut, therefore saving our company more money!
This software is really great. I provide all the snacks, office supplies, and other employee-related equipment to my team of about 120 employees. Therefore I use Certify a lot and its extremely easy to use. I love how I can just snap a photo an upload my receipt right after purchase to keep things in order. It also gives you tips and tricks if you mess up an expense. I would highly recommend this software to any companies that have company credit cards. It's very easy to learn and very easy to use!
There really is not a lot of things I dislike about Certfity. I use it every day and I find it a very easy product to use.!
Alex S.
Marketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees
Used daily for 6-12 months
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Timely reporting of expense reports, visibility of all expenses, easy to track & review. Historical data available and can review previous information very easily
Easy to use and the step by step implmentation process was well supported. Good training materials and support after implementation is available. Many good reports are also available. Did not have any issues with implementing the new expense report process and approval process within the system works well
Does not handle the GST specific to Canada very well. However we were able to customize a field to capture the information on a report that can be exported to excel to suit our needs. Does not readily integrate into Sage to simplify data entry.
Mohamed Salah B.
Management Consulting, 1-10 employees
Used daily for 6-12 months
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I've been using Emburse Certify Expense for a few months now and I'm very happy with the results. It's a comprehensive and cost-effective expense management tool that makes it easy to track my spending, set budgets, and receive expense reports. The user interface is intuitive and easy to use, and I haven't had any issues with the service. I would highly recommend Emburse Certify Expense to anyone looking for a reliable and cost-effective expense management solution.
I've been using Emburse Certify Expense for the past few months and I am very pleased with the results. It is a comprehensive expense management tool that makes it easy to track my spending, set budgets, and receive expense reports. The user interface is intuitive and easy to use, and the cost is very reasonable compared to similar tools on the market. I'm very happy with the service and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a reliable and cost-effective expense management solution.
The only downside to Emburse Certify Expense is that it doesn't have a mobile app. This is a bit inconvenient since it would be nice to have the ability to access the service from a mobile device. Other than that, the service has been great and I haven't had any other issues.
Hi Mohamed Salah, Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a review of Emburse Certify! I wanted to let you know that we do have a mobile app you can utilize. You can learn more and download it, here: https://www.certify.com/products-services/features-and-benefits/certify-mobile-app Thank you!
Anna V.
Transportation/Trucking/Railroad, 10,001+ employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
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As the administrator I think it's a fantastic program for cost savings in comparison to some other popular expense systems. Users struggle with adapting to this software compared to Concur. The interface is completely different for how reports are created and receipts are uploaded. I like that they are constantly making improvements based on user and administrator feedback (I was informed that the more requests they get for something, the higher that project gets bumped up on their development list).
I like that there are several option to make it custom to our company (ability to make it work how we need it to). There is a vast learning library available and reporting is visually appealing and easy to find what I need to run as the administrator. The Certify tech support team is responsive and always rolling out new improvements based on feedback, we have already seen several positive changes in the last 4 months since switching to this for expenses and travel.
User feedback has been that it's not user-friendly, there are several aspects of the software that aren't intuitive and users struggle with learning this system after switching from Concur's interface. As the administrator it's difficult to create specific rules to kick-out certain expense categories for audit. We had to create a work-around by making a secondary account for myself to manually review those exceptions which is pretty odd and causes for a lot of double-work, as those approved by the secondary account come back to me as administrator to approve a second time.
Randy P.
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Im going to make this kind of short.... I was lied to in the sales process, implementation dropped the ball continually. They have zero followup when you have an issue. My implementation coach and even the implementation manager I had to speak with never followed up with me. Oh did I mention they have an implementation fee they bring up just before you sign with them? Its not cheap. But they'll "discount" it. Due to being lied to during sales, I had to figure out how Certify worked instead of it just working for me. I had to re-enter my credit cards 3 times, and I had 15 credit cards. I had to call the bank to get individual logins for all my credit cards. I have 25 very unhappy users and one irate admin (me). The import into quickbooks did not go as promised as well. Due to all of this I now feel as if I know more about Certify than my salesman did when he sold me this crap. The app for the phone is pretty good, Android better than IOS I think. The Web application though is horrible, just horrible. The Layout is bad, you have to confirm simple things, but you can delete an expense with no more scrutiny. They have no way for you to recover deleted expenses. The have a Wallet and a Report, you cannot edit most fields in the wallet, you have to move expenses into a "draft report" then move them back into your wallet! Its about a 10 click process just to change the amount of a receipt or change a category- very important things, heres the procedure lol. 1) Check expense(s) in wallet 2) Click Add to report, 3) Chose whether you want a new or existing report. 4) Confirm that you want to do that. 5) Wait for the expenses to load(which can take a while if you have a lot) 6) click edit 7) Edit the expense, click save (I'll give them this one) 8) Click the icon to open a menu 9) Click Send to wallet. So 9 steps. There is an alternate way but you get to chose from a little window and you cant select multiple. So why do I have to leave the wallet to edit an expense? Oh and if you have a lot of receipts they remove the "merge" option. This matches your receipts with your CC charges automatically! But you cant have more than 100 or 150 lines of charges/expenses, they cant decide on which number, but its between there. So why would you make my life harder if I have MORE expenses? I hope this saves you from some hassle, expenses are tricky, this is my second go around wasting dozens of hours.
App is good to use
They dont know their system entirely. they will sell you something just to sell you. Their salesmen dont know the ins and outs.
Louis C.
Computer Software, 11-50 employees
Used daily for 6-12 months
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Our team experienced an immediate affinity for Certify as an application which we are using along side our current CRM in order to organize , track , and to monitor travel compliant policy alterations for our yearly , very busy travel schedule. Certify as such has become a concrete asset as we save on needless and potentially expensive travel costs.
We found that Certify readily integrates inside of our current Control Management Software quite efficiently and easily. Certify's own management team help sire us through this process which ultimately reduced our dependency on IT support which can be costly. Certify offers easy to use tools that allow our employees and resource allocation to create fine tuned reports designed to address monetary waste as well to increase cost efficiency. As advised by Certify's team, we are paying particular attention to travel mileage as well as incurred airfare. AP report generation is also available for our accounting in order to focus on reimbursable costs for each department or by employee.
We did notice occasional operational instability in the form of minor bugs with this program as well as the necessary synchronization that must be initialized by each employee per server , however overall these inconveniences were mitigated through intervention from Certify's capable client service department. They suggested quite effective work around solutions to keep our report flow steady and current.
Sloan F.
Research, 11-50 employees
Used other for less than 6 months
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After several phone calls with the Certify sales team, I was assured that the corporate credit card sync would work for our business. I stated several times that the credit card sync was THE critical factor in our evaluation of expense tracking software, and explained the structure of of our credit card login with authorized users. I was never given any indication throughout the sales process that there was even a possibility that the credit card data couldn't be pulled in, and proceeded with our contract an implementation accordingly. I dedicated many hours to the implementation process, including introducing our entire team to the website and mobile app. It was not until over a month into the process that our implementation specialist indicated that the credit card aggregator was unable to separate the charges according to authorized user....and that this was a KNOWN ISSUE for credit cards of our type. I spent an additional 4 weeks attempting to help them trouble-shoot the known issue. But the bottom line is that their service does not support small business credit card feeds, has never been able to do so, and they have no plan in place to attempt to do so. Bottom line: Certify will tell you whatever you want to hear until they take your money. But they do not standby those promises, and you should not trust that their sales people have any idea what the software can actually do or not do. Beware.
This seemed like an effective and easy to use expense tracking software.
The sales contact repeatedly assured us that Certify would bring in credit card transactions from our company credit card (Capital One Spark for Small Business). We were explicit that this was the primary driver in our decision, and that importing company credit card transactions was our primary goal. As soon as we paid the implementation fee and were assigned to an implementation specialist, they immediately explained that Certify does not work with Capital One cards, and also does not work with any of these: Chase Ink, American Express @ Work, Simmons Bank, PNC Bank, Bank of America Visa Executive Commercial Card, US Bank. If you use those cards, DO NOT TRY TO USE CERTIFY. They wasted 2 months of my time, and REFUSED TO REFUND the implementation cost, despite the fact that they sold me software they KNEW would not work.
Verified reviewer
1,001-5,000 employees
Used daily for 1-2 years
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It has really made tracking expenses and travel costs a breeze to track, leading to more efficiency and accuracy within our reporting. All of our outside customer sales reps use it daily.
Scaling to a larger business can seem complicated through the web app in the very beginning but they have a great service team that can answer all your questions. Also things like expense reporting and creating spreadsheets can sometimes take a few moments to load entirely but that's normally due to network issues and rarely has to do with the app.
Matthew L.
Pharmaceuticals, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used weekly for 6-12 months
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Easy way to track expenses and upload receipts with the mobile app. The way it syncs to desktop version is quick and efficient. All receipts and expenses in a variety of different forms can be added (bank statement, physical receipt, online receipt, etc). It is user friendly and easy to understand. Generates expense reports and notifies you of its progress.
I think the software is user friendly in both the App and the Desktop versions. I like how you can add expenses right from your phone when you are on the go. The way it prefills data from receipts is great. I like how it is connected to Uber and also how easy it is to forward an online receipt to certify and it will generate an expense. I rated customer service and value for money as average because I don't have a good benchmark for either of them.
I feel the App does some things better than the desktop version and I feel each have different capabilities, which is strange. For example, I can create an expense based on mileage from driving to and from a location, that cannot be replicated within the desktop version.
Ashley R.
Marketing and Advertising, 501-1,000 employees
Used monthly for 1-2 years
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Certify does a good job in solving the business problem of having all reimbursement, travel, and other expenses recorded for each user in one place, however, it is not always user-friendly. I would mainly recommend using this platform for booking travel.
My job recently switched over to Certify for travel and basic money management. The main reason I use it to receive reimbursement from my workplace when we go to an outing or have to travel for client meetings. Our company grew very quick from less than 100 people to over 700 people in a matter of 2 years so as we onboard this program, it made travel, reimbursement, tracking of receipts, etc for a medium size com pretty easy. I value programs like Certify that make my life easier by having all inquires in one place, saving me time on booking and making me worry free about tracking reimbursements
Sometimes the receipt upload process takes a while to get done right since it has quite a few components to enter when filing out the form for reimbursement. With this being said, the must unenjoyable thing about Certify is filing a reimbursement form since it is a tad annoying/takes a while to use.
Kathy G.
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We feel that our move to Certify was good and the right move for our travelers and users. Overall I would recommend Certify to others, especially since they continue to improve their product and add features.
Most employees find Certify very easy to use, and love the mobile app. We moved from Concur Expense which had more back end functionality for administrators but was not user friendly for travelers. The price point for Certify was significantly lower and yet we get a great product and excellent customer service. Certify is also responsive to feedback, and improving the product with new features and enhancements.
Could expand some reporting features or allow ad hoc reporting would be fantastic. Add some additional functionality for administrators to flag certain expense types and individuals for review. Allow some expense types to not require receipts.
Certify provides a rich reporting suite with 6 to 10 options for every report. The reports are continually expanded and enhanced as a result of on-going customer feedback efforts. Because Certify is a true SaaS offering, all customers benefit from new reporting enhancements. -Certify
Mark B.
Civic & Social Organization, 501-1,000 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
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Since joining my current company I have used Certify over the past 2+ years. It makes keeping track of business expenses while traveling a breeze. We have other systems to track some of our other expenses and I try to stay away from them and use Certify - it's just so much easier to use.
Ease of use and simplicity. It's very fast, sign-on is simple & quick. I usually have my meal expenses recorded before I leave the table. Once a trip is over, putting expenses together into a report is also very simple and the receipt wizard is very helpful. I'm able to take a hotel folio and break out my meals from lodging in just a few seconds. I can get receipts entered from my phone's camera, upload from a PDF or sent in by email.
I can't think of anything. I don't pay for it, my organization does, so I cannot rate cost or value.
Dennis W.
Used weekly for 2+ years
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The speed at which transactions are recorded from phone to computer and how they are reported I also like the wallet transfer feature that also drops the charges into each report as a question for inclusion
Exchange rates for say Canadian to us don't jive with the cc charges I have to wait until all credit card transactions are validated and then snip copies and add as a zero value entry on my expense report
Gary M.
Utilities, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
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I like Certify a lot but there are a few improvements that would really make it shine such as 1) Allowing the user to set preferences in certain fields such as the organization.. having to constant scroll through the list to my department wastes a lot of time. 2) Allowing the user to set preferences for certain expenses.. for example "Employee Entertainment".. be virtue of the expense type all persons should be from the same company.. We should be able to set our company name to a default value for that expense category. 3) Reimbursable expenses on the same receipt.. The user should be able to set more than one expense types in the same expense record.. For example, for company reimbursed Office Phone and ISP charges. Today you can only enter Phone or Internet.. So if Verizon provides both, that means two separate entries.. Save us the double work and allow more than one expense type per entry.
Ease of use
A bit clunky in the expense areas
James R.
Retail, 201-500 employees
Used weekly for 1-2 years
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It's a cost effective solution to credit card expense management. They can be mostly flexible in integration design to fit the needs of your company. The mobile app and website are user friendly for new users. The reports function is helpful to dig into expenses. There are a lot of reports to use, but the best reports are for an additional fee.
It's relatively user friendly and easy to pick up after a few expense reports.
The customer service and billing team does not respond or resolve issues timely.
Nancy N.
5,001-10,000 employees
Used monthly for 2+ years
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Fix the attachment process. Make it clear. It is not a clear step process. It should be a 1, 2, 3 step and it is not. It is confusing when in the process do you attach. Plus, my company only covers a certain amount per month and your software picks up the WHOLE value of my receipt so I have to go back and manually change it. Horrible!
It auto populates in a few areas. It remembers my vendor and what I call my report. It appears to be easy until you have to attach a receipt.
It appears to be easy until you have to attach. That steps messes me up every month. It should be easy but the steps are not clear and I have to redo every time. Why can't you make it go.....1, 2, 3. It doesn't. No instructions on a step process that makes it easy to attach. I'm not a stupid person and it confuses me every time I do it!.
Chris P.
Used weekly for 2+ years
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The mobile app is excellent. OCR feature automatically fills in expense data, and receipts sync right into the online module.
Not much really, I think if they bundled payment processing for reimbursement into their pricing, we would use it. We manually process reimbursements now to minimize costs.
Renae B.
Insurance, 1-10 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
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I am unhappy with the results, and was hoping for a more user friendly program. I want to customize the fields more to fit the needs of the company. Instead there extra fields that are required, that are unneeded and are extra work.
Ananlysis of individual expenses, reciept upload, linked with Quickbooks
Not as customizable as I had thought. Many steps are needed to edit an entry. The setup fee is expensive, and the majority of the setup is left to the user to figure out. The setup questionaire is vague. Would be best to have a telephone call where the user explains what exactly is wanted.
Shaheen G.
Telecommunications, 51-200 employees
Used weekly for less than 6 months
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Certify is a very efficient and effective tool for managing expenses. It's refreshing to have a tool that actually works and I am not constantly having to submit tickets on because it isn't working as expected. I like the set up of the front page and the quick links on the left. It's great that as soon as I can log in I can see a summary with counts of anything outstanding. The email notifications are very helpful too. I also like that I can see a history of my personal expense requests so that I can verify I sent it if I can't remember. As someone who also approves expenses, it would be good to also be able to see an archived history of the expenses I have approved or denied which includes the date submitted, date approved/denied, person's name, amount, and purpose. It would be very helpful to be able to sort by and filter those headers as well. One thing that I think would really improve ease of use would be the ability to choose receipts from a file right from the expense rather than having to go to a separate screen to upload and then create the expense to be able to attach. I have not used customer support and not aware of the cost so I have not rated those.
No pros were added to this review
No cons were added to this review
Lindsay W.
Hospital & Health Care, 501-1,000 employees
Used weekly for 1-2 years
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Relatively easy to use and user friendly to file an expense report. Updates on status changes for report and itemizes expenses well. Can set cost flags to make expenses easy to monitor without a deep dive into each individual report.
Difficulty transferring receipts from phone app to computer platform. Less user friendly in phone app.
Stephanie Z.
Construction, 51-200 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
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The ability to track expenses and receipts to review and implement cost controls within the company.
Still waiting on guidance for integration with our accounting software and lack of guidance from the Certify team.
Samantha D.
Consumer Services, 1,001-5,000 employees
Used weekly for less than 6 months
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The ease of access, the smoothness of Certify's interface, it creates the perfectly flawless environment to create, plan and schedule all business trip needs. It allows the information to be neatly organized in one stop for all business expenses
This software is by far the easiest I've ever come across. We use certify for multiple different uses, be it a mid day meeting or a week long business trip. Certify allows you to search, compare and select the best price on flights and hotels in a flash. The best part is that Certify allows you to keep all travel expenses documented and accounted for, such as cost of cabs/Ubers & cost of dining.
The one thing I think could be improved it that the system can create a company based cloud to hold/auto fill the fields when booking.
Marley M.
Logistics and Supply Chain, 51-200 employees
Used daily for less than 6 months
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If you're looking for expense tracking software don't waste your time looking around. Certify is the same price as all the other companies, but it is so user friendly, has a great interface and has outstanding customer service.
Super easy to use, outstanding customer service, not expensive at all, extremely customizable, makes life easier for our sales reps. They have been so helpful throughout the implementation process.
No cons were added to this review