Emburse Chrome River vs. FreshBooks

Chrome River in my experience is suited to the employees being more independent when completing their reports, due to the extensive questions and steps. This allows us (the reviewers) to come in and assist the employees more efficiently. I think it fits well with out needs and easy to help our employees

Incentivized

FreshBooks is the perfect tool for businesses who have hundreds of clients and customers whom they invoice regularly. It removes the need to manually send invoices to clients and customers, by streamlining inputted information to create an automated invoicing system which keeps clients and customers up to date with their bills. It is also a great tool for managing expenses, especially for companies with different teams working on varying projects, ensuring these teams do not exceed the budget ceiling.

Incentivized

• [Emburse] Chrome River listens to its customer's needs and does its best to match current products to those needs, or collaborate internally to determine if an enhancement can be made available that will not only benefit that customer, but will be a good use case for all Chrome River customers.
• The [Emburse] Chrome River customer service team is great. Unlike most companies, you can speak to a liver person!
• [Emburse] Chrome River's training offerings are relevant and pertinent to the day to day operations of the software.

Incentivized

• FreshBooks is pretty intuitive to use. I did have some questions when I first started using the system, but it wasn't a long learning curve.
• FreshBooks provides more capability than other billing applications such as PaySimple or BlinkSale. FreshBooks does provide an easy invoicing function. It's easy to create invoices that can be sent via email or snail mail to one or more individuals (for example, the decision-maker and the accounting dept). Clients can pay online or send a check and then I note that the payment has been received. If paid by credit card, the system automatically marks the invoice paid. Your business accounts such as bank accounts can be linked to FreshBooks. Then, the system can automatically draw in expenses and will create simple P&L reports, overdue invoices, client history, etc. If you don't have inventory and complex payroll, etc. FreshBooks provides just the right level of capability to make financial tracking simple.
• FreshBooks integrates with a number of credit card companies. I use Stripe, which has fees similar to Paypal, but much more reliable processing. I can accept all credit cards, including American Express, for a reasonable fee.

• Would be great to have pre-saved templates available to apply to line items at the expense report header level rather than having to go into each line.
• Would be nice to have a mass upload functionality for things like cost codes, allocations, and credit card users.

Incentivized

• Pricing structure is very poor for us. $10/user per month when we have staff that comes and goes. And it's impossible to change a free contractor to a paid staff and vice-versa. This is my biggest complaint.
• They only allow one admin owner user. Emails must come from that account. This is annoying, as other staff cannot log in with the same power.
• The user interface is quite dated. I've made recommendations to improve it and all have been ignored. It's skinny and not fluid. Also, there is no way to link between invoices and clients.

Chrome River is easy to use. We needed little training for our users and instead pointed them to Chrome River's Help Guides which are clearly written and easy to understand. With tools SNAP and the ability to email receipts means we can be completely remote when submitting reports.

At the current needs of our business, FreshBooks suits us perfectly - it allows online access by our accountant to the system for GST purposes, easy input of expenses and tracking of Profit and Loss statements. FreshBooks customer service is great as well - very understanding and accommodating.

I would rate Chrome River Expense a 10 because, as I mentioned before, it is very simple and easy to use. This is important from an administrative point-of-view as well as for the field employee. Being a general contractor, it makes it all the better for our employees to use a program that is easy to understand and requires little time and effort. It has made tracking expenses very simple and has been well received by the entire company.

Incentivized

It is well-built software with no significant drawbacks. It offers all the necessary futures expected from online software. However, it is not yet up there with Xero and QuickBooks regarding connections with other software and advanced reporting features. The developers work closely with accountants, and therefore, I expect further development of the software.

Incentivized

The software is always running effectively. I use many Cloud based systems and never had issues with Chrome River

Incentivized

FreshBooks is easy to use and always works!

Incentivized

System runs normal pretty much all the time. Does not slow any other systems down.

Incentivized

I cannot tell you how relieved we were when utilizing Chrome River support in comparison to other Enterprise level software support centers. Tickets were quick and representatives were swift in [their callbacks] and resolutions to our common and most difficult problems. The team there is professional and makes each new support ticket a breeze.

Incentivized

I think the support level for FreshBooks is on par with a 6 because the folks behind this application do a fairly good job at providing support for their customer base. I still don't think they are at an elite level when it comes to supporting but are getting there although too slow in my opinion.

Incentivized

The software is very user friendly, so the online training was easy to pickup for everyone.

Incentivized

Before implementation begins, make sure you have a plan on how you would like your workflow and platform setup for a system like Chrome River. It will speed the process and eliminate the need to make changes when you go live.

Incentivized

I haven't changed my mind since my first evaluation. Freshbooks is still meeting my needs, easy to use, etc.

The overall user interface was easy to use and it made the task of the reporting very easy. Compliance rules are guiding the users to correctly upload and enter receipts, which are already uploaded and recognized via OCR during the business trip. Uploading can easily done via APP, mail or receipt gallery. There is no need for storing paper. Chrome River is supporting digital archiving

Incentivized

There is no fluff and feature overload with FreshBooks. I can get to what I need quickly and easily. I don't have to deal with unnecessary features and fields the system considers essential. The payment features are streamlined and have lots of flexibility when receiving payments. I love FreshBooks support, and it is 100 more customer-friendly and easier to work with than its primary competitors from my experience.

Incentivized

It's very easy software to design to your needs.

Incentivized

• We have seen a return on approver time of nearly 60% meaning our approvers have tripled their output.
• We have had feedback from our users that time spent creating expenses has gone from an average of 2 hours to perhaps 20 minutes, tops.
• We have seen in our dashboards that the Emburse Certify Suite of tools has returned an average savings of over $500K a year.

Incentivized

• Since implementing FreshBrooks, 80% of invoices created are paid in less than 30 days from the time the invoice is sent via email to the client. Prior to FreshBooks, we were mailing or hand-delivering our invoices and payment on those invoices was in the 45-90 day range.
• Time tracking is done directly in FreshBooks (or through a plugin that's connected directly to FreshBooks) and is very easy to use. With this feature we're much better able to track all business activities. This has helped us to quantify the time we're spending on non-billable business-related work in addition to our billable client hours. We've been able to adjust our pricing accordingly, as well as being more efficient with our non-billable activities.
• When FreshBooks online payments is set-up in your account, payments made with this method are automatically sent to your bank account. We choose between FreshBooks payments and PayPal payments in order to manage how much money stays in the PayPal account for online expenses vs. how much is transferred directly to the bank account.