Emburse Certify vs. TravelBank

[Emburse] Certify seems to have been designed with large organizations in mind, particularly those with corporate card programs as opposed to "small business" cards. The integration with American Express Business accounts failed after less than a year, and was not reestablished before we pulled the plug on the whole project. Even worse, [Emburse] Certify's support team wasn't able to offer alternatives.

Incentivized

The company-wide implementation of TravelBank greatly increased the efficiency of our expense reimbursement process. It mitigated many pain points such as errors, inconsistencies, and missing information in our manual Excels that were very hard to version control and track through the approval/reimbursement process. Overall, TravelBank has made all of our lives easier!

Incentivized

• Customer service/support: They have an incredible team. We are fans of the chat option and 99.9% of the time our issues are solved within a 5-minute window.
• Listening to customers: they are always looking for ways to improve their product. They have free conferences sprinkled around various cities. They are worth trending. They provide "what's new in Certify" as well as round-table discussions specifically addressing how their customers are using the product and what they have learned along the way.
• Keeping their product up to date: Certify takes back various suggestions from the conference to enhance their product. I have been at every conference they have had and have actually seen customer suggestions get implemented into the program.

Incentivized

• Ease of use - TravelBank is super user-friendly and easy to use whether you use the platform online or through their app.
• Ability to effectively track expense submission, approval and reimbursement process. TravelBank allows users to see exactly where their expense report is in the process.

Incentivized

• The ability to add a receipt after a report has been submitted would be helpful. This would simplify processing as opposed to disapproving the report and sending it back to the user for correction and re-submission.
• Though not a fault of Certify, our users drive multiple destinations every day, rather than occasional trips from city A to city B. Therefore, capturing mileage is a time-consuming process for our users.

Incentivized

• Expanding the hotel offerings - they already have a huge inventory, but it would be great to have more AirBnB-like options
• I've found particularly with flights that the employee rewards are much less - I realize that is just a function of airfare costs, but it feels like most of the time I need to go over budget
• Add Uber and Lyft options

Incentivized

I am very used to Certify's components. But some users that I manage still have a hard time fixing their expense reports no matter how many times I try to teach them. The Editing expense Report and Adding Expense Report option sometimes gets confusing and causes some employees to enter transactions twice. There should be a better layout to make it easier for them to edit and finish their expense reports. I try to teach Certify as much as I can, but the usability should be a bit easier so it is less confusing.

Incentivized

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

I have had 2 instances where the hotel double charged me and it took months to get back. I was never given a reason why and no one followed up with me -- I just got the money in my account one day and would have never known had I not been looking at my account that day,

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It stacks up right next to concur. They're both great products; they are complementary, not competitors. We used to use Rocketrip, which was complete garbage. I like that I get rewards on Uber. I like that I get rewards on Amazon. I wish I could get hotel rewards, not just AirBNB rewards.

Incentivized

• We have reduced the amount of time our operations department has to spend booking flights to 0.
• Hotel bookings have been greatly streamlined and we are looking to eliminate human interaction with this process once CC authorisations are handled.
• We have eliminated the wait time between operational travel research and client approval time -- it can all be handled in one single step now.

Incentivized

• I'm not in the finance department, but I'd guess our travel spend per employee has reduced since we started using TravelBank.
• We now have one travel supplier, with flights and hotels paid from a central account, rather than everyone booking through a variety of channels with their own card. In case of emergency, the company knows which flight you're on, which hotel you're staying at.

Incentivized