Chrome River EXPENSE Reviews

Pros

Our expense reimbursement process improved greatly when implementing Chrome River Expense 12 years ago. No more paper shuffling from in box to in box for approvals, potentially getting lost. Also, Chrome River continues to improve their product and keeps up with client demands as technology evolves.

Cons

Customer service is up and down. Chrome River now charges for changes you want to make, where that used to be baked in the subscription price. Or you can pay for an almost unlimited service model - a bit pricey, but overall worth it if you have a lot of changes to make like we do. (Changes are because our business needs often change).

Pros

The new receipt functions within Mercury are a life saver for the auditing process. We love the way it crops and attaches the receipts to individual line items, it makes auditing a breeze rather than going through countless pages of receipts. Its a huge time saver and that is important as we have such a high volume.

Cons

Help Desk Turn Around time could be better.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Chrome River EXPENSE

Pros

Tiles are easy to use and explain. Process for submitting and tracking expenses is user friendly.

Cons

- Importing in Pcard expenses and receipts seems to take too many steps and are at different visual points for users.
- The initial form is not configurable to select the type of expense report you are completing FIRST

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Chrome River EXPENSE

Pros

The ability to build rules around compliance and polices is top notch.

Cons

The reporting (Analytics) isn’t as easy to navigate as it should be.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing Chrome River EXPENSE

Reasons for Switching to Chrome River EXPENSE

Pros

The OCR capability is fantastic...expenses can be captured from anywhere using any device and interpreted as accurately (in many case more so) than our users! Really saves time and enforces compliance.

Cons

We really don't have anything not to like...it just works!

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Chrome River EXPENSE

Pros

The digital receipts and paperless. You can do everything on an app. People get paid faster. Easy to use just click on the icon you want and fill in the data.

Cons

Some customization are a bit challenging at times.

Pros

from a user perspective, this software has helped eliminate steps in submitting and processing expense claims. The use of the Snap App to process the paper claims and combined with OCR capabilities help to make claims a breeze compared to our older manual method. Further, our AP team and others have gained greater efficiencies by being able to collect this information in real-time and process it faster.

Easily integrates with other accounting system or organization uses.
Easy to use user interface.

Cons

The reporting/analytics features can be revamped, as well as greater flexibility in customization. Overall, the tool does a great job.

Pros

The ability to submit bills directly by scanning and uploading is a very good feature. Definitely saves time and resources - sending bills by courier or mail. The automation in travel/tour claims and reimbursements is a must have feature and Chromeriver is good at it. Works well with our travel portal and Hotel Vendors. The rules and flexibility offered is great for controls and monitoring spends.

Cons

The interface looks clunky and not that intuitive. The workflow also is not that straight forward, with different steps required sometime unnecessarily. Its response time sometimes becomes too slow. We had 2-3 maintenance shutdowns and it was not acceptable.

Pros

The user interface is very easy to use. We have the person load feeding from our HR data, so new employees are automatically fed into the system. When an employee leaves they are also removed from ChromeRiver

Cons

The itemizing of hotel bills has been an issue when the hotel does not send all the information. Not really a chromeriver issue, because the hotel is not sending the information, but the users see it as a problem with ChromeRiver. This process has gotten much better since we originally went on the system

Pros

Very easy to use, has a lot of report functionality and can add notes and attachments super easily as needed.

Cons

Limited on approval routing, but not so much that it has been difficult to adjust to.

Pros

Chrome River is highly accessible and available across many devices and platforms. You basically just need and internet connection. This allows us to work and function across many dispersed offices. It's a fairly easy interface for the average user, and puts the ability to quickly submit an expense in the purchaser's hands. We are able to send data to and from Chrome River, which is vital. Emburse stays ahead with technology and is working on AI receipt readers.

Cons

The integration certainly felt like a struggle. Basic data feeds were easy, but when we updated our accounting software from Elite Enterprise to Elite 3E, the export integration - which was fully handled by the CR development team - did take quite a bit of time and effort to get right. It's working great now though, but was more effort than anticipated to set up initially. I would advise to keep custom rules simplified if possible too. Overall the product is good, it's just about getting it set up in my opinion.

Pros

This software lets our users attach receipts hands free by either emailing receipts or using the Chrome River SNAP app. This allows delegates to go in and create expense reports for our users who would rather have their assistant perform this practice. The software is also usable on any computer, smart phone or tablet allowing users to work from anywhere they have an internet connection. Chrome River is also integrated with our Corporate credit card (US Bank) so transactions come through showing our users exactly which items need to be submitted. The product also integrates with Uber, Lyft, and Spot Hero so those receipts are automatically sent to Chrome River.

Cons

We have not had any major issues with the software. The OCR function for reading receipts does not always work as well as you would like but this only makes users select a different expense type than is suggested.

Pros

Easy to send receipts to the product. Very easy for occasional users to pick up. Rarely any down time.

Cons

Customization is able to be done in house, but it is not easy to learn in a non tech department.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to Chrome River EXPENSE

Pros

customizable for my business rules

Cons

we opted for daily feeds of certain information. Sometimes new options are added that I might be interested in, but until I read their updates in detail, I won't know about changes.

Pros

- Very intuitive, tile-based with the picuture driven for easy identification.
- Centralized configurations
- Better tracking mechanism
- Better workflow management
- Violation tracker

Cons

Customer Service is good but I see room for development in handling the cases faster after assignment.

Pros

Emburse Chrome River has empowered the local admins more every month we've been a customer. This allows us to create a familiar and intuitive system for our users.

Cons

Would still like additional capabilities for reviewers/approvers to modify expense reports. I believe CR is moving in this direction soon, however. This will be a great change!

Pros

All of our travel is processed through Chrome River. I really appreciate the ease of use of the product. It is also very easy to teach and create training materials. Our travel card program integrated very well with the software.

Cons

I would like to see more scoped administrator roles to choose from.

Pros

Can easily upload expenses and can be monitored. This is then easily exported to be upload into our accounts software therefore we don't have to import the information twice.

Cons

Need to look into more about how to make changes but have seen some of the webinars and this looks like it will be getting easier

Pros

It drives policy compliance with reminders, warnings, and hard-stop violations. Plus, no more paper!!

Cons

The credit card reconciliation has been difficult for us, however, a big part of that could be related to our stringent state requirements.

Pros

The software is easy to configure and update for administrators. For our users it is simple to create and submit their expenses made on their card or out of pocket.

Cons

I felt that things that I found challenging was because it was a new process or I did not have a full understanding.

Pros

Great integration with our ERP system (PeopleSoft). Nice features like Snapp App, Uber integration. Really easy workflow process. Nice, user friendly design

Cons

I don;t see any disadvantages so far. App is stable, in case of any issue we have the service desk for the support we need

Pros

The configurability of the UI, the compliance warnings, the routing rules, and the approval flows is hard to beat.

Cons

The system seems like it can be slow at some times, but it is very difficult to identify the source.

Pros

I like the ease of use and the ability to have all information in one place.

Cons

The ability to make changes sometimes involves higher Customer Support involvement and the lack of response is critical to our business.

Pros

The ease of use, this software feels like a 2018 software, it works great with mobile or desktop and has very innovative look and feel.

Cons

You can customize a lot of rules, but there is a limit to how far you customize it, some functionality is just not there yet, but they are very receptive if you can make a business case for it.