Chrome River Expense - An easy tool for expense and travel management

Earlier we used to submit hard copy receipts and excel files which is a time-consuming process for the employer as well as for accounts staff. I am really happy with the product because it saves a lot of time and makes the expense reporting process very easy.

Pros

Chrome River Expense is fast, fluid, and easy to use the application to report travel expenses done with a corporate credit card or even with a personal card. The application is available for all platforms including desktop, mobile, and tablet, etc. which makes the expense reporting process fast and easy even when you are on the go. Some of the features of the application are – Automated spend control, automated approval routing, credit card integration, Snap and send receipt submission, optical character recognition (OCR), integration with leading financial systems, configurable policies, and routing, online dashboard and self-service inquiries. The application has a powerful analytics engine that saves a lot of time for employers and accounts staff.

Cons

You need to spend some time initially to understand it as the tool includes a lot of categories and sub-categories which makes it a little bit confusing to use, but trust me it saves a lot of time. Receipts have to PDF formatted. Ad-hoc functionality seems a little slow and can be improved.

Great Visibility for Business Expenses

We are keeping track of all corporate spend, and submitting them all on time now. The visibility of where all expenses are in their approval process has been great for our users. Since everything flows faster, we are able to process reimbursements faster too. Our ability to also track compliance violations helps with know where user need additional training. The compliance reports are very useful.

Pros

Integration with our corporate card program has been such a time saver. All users are able to track and expense their incurred business expenses in a timely fashion, and that helps with decision making. We also integrate with our travel agency, so expencing full trips now take way less time.

Cons

Setting up the routing rules was a challenge with some of the exceptions we had to work through, but once the time was spent to consider everything, the system does what we expect.

Easy to use and teach

Our travel department was able to become mostly paperless using Chrome River. Most of our end users are pleased with the product.

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.

Need more control and responsiveness from Chrome River team

- We have experienced a drastic reduction in turn around time for our help desk tickets. Untimely or disparate responses and questions back to us. Attempting to charge us extra fees when there are minor changes to our expense rules that happen regularly.

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

Great way to bring our University into the 21st century and strive for paperless expense management.

Auotmation

Pros

The routing rules, compliance rules and the ease of being able to track items quickly. Enabling the user to have more flexibility in timing and to not spend the majority on their time on "paper-work" shuffling. Creating an "all-in-one" place for reporting and multiple functions that can reduce headaches from both the fund manager, auditor, payables' team and the users.

Cons

The platform becoming not a fully functional system and the fix for the problem taking months to correct when all of the programming and configuration was completely in tact prior to any "upgrade" globally.

Chrome River...amazing product.

Pros

The best part of the program is the ease in teaching others how to use. We have users that come in, not knowing anything about the program and with one training and 1 or 2 uses, they make it work.

Cons

The settings section in the new platinum version is not very user friendly.

Chrome River Expense

Overall the experience has been great and we are happy with it!

Pros

The ease of use and the customization of it to meet our changing needs

Cons

Since the systems is so customizable it can be hard when there is a issue for support to understand why you do something a certain way.

Chrome River Expense

Expenses are now submitted in a timely manner and we now have receipts to match expenses. No more lost receipts. The approval processes are quicker, making reimbursements happen faster.

Pros

The product is very easy to use and quite intuitive. The CRSnap APP is a great tool and make uploading receipts to the Receipt Gallery less time consuming. Integration on the most part was very good.

Cons

There are two things that I really would like to see some changes and they are, I would like the ability to have more customization on the Tiles. As a religious institution our expenses are often quite different from the corporate world. Second, we are still having difficulty integrating our feed with our OBT, Egencia. We have to map our expense feed from our credit card company.

Chrome River makes expense management part of my day.

Amazing customer support, very simple Apps, great training options.

Pros

Simplicity, great customer support, and fit our budget.

Cons

Implementation was a bit challenging through all the Covid-19 stuff, but the Chrome River team was assume and supported us until we had it figured out.

Chrome River Expense is Great!

It has been pretty positive.

Pros

The user interface is customizable and several changes can be easily made for your own specifications.

Cons

Some things you can't remove in the eWallet like "trips" which we do not use and this clutters up the screen and confuses field employees creating firm paid expense reports.

Look elsewhere

Pros

I like how it had API integration with my credit card account.

Cons

CONSTANTLY GOING DOWN, the service is always having issues due to it being cloud hosted.

I have worked with Chrome River four years and lead the upgrade from the Platinum to Mercury.

Pros

The platform is user friendly and intuitive. Travelers have the capability of taking pictures of their receipts and sending them directly into their Chrome River e-Wallet. We use Egencia Travel which is in the process of integrating with Chrome River. This will result in all travel data also being housed in the traveler's e-Wallet. Our travelers also like the mobile capability of the new web-based platform, Mercury, which allows them to have access to the site while on the go. Credit card integration has also proved very valuable enabling travelers to see transactions they need to submit on their reports. Approvers have the ability audit and approve reports on the go with the ability to easily review receipts that are being billed to their projects. With the ability to program policies and routing, approvers can be assured that reports are meeting programmed company policies. If there is a need to split the allocation of the expense - Chrome River makes it very easy. Employees love the ability to easily delegate access to others and assign approval to coworkers while on vacation. We have been very happy with this software. It has simplified and made the expense report process very efficient for our firm.

Cons

As a travel manager, the analytics engine that I use frequently could be more intuitive. If reports are required outside of the standard list, the engine to produce custom reports is not very user friendly.

Chrome River - Easy Expenses!

We went from an in-house excel based expense report to CR so it was amazing to go from a spreadsheet to a real expense submission site. The improvements that came with the app and how easy it is to do expense reports now make the old way seem like a nightmare

Pros

CR Expense makes expense reports incredibly easy, both from the submission to the approval. The newer apps also alleviate the need to collect a folder of receipts that you have to later attach to paper and scan in manually, as with the app you can sign in on your phone or tablet and take a picture of the receipt right there. For other things, like receipts you receive via email, it was just as easy to sign into the site and upload a PDF copy of the email. Or if you still want to do everything at once, you can upload all your receipt images and attach them to individual items that way as well. With the available options and easy use there is no reason for people to be missing images or late on submission

Cons

The only down side/complaint I have is the "old" version (pre-mercury) still requires flashplayer. And I don't believe the admin tool has been migrated to mercury either so you still need to go into the old site to manage anything manually or investigate problems

Expense System on the Go

The system has streamlines our expense process allowing us to eliminate paper reports and move the whole company to a single expense system

Pros

The flexibility of mobile use and user interface

Cons

The limitation of customization of Mexico VAT

Compliance and Ease of use

A positive overall experience with some very nowledgable and patient team members. CR Expense has impressed us from the beginning (tendering process). Mobility, integrations, OCR, GUI - very positive about the solution.

Pros

All our Expenses Policy has been built into the system - threshholds, variations, warnings and violations. The user interface is really straight forward and the solution being fully mobile has put the expenses claim process into a completely different eprspective. OCR functionality enable quick scan and upload receipt process, integration with Credit Card provider eliminate clunky process we had before.

Cons

The biggest challenge was the implementation and understanding the old-fashioned rule building via excel sheets. Luckily this process is changing gradually as is becoming more sophisticated and current. This will be a benefit not only to new customers but a huge step forward for existing ones too.

Chrome River Expense - Expense reports made easy

Chrome River has been a great company to work with. They are always open to hear about features that would make our lives easier and try to accommodate when possible. We have since started using their Invoice capture service to help automate AP even more and the results have been fantastic.

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.

Great Service for a Great Price!

Great! We'll never use another software

Pros

I love how easy it is for people to use and our guys in the field love being able to simply take a picture of their receipts.

Cons

honestly, there is very little we dont like.

Chrome River Expense Review

Overall experience has been very positive as all employees are now using it and we are saving time and money. We can rely on the system to help us with the process and the automation helps us manage the process.

Pros

The system creates a workflow that saves us time and money. It enforces our expense policy so the administrators don't always have to be the bad guy. It also integrates with other systems such as our HR system (employee feeds), our corporate credit cards and out Concur travel system.

Cons

The admin features can be a bit tricky to use. Features aren't always in the most intuitive place. The CR team is working on changing everything around. Once things are found/explained, it is a nice system to use. The help desk can also be slow to respond. Most times i want to be able to pick up the phone and call someone rather than dial 1-800 help.

Totally Mobile, did not miss a beat during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic

The system is easily configurable and we can design it to meet our needs at year-end, during a pandemic, or as our policies are updated. Changes are easy to implement and with little to no disruption to our everyday processes.

Pros

Chrome River is a completely mobile user friendly software. When we were all ordered to work from home our users were able to leave the office and pick up exactly where they left off when they started working from home.

Cons

Some of the features and functionality are not configurable. However, in fairness to Chrome River they are always listening to our wants and needs and open to suggestions to making changes.

Chrome River Expense - Easy to Use

Monthly expense reimbursement and categorization used to be an extremely time consuming task. With CR Expense, it is now very efficient and streamlined. Our overall monthly close process has been sped up by at least 15%, simply because of CR Expense.

Pros

It is extremely easy to use. Our entire organization now uses it on a daily basis. It has completely streamlined our expense processes.

Cons

Implementation took a while, but we did eventually get it customized perfectly for our organization.

Mercury is wonderful!

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.

Customizable User Friendly Expense Platform

Chrome River has worked closely with us to understand our business and business needs. The staff is innovative and eager to solve any issues your business presents.

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.

Excellent Solution for Expense Report Automation

Chrome River has been such a valuable tool for our Firm, especially with the challenges raised by COVID-19. Our ability to work with EXPENSE remotely was unaffected.

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!

Business expense reimbursement software

my firm has been using Chrome River since 2011 for expense reimbursement processing. Implementation was quick. They have kept up with changing client needs and technology by constantly updating the software and offering new options. End users are happy because they have easy options such as connecting receipts directly from Uber, and can get downloaded transactions daily. Submitting expenses are icon based and are tailored to exactly your specs. Back office is happy because duplicates can be immediately identified and importing into GL packages is almost seamless once set up. Take a look. Chrome River is growing fast because they do it right and to your specifications.

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.

Expense report

Chrome River has been a great company to work with. They are always open to hear about features that would make our lives easier and try to accommodate when possible.

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.

Customizable Expense Reporting Made Easy

Huge benefit from the perspective of check printing and reconciling, less time for Accounts Payable to work through and sort paperwork and being able to use the A/P staff in other, more productive way was critical. When we lost a staff member we decided not to replace them because of the efficiency Chrome River gave us. We likely have the capacity to downsize another FTE but we will wait for either a retirement or someone to leave on their own.

Pros

Investing time on the front end of this product is well worth the results in the end and the overall buy-in of fellow employees. Keeping the initial screen simple is the key to employee adoption rates being higher than normal. Designating an implementation person or two (cross-training is key) is all that is needed. Do not rely on the partner from Chrome River to tell you what you need. They will interview you and guide you but the important thing to remember is that this will be your software to operate once it is ready to be deployed.

Cons

Not much honestly. When I implemented it there wasn't much OCR technology built in but that was something that was being developed.

Great base product with fantastic add-ons on the horizon

Fantastic customer service with a quality product that allows a lot of flexibility regarding expense reporting.

Pros

Able to customize all aspects of the expense reporting, and easy to use functionality in every way.

Cons

Difficult to utilize 3rd party connectors for systems such as FinancialForce.

Love ChromeRiver!

Overall ChromeRiver Expense is a great tool to use for invoicing and expense management!

Pros

Once the compliance and rules are set-up behind the scenes for this system is it really a more efficient and easy tool to use. It helped streamline the reconciliation process for our P-Card and Travel Card programs. Users really appreciate that all the accounting information needed to process payment for expenses out of departmental budgets is readily accessible

Cons

the reporting tool is not easy to use. We would really like to see more adhoc reports provided to higher eds and other companies that utilize this system.

Chrome River is part of a global end-to-end solution for travel and expense.

Pros

Chrome River is an easy to learn travel expense tool. Training effort is limited. 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. Interfaces to SAP are working smoothly and the effort for installing was minimal.

Cons

We would prefer, if the accountants / auditors could change / adapt the expense report by themselves. Entries / information for which traveller's are not the experts like expense types, VAT or other income related stuff should be possible to change without return and starting the approval process once again.

Designed to fit each companies wants.

Pros

What I like most about the software is that we have the ability to customize to meet our companies needs, while also being able to take out a large part of manual tasked by having reports routed automatically within the platform to lessen some of the administrative burdens.

Cons

What I would say is least liked about the product is that there are some functions that would be beneficial but are not yet envisioned, but with the ability to provide enhancement requests I am very positive that if it is possible that Chrome River will eventually have whatever it is added to the platform.

Awesome

We are very happy with this software as we knew their were some deficiencies and this software has made it easier to identify it and to eliminate it moving forward.

Pros

The software is easy to use. It enables expense owners the ability to submit their expense reports quicker and on time. Using the snap app makes it more quicker to submit receipt directly to your receipt library. The OCR capabilities to recognize receipts and auto populating the information reduces staff time . The mileage expense reports are amazing. Chromeriver uses Google Maps to calculate the travel trips. Employees just need to enter the destination points and the calculations are done for them. Setting up the routing for expense reporting is simple and the HelpDesk support from Chromeriver is quick to respond and tailor things to your needs.

Cons

I have no issues at this time with the software

Chrome River Rocks Your Socks

Pros

This software provides everything we were looking for...and then more. The implementation was great and very easy to customize to our needs. The user experience has been nothing but positive through the first few months we have used the system.

Cons

N/A - everything about this product has been top notch. Implementation, End Users, Reporting, etc. Leaves nothing to be desired.

Efficiencies increase over 50%!!

At Indiana State University we use Chrome River for all of the Travel expense reimbursements. The product is a great tool to have, especially in today's environment. I was able to process requests remotely from home.

Pros

I am so happy that this system was in place prior to COVID19. Electronic invoicing made it easy to review and approve expense reports and pre-approvals for travel. Routing steps that were already determined per index made it easy for approval to be completed without requiring signatures from everyone. Adobe signature is not readily available for everyone.

Cons

We have had some issues with the files from Chrome River being

Chrome River Expense Reporting

Pros

This software is very intuitive for the front-end user while handling all of the needs of the back-end user with all of the options of customization to fit the product to the company's needs like a glove. Before we selected this product, we had a list of everything we wanted and then went to market. Every single product we demoed was lacking many items on our list. Right when we were about to give up, we demoed Chrome River and felt very confident with selecting this product. The 1-2-3-Go Implementation was one of the best and quickest implementations I have ever been through. Communication and understanding as well as the technological knowledge was spot on. Three months later things are still running super smooth, and customer service is great. Couldn't be more happy!

Cons

Honestly, at this point there is not anything that we have encounter that there has not been a resolution to.

Chrome River has made my work much easier!

Pros

As an administrative assistant, my favorite function of Chrome River is that the information for all the dozens of people I support is located in one place. This function has made my work much simpler and easier than it was when we had to authorize and reimburse travel by hard copy.

Cons

It would be nice if Chrome River had a function where I could duplicate pre-approval reports or expense reports from one user to another. Frequently, our staff travels in groups and have identical expense reports for their reimbursements (e.g. meal per diems) and I frequently end up submitting the same expense report for several employees.

Our university is in the process of training everyone who travels.

Replaces manual process of paper travel forms.

Pros

No more paper forms, eventually once campus gets trained! No more worrying who has the paper form on their desk to sign or wondering who it goes to. Chrome River is easy to use and much faster than our current paper form, and less room for errors or duplicate payments.

Cons

Not being able to allow the person who is assigned as a delegate and created the Pre-Approval to make changes if Traveler returns to them. This is only because it stays on the Traveler's dashboard but the person who keyed in the report doesn't have access to make changes once returned is selected.

Chrome River Expense system

Chrome River is light years ahead of the previous system we used. It is user friendly for the most part. It has reduced the work load in our Accounts Payable Department tremendously. Chrome River is much easier for navigate and to use to assist our staff in researching problems with their reports. There are a few things I don't care for, such as how you enter account allocations and how the system allows staff to enter an account allocation wrong by giving it an alias and then telling them the account is wrong when they try to submit the report. It should just tell them it is wrong in the beginning to avoid all the corrections they need to make later. Otherwise, it is great and the service is great also!

Pros

Ease of use

Cons

How you enter account allocations.

I Recommend Chrome River

Pros

Chrome River provides wide variety of feature which make the day to day lie easier. We have done lots of automation after moving to Chrome River platform and it saves time for users, approves and auditors. It has also brought controls within the process.

Cons

I like all the features it has and definitely there is scope of new features.

Chrome River for a lawfirm

We no longer need to track paper expense reimbursements and our entire approval process is streamlined. Our attorneys like that they don't need to keep a file of receipts when they travel, they can take a picture and throw away.

Pros

Chrome River is always making updates, changes and new ways to customize the software to fit our business.

Cons

Ad hoc reporting is not user intuitive but the standard reports are useful for the majority of needs.

Paperless Heaven

Chrome is extremely user friendly! You do not need an app to use on your phone, or connect to any database except the internet. The snap and send function makes sending receipts to my reports flawless and easy to manage. Approvals are faster without paper and go directly to the person to review. Fast, easy and efficient!

Pros

The snap and send function and being able to review reports without paper and no overload of information

Cons

Sometimes updates can take a while and if the internet is slow it can take a while to load

Chrome River Expense Review

Keeping track of my daily mileage and expenses to submit at the end of the month for reimbursement.

Pros

I like that you can see the past 90 days of submitted reports all in one spot. Also, the map feature allows you to type I a business name and it will auto populate the address for you.

Cons

It does sometimes glitch if you dont enter everything in correctly, and you will need to go back and do it again.

Our wonderful CR project team helped us improve, streamline, and rethink outdated travel policies.

Automated rules that drive compliance thereby eliminating manual checking. It has taken the guess work out of 'where's my expense report'. Employees receive reimbursement quicker. Paperless system!!

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.

Expense reports made easy!

Pros

Ease of use from a user perspective. Very flexible from an administrative perspective - we can set routing rules to be as simple or complex as we wish. Automated approval routing is the best! Chrome River is also constantly making improvements. They truly listen to their users.

Cons

Reporting is still a bit clunky, but they're working on it.

Happy Chrome River Admin

Pros

I love how user friendly the software is for my colleagues that need to enter expenses. On the admin side, I love that I can pull information and analytics easily. Since everything is automated I can focus my time on projects and cost saving initiatives rather than be buried in paperwork.

Cons

I do not have any complaints. Chrome River is constantly updating and giving more power to admins. I can make a lot of changes on my own, and create custom reports.

Chrome River Experience

Chrome River has helped the expenses flow through our system a lot smoother and with less issue. It also, help with accountability. We know when an expense report was submitted and how long it takes for it to process.

Pros

I like how user friendly it is. You are able to upload a receipt multiple ways.

Cons

You are not able to add an expense to a returned expense report.

Chrome River Experience

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

Chrome River has improved our overall expense management

Pros

the ease of use and accessibility. users can upload receipts on the go, approve and review reports, and have historical access of their submitted expense reports.

Cons

I wish all users were as excited as I am about it. We've found that it takes a bit of time to adjust, but the overall response has been very positive

Great Product

Enhanced compliance monitoring, approval configurability, more robust analytics reporting and capabilities.

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.

CR Review

Overall, users are able to submit requests and be reimbursed quicker.

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.

Great system, easy to use

We have found Chrome River to be the best fit for our expense management. We have been able to build in rules which cover all of our internal policies, as well as routing to specific approvers. This has saved us countless hours per day in chasing approvals and expense claims.

Pros

The flexibility and ease of use

Cons

Original version is a little slow, especially when loading