Certent Equity Compensation Management Reviews & Product Details

With the ability to link the software to the broker's software, prepare/export monthly journal entries, and prepare financial statement footnotes for 10-Q and 10-K reporting, Certent saves our company a significant amount of time and effort around this process and compliance. Relatively easy to do award modifications when needed also. The upload templates make it easy to add large amounts of data in terms of grants and exercises in to the system. The availability of different types of reports make reviewing transactional activity as well as accounting and disclosures very easy. Prior to implementing Certent, we manually calculated all of our journal entries manually because we did not have a system that we could reliably assure the completeness and accuracy of the data. Certent's solution and reporting capabilities have allowed us to get comfortable relying on a system to pull all journal entries for the month. We used to have one FTE supporting stock-based compensation, and using Certent has allowed us to have stock-based compensation be only 10% of someone's day-to-day activities. We are always looking for efficiency gains and this system has helped us to achieve a lot in this area. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

System could be designed a bit more user friendly. Since Certent acquired EASi, the color scheme changed on the site, but I didn't see much functionality added to the site to improve user experience. The system operates largely as it has from the time we implemented many years ago. One functionality Certent does not have yet is the ability to indicate individuals as 162m (ineligible for compensation expense deduction on corporate tax return that would remove any DTA from being calculated). This requires us to run manual reports on a monthly basis in order to ensure we are posting accurate DTAs on awards granted to individuals who are designated as 162m. We do grants on an annual cycle, so this isn't extremely burdensome, but definitely adds an extra step in the process.

One more thing I wish the system would improve on is their reports. They added in the past year or so the ability to customize reports, including column headings, which is useful. The vast majority of their reports contain a significant amount of columns, which isn't always a bad thing because the data you are looking for is generally there. However, there are many instances where we have to hide a ton of columns or rework the reports to show only the information we need while making it user-friendly for another to review. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The reports in Certent are very helpful. The reporting tool enables us to save favorites for each quarter-end, and also makes it very easy to look up a variety of equity information in just a few minutes.

I also really like that Certent is linked to ADP and Bank of America Merrill Lynch through the HR Connector tool to make our equity management process with our participants more seamless. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I dislike that we have to work through a help desk versus having a dedicated client support contact to either call or email for assistance. It would be a lot easier to have a direct contact for support related issues. It is great that Certent has both a general support and accounting support team, but it would be more helpful if we had a direct contact for each. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The service desk personnel are very responsive. They are also experts in the field of equity compensation accounting and will do their best to ensure you get the accounting right for your specific transaction, no matter how complex or obscure it may be. The reports generated by the system are easily audited, which is good from both an internal controls standpoint and from an external audit standpoint. Any summary report used for disclosures can also be ran as a detail report to aid in completeness and accuracy testing. The tool is quick and allows many users to be in the tool at the same time. The roles are very distinct and allow for some users to just generate reports and not make any changes to the awards. The sandbox provided by the tool is very good for experimenting and seeing what will give you the results you need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

In the past, the SSAE 18 report provided for the firm had certain holes that caused headaches on both an internal control and external audit side, as the client would have to have compensating controls in order to make up for the internal control deficiencies. This has improved over the past few years, but there's still some reports that are used during the equity process, such as for EPS calculations, that are still not covered by the SSAE 18 report. I would like to see more of those reports tested. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Certent Equity Management platform is an essential part of me managing our stock options and ESPP contributions. The customer service team is outstanding. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No complaints. It is a fairly pricey service but it is necessary for our business. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Solid features and an easy to use package. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like having an integrated broker that can control the product development and interplay. It is difficult to work with a broker and Certent in some cases because of the competing interests. Certent is a fantastic partner but can't control the broker priorities. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The Certent platform is excellent when it comes to public company compliance and reporting - they provide SOC 1 reports for audit comfort, reliable disclosure reports, and verifiable compensation expense calculations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My one experience with Certent that was fairly negative was with their Accounting Services team a few years back - I haven't used them since, but I found their offerings didn't decrease my workload at all as an outsourced service, but instead actually increased mine and the time to get things accomplished. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The thing I like about Certent is the user interface is really easy to use. We looked at comparable systems by all the big names, and Certent was just the simplest to implement and use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One downside is that the system only allows you to automate one kind of grant in terms of acceptance of the form. Luckily we mostly only use one type of equity awards but it would be great if it allowed automatic acceptance of multiple grant types so it was less manual to do other types of awards. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Generally easy to use, and also support is in a timely manner. Most of time the support can answer your questions Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometime there is glitch in the report. Also sometime loading is slow. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The platform was able to provide any combination of data in multiple formats allowing us to automate the integration with our ERP. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is no trading platform for participants. This was resolved with an easy integration with a preferred broker. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Financial reporting functionality & online grant agreement functionalities Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Custom reporting functionality & no functionality for viewing different tabs simultaneously without having to navigate away from other windows. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like best about the software is its ability to handle a number of award types, from stock options to RSA/RSU's to PSU's. The system is set up to handle any scenario, and is easy to help you navigate thru complex transactions such as accelerations and other modifications. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Need to be able to customize reports. This will help provide a report specific to my needs Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This is a relatively simple, intuitive, and easy to navigate system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The UX could definitely use a refresh - it's pretty bland/basic - but it doesn't impact the system's usability. This may be more important to us if our staff had access, rather than just our small admin group. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Software manages a vast amount of data and compiles reports as needed. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Due to the amount of data and the numerous reporting functions and how all is tied together, small changes in data can cause unforeseen issues in other areas. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

So far the ease of understanding the set up process. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nothing at this point. Just waiting for full implementation. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The software is pretty easy to use once you get a good understanding of how to use it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Since I was not available for the training that Certent provides to new users, I have been mostly left to learn the software by myself which has caused some accounting issues. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It performs as expected with the management of our equity compensation program. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The user experience is lacking any intuition. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The customer service is great. Very knowledgeable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I currently like everything. I have no current problems. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We can always count on them to "be there" for us when we need them. While we have been on the platform for a year now, we still need hand holding sometimes and they never complain even if we have asked the same question 5 times. The learning tools they provide are invaluable! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We have had one glitch that they have not been able to replicate from our previous spreadsheet system, but other than that we are extremely happy with Certent. They are working on it though and hopefully will have a solution soon. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Support, Always friend, and always willing to go above and beyond. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Reporting. Although the standard delivered reports can get the job done with modification once in it's excel, it would be nice to be able to create your own reports similar to how BI Cognos analytics allows. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The turnaround is quick. We have a dedicated team that can answer questions regarding both equity comp and accounting Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are some easier tasks that I would like to be able to do myself, i.e. terminations, address changes, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

For the most part, Certent Equity Compensation Management is straightforward in working with different types of equity awards. Certent Support is also very responsive and and helpful whenever I have a question. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only downside is that there are a lot of manual processes and overnight feeds with a few glitches, but this could be due to the broker we use and link with Certent. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the online rollout of options and that it calculates everything i need for me Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't like that the RSUs automatically issue when they vested regardless of the deferral period. I hate manually tracking this Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Accuracy of they system and ability to adapt to our business needs, which can be very unique at times. Handled a complex spin-off transaction. Staff is very experienced and understands the system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Interface with bank of America with regards to performance shares. Currently does not have functionality to support exchanging data for performance shares. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Support is excellent, platform is robust enough for different types of awards and vesting schedules Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

accounting / expense setup is complicated for performance based awards Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is easy to see all of the stock option activity for all shareholders in one place. There are also many helpful tutorials and videos which explain the features and functionality of the platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Email notifications are very brief and require logging in to see exactly what the alert is for. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.