Certent Equity Management Pros and Cons

Our company has been a loyal client of Certent for over 10 years, benefiting from their exceptional support with producing monthly cap tables, option grants, exercises and even API integrations to our HRIS platform. Their top-notch customer service, especially the continuity of working with our dedicated Client Services Manager, Tina Carlson, is greatly appreciated. She's always been prompt with addressing any concerns and resolving our needs.

Our employees really enjoy the system because it's easy to use and they can view their option grants at any point in time and easily make a transaction. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I don't have any significant concerns with their system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Tina and her team are extremely efficient and responsive. They are always available to assist us when needed. I've learned so much over this past year taking on our equity piece at my company. The site is easy to use and is integrated well with our internal HRIS system. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We haven't found any downsides. Our Certent team gives us the time and attention to complete all activities on a weekly or monthly basis. They are always available to complete time sensitive tasks that get thrown in throughout the year as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Certent Equity Management is a dependable tool for managing equity compensation plans. The reports are easy to generate and connects well with our Workday integration.Customer Support is superb, very fast in response and provides reliable and accurate feedbacks. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

From HR adminster point of view, there is really none that comes to mind. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is intuitive to use for running reports, proxying in as a participant, and transferring files. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are too many restrictions on making updates as an administrator. Many changes must go through the service team. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Its easy to read, follow and track once you login. The system has great details and is able to understand quite a bit of variations and nuances. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Its sometimes cumbersome to make changes in the system. You have to consistently email the Certent team to implement changes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Great rep – Katie knows the system and the process and is our advocate for getting things done smoothly and accurately

Very versatile – can handle many types of awards

Syncs with our payroll platform (Ceridian) to automatically update participant data

Results are as expected – we have recomputed amortization and disclosure amounts and the amounts are reliable and accurate

Numerous reports help us navigate complex disclosures and the audit of the disclosures quickly

Extensive help tool has great information

Test environment lets us ensure processing is accurate before going live with new awards or modifications Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

We don’t have access to make changes on our own and have to submit templates to process all changes

Our ESPP platform is separate, creating some duplication of effort as the participant population is the same

Turnaround times for more complex items (modifications of complex awards and reverse stock split) required more time than expected

Designing your own report module needs some upgrades Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The platform is intuitive, easy to use, and doesn't require any training or a lot of time to get used to. The feature to save your favorite reports helps to make weekly or monthly tasks more efficient. I have also had a great customer support experience - our representative is very responsive in getting us the help we need and makes us feel like we're her only client. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes there are errors in reports or discrepancies between our records and accounting that are only discovered once something goes awry. However, this has only happened 1-2 times in the 9 months I've used Certent and has never been significant. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

representative is responsive and able to action most requests Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Certain reports could be better - example the accrued expense report, the net expense column is on the far right side of the report (about 50 columns over) and so every time you have to pull it forward for easy visability Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Certent Equity Management completely solved the issues of issuing and tracking employee shares for our company both from the perspective of administration by our finance team but also from the perspective of visibility and access to this value added benefit for our employees! The Certent Support team has been fantastic helping us setup and use some of their standard features in an "outside of the box" way that fits our company's needs, and our account rep Katie Avila could not be more accessible or responsive when we have questions or need help with creative solutions! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Would like to have the ability to do some manual adjustments such as changing email address, mailing address, etc information for participants ourselves rather than submitting those changes requests to the Certent Plan Admin team to do, but, at least their team is fast responding to change requests / tickets usually same day. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Real-time equity management reporting is available on one report. Reports are flexible, and can be filtered in many different ways for different purposes. We use for performance based and time based RSUs and RSAs. We do not use the system for dividend/DEU calculations. Most critical reporting is used for SEC public reports, which are just a click away, and used to be manually calculated maintained in excel workbooks. Certent reporting saves us hours/days of manual tracking in excel. Our relationship manager is also very responsive, knowledgable, patient and reasonable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Since Certent is not a broker, when we changed from private to public, the connection with a broker has been very challenging. Almost like duplicative work and coding. Albeit, it seems like Certent's customer services is much better than the broker so we are hoping that once connection is made, we won't have any future broker/record keeper issues. Back end set-up is hard to follow and understand since it's not something regularly reviewed, but our relationship manager is always available to help and walk us through our needs and questions.

Also, it would be valuable if Certent offered the ability to calculate cash dividends (not DEUs), so that we don't have to track in excel. But this is not a deal breaker. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.