NetSuite
Best for fast-growing mid-market or enterprise companies looking for a robust single system that can manage business processes, global finances, warehousing, inventory and more.
Certinia
Best for businesses already using Salesforce, those who don’t need a full-feature ERP or those in the professional services or digital media industries.
If you’re looking for some new business management software, one of the options that you’re sure to come across during your search is FinancialForce ERP. Here we go through some of the key differences between FinancialForce and NetSuite.
NetSuite and Salesforce are both groundbreaking software systems, but a direct comparison is tricky. Salesforce is focused on customer relationship management (CRM) and professional services automation (PSA), rather than being a full-service ERP (with CRM and PSA capabilities), like NetSuite.
In 2009, to bring more ERP features to Salesforce customers, the company founded FinancialForce in partnership with UNIT4. In 2023, FinancialForce rebranded as Certinia, although it still operates on the Salesforce platform.
NetSuite is a cloud-based business management software suite originally built in 1998. It supports Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and eCommerce.
The solution offers comprehensive functionality, including accounting, CRM, HR & payroll, inventory & supply chain management, professional services automation, project management, and more. It also has industry-specific modules for a broad range of industries.
As with Certinia, customers can create an order from an opportunity or quote and generate invoices automatically from approved orders.
Customers pay for NetSuite’s software annually, on a subscription basis, with a minimum commitment of 1 year.
Certinia (formerly FinancialForce) is a set of business applications that run in the cloud. The company was founded in 2009 with an investment from UNIT4, and Salesforce.
The resulting cloud accounting system was a single-ledger design that enables real-time financial management and is built on Salesforce’s cloud technology platform, Force.com.
Following various acquisitions, FinancialForce unveiled FinancialForce ERP in February 2014. The solution supplies accounting, billing, professional services automation (PSA), revenue recognition, human capital management (HCM), and supply chain management (SCM) applications.
Closely coupled with Salesforce’s CRM applications, Certinia leverages the Salesforce data model, reporting, workflow, and user interface (UI) components.
With Salesforce integration, customers can create an order from an opportunity or quote and generate invoices automatically from approved orders.
Certinia’s solution is available on a subscription basis with a minimum commitment of 1 year.
With Certinia, you don’t get as much functionality out of the box as you do with NetSuite. If they require additional functionality, Certinia users must use “AppExchange” apps, which are built for the platform by partners.
In terms of features, Certinia offers a range of financial management capabilities, including:
A standard NetSuite deployment has more available functionality out of the box with its range of industry-specific modules. If further functionality is still required, users can achieve this using SuiteApps that have been developed by NetSuite partners.
NetSuite’s features include:
Whilst Certinia is an easy-to-use ERP software solution out of the box, it is not easily geared to a business’s individual needs and structure. It was built using Apex, which is a proprietary language, making it more difficult to customise, so Certinia users who wish to customise the software must rely on partner-developed apps.
NetSuite can be customised more easily because it has a more modern web architecture, and expert help can therefore be found by anyone who is proficient in JavaScript (internally referred to as SuiteScript). It’s also modular, and with many industry-specific modules available, you simply ‘turn on’ the functionality you need in order to tailor it to your business. SuiteSuccess makes use of this, using tailored industry-best-practice features and reports to speed up the implementation process.
Partner-developed “SuiteApps” allow NetSuite to be customised even further (such as our own suite of applications, TaskSuite).
Unlock the full potential of NetSuite's powerful business management and accounting software
Outside of Force.com applications, Certinia does not support integration with other enterprise applications you may already have in place (i.e. SAP, Oracle). Due to the way it’s built, it requires integration tools for any system other than Salesforce.
NetSuite is built to be integrated with other applications. There are many standardised integrations available for common business applications, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, WooCommerce and Amazon.
Meanwhile, the “Built for NetSuite” network gives users access to a pool of NetSuite SuiteCloud developers who can build bespoke applications and integrations, all verified to meet NetSuite best practices.
NetSuite, and in particular NetSuite OneWorld, makes a strong offering to multinational organisations. The solution is localised for more countries, better supports local accounting standards, and provides strong multi-currency, multi-entity and multi-language support.
NetSuite is proven to manage, bill, and recognise revenue for products and projects across multiple currencies, tax jurisdictions, languages, and time zones. In fact, OneWorld supports over 190 currencies, more than 25 languages and automated tax compliance for over 100 countries.
Certinia also offers a multi-currency, multi-national structure with an expandable chart of accounts, but it is much more limited than NetSuite’s offering. Concurrent licences are also required for the ERP and CRM side, whereas NetSuite offers ERP with an integral CRM across all areas.
Certinia does not include a large number of packaged financial reports. P&L statements, for example, are not out-of-the-box. The reporting engine tends to be somewhat cumbersome and beyond the average user.
NetSuite users benefit here because the solution provides a full range of reporting and analytics tools to help ensure all users have strong insight into their business.
Key data is available as standard through the software’s easy-to-use dashboards, and a vast array of packaged reports allow you to analyse your data as required. It is also possible to bring up tailored real-time reports for further insight.
NetSuite has gone all-in on AI in recent months with NetSuite Next. From the newly launched NetSuite Intelligent Close Manager and the collaborative AI Canvas, to generative AI that can write natural-language analysis and commentaries to accompany reports, its agentic workflows and AI features enable it to act as your conversational assistant, using data from across the entire ERP.
Meanwhile, Certinia uses Salesforce’s Agentforce and its native Veda AI suite to enable faster decision-making through AI-powered insights that span the entire customer journey. From sales, to staffing to project delivery, users can track progress, build and refine quotes and generate estimates for planning using historical data.
Neither of these systems is necessarily “better” than the other, however one or other of them will likely be better for your business.
Choose NetSuite if:
Choose Certinia if:
Strictly speaking, it’s not. While it offers robust financial management, billing and professional services automation (PSA), it does not function independently of Salesforce, which makes it a great choice if you’re already using this platform. If you’re looking for a standalone solution, NetSuite is the more logical choice.
Certinia is mainly designed for services-led organisations. While it does have basic order management functionality, it’s not really robust enough for a product led organisation with all of the manufacturing, supply chains, warehouse management and inventory that such a business entails. NetSuite includes native features to manage all of these streams.
NetSuite is by far the leader of the two when it comes to system integrations. As it uses standard web architecture and JavaScript (SuiteScript), it has a huge network of pre-built connectors, for platforms such as HubSpot, Amazon, SAP, WooCommerce, Shopify, Zendesk and hundreds more, including Salesforce itself.
Certinia on the other hand integrates seamlessly with Salesforce apps, but connecting it to any other external software usually requires specialised integration tools.
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