FinancialForce / Certinia
FinancialForce — rebranded to Certinia in May 2023 — is a cloud ERP built entirely on the Salesforce platform. This distinguishes Certinia fundamentally from classical ERPs: customer data, sales data, service cases and ERP core data such as orders, projects and financials live in a single data model. The product addresses services-led organisations: consultancies, software vendors, agencies, professional services and larger SaaS businesses that want to run their entire value chain — from lead acquisition through invoicing and customer success — on the Salesforce platform. Certinia is one of the prominent platforms in the “services economy ERP” segment popularised by Salesforce.
Functional scope
Certinia spans three product pillars on the Salesforce platform: ERP Cloud with accounting, billing, revenue management, procurement and inventory; Professional Services Cloud (PSA) with project management, resource planning, time and expense capture and project accounting; and Services CPQ and Customer Success for quote-to-cash on services revenue. Because all three pillars run on Salesforce, the integration with Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Service Cloud is native, so a single customer record carries pipeline, contract, project, billing and renewal data. ASC 606 / IFRS 15 revenue recognition, subscription billing and recurring-services billing are part of the standard. Multi-entity consolidation, multi-currency and the Salesforce-native flow builder for workflow automation complete the picture.
Target audience and industries
The primary target is services-led organisations — professional-services firms, consultancies, agencies, software and SaaS vendors, larger MSPs — that already run Salesforce or are committed to building on the Salesforce platform. Typical user count ranges from 100 to several thousand. Industries with particular fit are management and IT consulting, software and SaaS, marketing and digital agencies, engineering services and managed-services providers. For pure manufacturers, traders or retailers the platform is not the natural fit — here the classical product-economy ERPs (NetSuite, Business Central, S/4HANA) are more appropriate. The decisive selection question is usually whether Salesforce is the strategic platform or just one application among many.
Technology and deployment
Certinia runs natively on the Salesforce platform as multi-tenant SaaS in Salesforce's data centres. This means customers inherit the Salesforce security model, platform updates (three per year), Lightning UI and the Salesforce AppExchange ecosystem for third-party extensions. The Salesforce-native architecture is the differentiator versus other cloud ERPs: instead of integrating CRM and ERP across platforms, the customer record is shared natively, and Salesforce flows orchestrate processes across CRM, service and ERP. The trade-off is platform lock-in: customers run on Salesforce's infrastructure, with Salesforce licensing as a foundation cost on top of Certinia's own subscription pricing.
Strengths and limitations
Strengths sit in the Salesforce-native architecture: native CRM-ERP integration, unified customer record, services-economy data model (subscription billing, revenue recognition, project accounting), platform updates from Salesforce, and the AppExchange ecosystem. For services-led businesses already invested in Salesforce, Certinia is typically the lowest-friction cloud ERP option. Limitations include the platform dependency on Salesforce (and the associated licensing cost), the relative lack of manufacturing and inventory depth versus classical ERPs, and modest DACH partner-ecosystem presence versus Salesforce's strong international footprint. DACH-specific topics — DATEV integration, GoBD-compliant document handling, ZUGFeRD / XRechnung — are addressed through partner extensions on the AppExchange rather than as native Certinia features.
Pricing and licensing
Certinia is licensed on a per-user subscription model with separate pricing for ERP Cloud, Professional Services Cloud and Services CPQ. On top sits Salesforce platform licensing (Sales Cloud or Service Cloud), which is typically a precondition for Certinia. Indicative per-user pricing for the combined Salesforce + Certinia stack lies in the 200 to 400 USD per user per month range, materially higher than DACH cloud-native SMB ERPs but in line with international enterprise cloud ERPs. All-in five-year TCO for a 100-user services-economy deployment typically lands between 2 and 8 million USD, with implementation services representing roughly 0.5 to 1 times annual subscription.
Related Topics
Editorial assessment of FinancialForce / Certinia
Cloud-Finanz- und Service-Suite auf Salesforce-Plattform (heute Certinia) — passt für Service-Industries mit Salesforce-Stack.
Strong at
- Salesforce-Plattform-Pros: Profitiert von Salesforce-Cloud-Reife, AppExchange und kontinuierlichen Innovationen.
- Project Accounting: Tiefe Projektabrechnung mit Time-and-Material, Festpreis, Subscription Billing.
- Service-Industries-Fokus: Beratung, IT-Services, Engineering — Best-Practices in diesen Bereichen.
Watch out for
- Salesforce-Bindung: Klar Salesforce-Plattform-abhängig — bei Wegfall der Salesforce-Strategie schwierig zu wechseln.
- DACH-Compliance: US-zentrierte Plattform — GoBD und DATEV via Add-ons.
Editorial assessment by erp-software.org based on publicly available sources, Hersteller-Dokumentation und DACH-Markt-Beobachtung. Last updated: Mai 2026.
Vendor homepage of FinancialForce (heute Certinia)
Current view of the website https://www.certinia.com/
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why was FinancialForce renamed to Certinia?
The rebrand happened in May 2023 to signal the broader services-economy positioning beyond pure finance. The product, code base and Salesforce-native architecture continue unchanged; only the brand identity changed.
Do I need Salesforce to use Certinia?
In practice yes — Certinia is built natively on the Salesforce platform and assumes Salesforce as the underlying infrastructure. Salesforce platform licensing (Sales Cloud or Service Cloud) is typically a precondition for Certinia subscriptions.
How does Certinia compare with NetSuite?
Both are cloud-native ERPs but with different platform foundations. NetSuite is its own stack with broader manufacturing and inventory depth and is platform-agnostic regarding CRM. Certinia is Salesforce-native with unified customer record across CRM and ERP, but lighter on manufacturing. For services-led businesses already on Salesforce, Certinia is the natural pick; for product-economy businesses with manufacturing or distribution, NetSuite typically fits better.
Does Certinia support DACH compliance (DATEV, GoBD)?
Not natively. DATEV integration, GoBD-compliant document handling and ZUGFeRD / XRechnung are addressed through AppExchange partner extensions or custom development. DACH-specific deployments should validate this carefully during selection.