I used to work for Extensity Inc., now part of GEAC. Extensity Expense Report Software was the key product of Extensity. I was project lead for Extensity's Expense Report Software product. I have knowledge about this domain and strong interest. So with keen interest I looked into AdiSoft's Enterprise Expense Reporting Software - Expense Submittal System, a Java software, which is distributed under GPL and hence can be downloaded and used for free.

The installer requires Apache web server and Tomcat to be installed. Also it possibly expects Apache-Tomcat integration to be in place. In any case my login attempts didn't succeed and I managed to crash it easily.

Looking from the documentation it has well rounded features though I am rather skeptical about its "semantic mapping" strategy for screen creation. From my personal experience this part can be ugly and often requires Professional Services support. Their support is reasonably priced.

How much does a service contract cost? Depending on the level of support, contracts can range from $75 for the 30-day initial support to $1,500 for a one-week installation agreement to $20,000 for premium annual support. There are other agreements in between these extremes.

Current customers use this package with major accounting packages, including SAP®, Great Plains®, and others. ESS also comes standard with an ACH file transfer creation module.

I expected integration with Oracle Finance and Oracle Project Accounting.

The software lacks some key features which I consider "must have" for any expense reporting software like:
1. Support for internationalization. I am actually very surprised by this.
2. Support for flexible business rules in routing workflow. This allows you to easily and rapidly customize your Expense Report workflow to (changing) business requirements.
3. Support for offline mode. In other words ability to file your expense report while you are on flight or without internet connection.

Workflow appears to be an afterthought rather than an integral part of the software as it should be.

Without seeing the UI it is hard to go into further details of the software. I am interested to see how it handles multiple line items and workflow. The quality needs to be improved upon looking at how easy it was to crash the software. Also the installer should be made somewhat more flexible and verbose.

Overall I would rather wait for few more versions before even thinking of using this software. It didn't give me the impression of being near its boastful claim - "Best corporate expense reporting system available - period." Overall in enterprise software selection you have to keep in mind that the real cost is in adoption, maintenance and customization and not in the upfront cost.

Adisoft's "Enterprise Expense Reporting Software" is available for download here.