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What Is Certinia? The Salesforce-Native ERP and PSA Platform Explained

Certinia, formerly FinancialForce, is a Salesforce-native platform for PSA, financial management and customer success. Here is how it works.

By the IT Offshore team

Team meeting in a glass-walled office conference room

Key takeaways

  • Certinia is the company and platform formerly known as FinancialForce. It rebranded in 2023.
  • It runs natively on Salesforce, so services, finance and CRM data share one platform and data model.
  • Its main products cover professional services automation (PSA), financial management (ERP) and customer success.
  • It is built mainly for services businesses: consultancies, IT services, software companies with services arms, and other project-based firms.

Certinia in one paragraph

Certinia is a cloud software platform for services businesses, built natively on Salesforce. It helps companies sell, deliver, bill and account for project-based work in one system. The company was known as FinancialForce until 2023, when it rebranded to Certinia, describing its offer as a “Services-as-a-Business” platform. In the same year Haveli Investments acquired the company.

What “Salesforce-native” means

Certinia applications are built on the Salesforce platform rather than connected to it from outside. In practice:

  • Opportunities, projects, resources, timecards, invoices and journals live in the same database as your CRM data.
  • Users work in the familiar Salesforce interface, with the same security model, reports and dashboards.
  • There is no separate integration to keep CRM and ERP in sync, which removes a common source of errors and reconciliation work.
  • Salesforce tools such as Flow, reports and AI features can be used across sales, delivery and finance data.

Main Certinia products

Product areaWhat it coversTypical users
Professional Services Automation (PS Cloud)Resource management, project management, time and expenses, utilisation, billing, services quoting and forecastingDelivery leaders, project and resource managers, consultants
Financial Management (FM Cloud)General ledger, receivables, payables, cash management, multi-company, multi-currency, consolidation, revenue recognitionFinance teams, controllers, CFOs
Customer Success (CS Cloud)Customer health scores, success plans, playbooks, renewal and expansion signalsCustomer success managers, account teams
Veda AIAI agents and generative features across services operations, launched in April 2026Resource managers, project managers, customer success teams

Companies can use PSA alone with another ERP, Financial Management alone, or both together for a full quote-to-cash process.

Who Certinia is built for

Certinia focuses on businesses that sell people’s time and expertise. Good fits include:

  • IT services and consulting firms
  • Software companies with implementation or professional services teams
  • Engineering, architecture and project-based consultancies
  • Marketing, events and other agencies that run client projects
  • Businesses already using Salesforce that want finance and delivery on the same platform

It is usually not the first choice for manufacturing or retail businesses whose core needs are inventory, production and warehouse management.

How the end-to-end process works

  1. Sell: sales teams manage opportunities in Salesforce and create services estimates.
  2. Staff: resource managers match skills and availability to project roles.
  3. Deliver: project managers track milestones, budgets and margin; consultants submit time and expenses.
  4. Bill: billing events are generated from time, milestones or fixed fees.
  5. Account: invoices, revenue recognition and journals flow into the general ledger.
  6. Grow: customer success teams track health and renewals on the same account record.

Certinia in the UAE

For UAE services firms, the main questions are local tax and reporting needs, including 5% VAT, corporate tax record-keeping and the phased e-invoicing mandate from 2027. These are covered in our guide to Certinia implementation in the UAE. Confirm localisation and e-invoicing support for your specific needs with Certinia during evaluation.

Learn more

See our Certinia services overview, our Certinia implementation services, or the Certinia financial implementation case study.

Frequently asked questions

Is Certinia the same as FinancialForce?

Yes. FinancialForce rebranded as Certinia in 2023. Older documentation and job listings may still use the FinancialForce name.

Do I need Salesforce to use Certinia?

Yes. Certinia runs natively on the Salesforce platform, so it uses Salesforce licences and infrastructure.

Is Certinia an ERP?

Certinia’s Financial Management product is a cloud ERP for finance. Its PSA and Customer Success products cover services delivery and customer success.

Can we use Certinia PSA with a different ERP?

Yes. Some companies use Certinia PSA with another accounting system and integrate billing and financial data between them.

Evaluating Certinia?

Talk to us about your services, finance and Salesforce setup, and we will help you assess the fit.

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