The Things People Ask Before They Buy
These are the questions centers put to us, and the ones they put to anyone selling case management software. Where the honest answer is "not yet," that is what it says.
Cost
How Much Does It Cost?
From $5,000 a year to $25,000, depending on the size of your center, with setup and migration costing the same as your first year, paid once. The full table and a calculator are on the pricing page. There is nothing on it we would rather explain by phone.
How Much Does Support Cost?
Nothing on top. Support is part of the price, and it comes from the people who built the software, since there is nobody else here.
What Does Training Cost?
Also nothing on top. Your staff are trained as part of setup, and again as new people join.
What Equipment Do We Need?
A web browser. Emberbase runs on whatever computer, tablet or phone your staff already use. There is nothing to install and nothing to keep updated on your side.
Getting Started
Can We Bring Our Existing Records With Us?
Yes, and this is the part we have put the most work into. You give us an export from your current system. Emberbase reads it and shows you what it found before anything is created: how many people, how many matched records you already have, and which rows need a person to look at them. You map each of your old program names once rather than row by row. When you commit, the records are created with their full history, and if something is wrong the whole batch can be reversed. Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare numbers are never imported, even when the export contains them.
Can It Be Set Up the Way Our Center Works?
That is how setup works. You give Emberbase your program guides and eligibility criteria, and each program is configured from them, with its own screening rules and its own assessments where it needs them. Your staff work in your program names and your service types. The federal categories sit underneath.
How Long Does Setup Take?
It depends on how much history you are bringing and how clean it is. A center with one database and tidy records is quicker than one with several databases that have drifted apart over the years. We will give you an honest estimate once we have seen your export, and you will see the dry run before anyone commits to anything.
Your Data
Who Has Access to Our Information?
Your staff, according to the role you give each of them. Coordinators see the cases assigned to them. Administrators see the whole organization. Emberbase records who has viewed, exported or searched a record, so you can answer that question yourself if anyone asks. On our side, access is limited to what is needed to support you and to move your data in, under a written data protection agreement you sign before any real record enters the system. Everything is hosted in the United States.
Where Does a Question to the Assistant Go?
When you ask Ember something, it is answered using the record in front of you and the documents you have uploaded. Your data is not used to train any AI model. The data protection agreement says so in writing.
What Happens to Our Data If We Leave?
It is yours. The agreement is annual, so nobody is locked in, and your records go with you in a readable form. We would rather you stay because the software is good than because leaving is hard.
Reporting
Which Reports Are Built?
The federal PPR, including the funding section, the narrative sections and the signature block, and California's quarterly CA 204. Both are built from the same records, so they cannot disagree with each other. Other state reports are built when a center in that state comes on board, rather than guessed at in advance.
Will We Still Have to Enter Things Twice?
Not inside Emberbase. A service is recorded once and it counts everywhere it should, in the consumer's file, in the program's numbers and in the report. The one step no software removes is the federal submission itself, which goes through ACL's own portal and has to be entered there by a person. The difference is that the numbers you are entering are already finished and already agree with each other.
What Does It Work With?
Reports come out as spreadsheets and as Word documents, including the completed audit evaluation form. Financial figures come in from a spreadsheet exported from your accounting system. There is no direct connection to accounting software yet. If that is something your center needs, tell us, because it changes how we prioritize it.
How Do You Keep Up With Changes to the Reports?
Updates ship continuously with nothing for you to install. When ACL or a state changes a form, the report changes with it. When something changes at your center, a new program or a new eligibility rule, it goes in through your own documents rather than through a support ticket.
About Us
How Many Centers Use It?
We do not publish customer counts or customer names, and we will not use your center's name either. If you want to talk to someone who uses it, ask us and we will ask them.
How Do We Know You Will Be Around?
You do not, and neither does anyone buying from anyone. What you can hold us to is this: an annual agreement rather than a long one, a published price that does not move, and your data leaving with you in a readable form if we ever fail you. Those three things mean the risk of choosing us stays small even if the worst happened.
How Do We Know You Will Deliver What You Promise?
Everything we have promised on this site is written into the agreement before you sign it. And before you sign anything, you will have seen your own programs set up in the software, on a call, from your own documents. Judge us on that.
Accessibility
Will It Work With a Screen Reader?
It is built to be. Keyboard focus is managed deliberately, including inside dialogs and menus, and the interface follows the text size you have set in your own browser rather than overriding it. We have not yet published a formal conformance statement, and we will not put a badge on this page that we cannot back up. If you or your staff use a screen reader, tell us which one, and we will go through the software with you on it before you decide anything.
What If Something Gets in the Way?
Tell us, and it goes to the front of the list. For software used by disabled staff to serve disabled people, that is not a nice to have.
Ask Us Something That Is Not on This Page.
If your question is not here, it is probably one we should add. Write to us and you will get an answer from a person, not a form letter.