Activating ExpenseIt functionality - good, bad, ugly (*edited)

[afreeman]

Hello,

We are prepping to implement the ExpenseIt functionality within the Concur mobile app for our organization of 900 employees, where we have a 35% usage of the mobile app. Seeking to hear from other clients who have activated the ExpenseIt functionality:

How has the implementation gone? Has the functionality caused issues for your users or Expense processors? How has it behaved with ExpenseAssistant enabled? Has it helped cut down expense submission times?

What are your biggest pain points? What do you like most about the enhancement?

Thank you for your input! Alexandra

[mromani]

The biggest flaw with ExpenseIT was getting the users to understand how the process for using it works.

We recently rolled it out to about 800 users, and the biggest pain points were the two below.

1. We were using SSO for Concur, and ExpenseIT doesnt support SSO. Therefor users needed to know their Concur password to log in. This caused alot of issues.

2. Having a 2nd application for the pictures caused alot of issues, as users had to now download 2 applications on their mobile to get through the process. The integration worked fine, but having 2 apps was a hard spot.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Matt

[ClayT]

I'm excited to hear from other customers on their experiences, but I wanted to clarify something for you and @mromani.

All ExpenseIt customers now have ExpenseIt functionality in the SAP Concur mobile app as of August 13, 2018, and all customers should only be promoting ExpenseIt in the SAP Concur mobile app. We’ve moved the benefits of ExpenseIt into the SAP Concur app: itemized expenses using OCR technology, reduced lost receipts and increased productivity for your users.

SAP Concur mobile does have SSO functionality, and now ExpenseIt users only have to use one app: SAP Concur mobile.

With ExpenseIt now available in the SAP Concur mobile app, support for the standalone ExpenseIt app will be ending on December 31, 2018. You can review our FAQ now. We've been announcing this over the last week.

After December 31, 2018, new receipts will not be able to be captured via the ExpenseIt standalone app. Any receipts your users have uploaded with ExpenseIt before this date will be available in the app through January 14, 2019 to help with year end expense reporting.

We also have the Administrator toolkit to help with general promotion and this change. I hope this is helpful for your planning @afreeman!

[afreeman]

Thank you Clay, apologies that my initial post wasn't clear. I'm looking for feedback on activating the ExpenseIt functionality within the Concur mobile app. Our organization will not utilize the stand-alone app in any capacity.

Thanks!

[farmfly]

Hello @ClayT,

We still use the old ExpenseIt app.  ExpenseIt inside the Concur Mobile App is missing some of the basic features that the stand alone app had.  This makes it hard to use for our operation. 

Right now ExpenseIt in the Concur Mobile App only allows 1 picture to be taken or uploaded.  The ExpenseIt App allowed multiple pictures to be uploaded and then you could select single expense or multiple expenses.  This was important when there was an itemized meal at a hotel that needs to be attached to the expense along with the hotel receipt.  

Another major problem is that the camera roll opens with the first picture on the phone.  I have 15,000 pictures on my phone and have to scroll to the end to add a picture.  This needs to be changed also.  

I hope some of these changes are made before the old app is terminated!! 

[ClayT]

Good morning @farmfly!

Thank you for raising these concerns.

For "multipage capture" - the feature that allows multiple pictures to be taken on iOS devices - this feature will be released before the end of November in the ExpenseIt on SAP Concur mobile app. So, iOS users will have this before retirement.

For the camera roll issue, please submit a Support Case through Admin Support (Authorized Support Contacts can access this) so that the team can help troubleshoot.

Regardless, if you're the person responsible for communicating to your users about this change, please start soon. The ExpenseIt standalone app will be retired on December 31, 2018.

Thank you again!

[jelliott]

Has this feature been rolled out?

[HB]

I find that the OCR doesn't work in concur app and I have to key in all the details. Takes a good few minutes

Whereas with ExpenseIt, snap and export in seconds

[afreeman]

Thanks for the feedback, Matt. I can imagine implementing a second app added much confusion for your users. It's always hard to get buy in when the changes aren't necessarily streamlining the work. I hope things go more smoothly with the transition to embedding ExpenseIt into the main mobile app!

[adptravel]

The issue that we are having is that the ExpenseIt receipts come into Concur as 'Available Expenses' so associates are simply creating the expense report and submitting it.   Unfortunately, the corporate card charge that corresponds to the receipt is not in Concur yet so now they are either creating 2 expense reports for the same charge or believe that the initial report with the ExpenseIt receipt info was the card charge and the card account has been paid.   They don't realize the mistake until they get a past due notice and don't understand why they are past due.  

[Amb23]

This is my concern with using the app. Have you or others found ways to avoid that from happening? 

[DeanR]

Does anyone have any tips/guidance about how best to match up the expenses created through ExpenseIt with the resulting card feed transaction? 

Can the match happen automatically (i.e. combine them into one expense)?  If it is automatic, what fields need to match in order for Concur to recognise them as a match?

Is it better to leave the ExpenseIt expenses in Available Expenses until the card transaction comes through?

Note: We don't use Expense Assistant so the creation of reports and moving of expenses to reports is done manually.

[DeanR]

A big issue for me is the implementation process itself. 

1. There is no feature to centrally enable/disable ExpenseIt for user groups or individuals; once activated it is immediately turned on by default for all users.  Effectively this means that there is no UAT process available prior to making a decision to implement.  As an administrator I'm learning all of the pros/cons at the same time as my users and having to reactively support rather than proactively train.
2. Concur's communication tools (video, FAQ) are very high-level and only cover the capturing of invoices.  Our heavier Concur users are all corporate cardholders and our main pain point after roll-out was matching ExpenseIt items to card transactions - the documentation doesn't cover this at all.  We've had to develop our own communications and training documents, which because of point 1 has happened after users have already been exposed to the product in a live environment.

User feedback to date has largely depended on how they used Concur previously.

Positive - users who already created Expenses from receipts at the point of capture like it, as do their delegates, since it automates their data entry and generally matches Expenses to card transactions automatically.

Negative - Users who were accustomed to storing receipts in Available Receipts until the card transaction came through were simultaneously confused about 'where their receipts had gone' (now in Available Expenses) and 'duplicate transactions' (one for the ExpenseIt-created Expense and one for the card transaction).

I expect users individually to choose whether they want to have it or not and control this themselves through the app.  However I feel that the inability for customers to do any testing prior to a go/no-go decision is a major implementation flaw on Concur's part.

[edp762]

Some comments from a new user. I forward airfare, hotel, rental car, uber etc. receipts to expense it.  These are all from major name brand companies.  I would say that I have to edit approx 90-95% of all the receipts.  They have incorrect categories, incorrect dates, incorrect vendor, incorrect amounts, etc.  I basically find it way more time consuming than typing numbers into a spreadsheet.

Here's an example.  I booked 4 flights on AA.  All for email receipts are formatted identically.  ExpenseIt got one correct.  Two had incorrect amounts.  One was just jibberish.  3 of the dates were wrong.

Hotel bills are also a disaster.  As you know many have multiple room tax line items.  I normally need to correct every single one.  International is also a mess.

We are a brand new user and I am at a loss as to why people use this service.  Unless we are doing something totally wrong here...