Concur Request for non-travel needs

[MeggieC]

Have you ever used Concur Request for non-travel needs such as P-Card enrollment, gift card requests, etc.?

This question comes from our LinkedIn group.

[SylvainMuller]

Hi, 

I am a Concur Request product manager and I am very interested in reading more on this topic. Please contribute!

In the meantime, I confirm that Concur Request is an extremely flexible solution, offering a sheer amount of features combinations, empowering companies to optimize various business processes. For instance:

• “Can I book this trip to meet a client for a project kick-off meeting?”
• “As a researcher from a University, can I conduct research on frogs?”
• “Can I invite this client to a restaurant or does that exceed the quarterly max amount?”
• “Can I offer a gift to this partner or will it defeat bribery controls?”
• “Can I use some of our team budget to purchase office furniture?”
• “Can I speak at this conference? Do I need any specific training to represent our company?”
• “Can I register for this training and have my travel and expenses covered by HR?”

[AmberLee]

So you're telling me Request could be used by employees to request company credit cards and Concur accounts?

I had to create a request form and application link for Corp cards but the whole time I thought, "there's got to be a better way!". *ENTER CONCUR*

How did I not know about this? I thought Request was just a way to request cash.

The Corp card request includes important information like manager/approver, Emp ID, Limit, cost center, location, Dept., Etc. Most of which are fields already in an employee's profile in Concur!

[cfigueras]

Hi Amber,

Concur Request is indeed really powerful and could accomodate such request processes.

In parallel though, we as Product team are interested in understanding your use cases so we can build standardized features (meaning with very light configuration effort).

For instance, a Card Management tool would also ideally allow you to automatically request a new Card when expired. 

Feel free to enter a Solution Suggestion on what you would envision here. When an idea gathers votes from a significant amount of customers, we evaluate the feature as part of our global roadmap thinking.

Regards,

Claire Figueras

SAP Concur Product Manager - Expense - Credit Cards/CBS/Central Reconciliation

[TrishW]

Hi Amber

As a new Concur administration, could you pprovide some insights on how this could be done?

At the moment we use a paper trail to ask for company credit cards?

Any assistance would be appreciative

Thanks

trish

[rlipsey64]

We are implementing Concur request for Travel Approval.   If true, is there any docuemtation out there that covers Corporate card request in Concur and will it function along with Travel Request?

[ChadM]

Hi @rlipsey64 - 

Did some digging and found this blog post:

https://community.concur.com/t5/Expert-Corner/Request-can-do-what/ba-p/3885

Where I don't think it's the answer, it may be a start. It provides a link to the Concur Training site that details Request, as well as recommending reaching out to your SAP Concur Client representative to learn more. 

Hope this helps with providing a bit more direction!

[adilupashko]

Hi Sylvain,

Can you pls share more on how are those use cases offered in Concur Request?

My required use case - some teams requires their employees to request a high level trip approval, providing an estimated cost. Once expensed - we would like to see the amount expensed for this trip, vs, the ammount approved.

We don't want to connect this to the online booking tool, only to the actual expenses.

I know of a way to connect expense reports to requests, but strugelling with the right Request for to use. Can i keep it simple and leave out the segments? Can i only have one field for Expected total amount for this trip?

thanks,

Adi

[SylvainMuller]

Hi Adi,

Sorry for the belated reply, I did not notice this thread was updated with your question.

With regards to the amounts comparison, I recommend you to read the "Comparing Expenses to Request Pre-Approval Limits and Entries" section from https://www.concurtraining.com/customers/tech_pubs/Docs/_Current/SG_Exp/Exp_SG_Audit_Rules.pdf There are two possibilities: comparing overall total amounts request vs report mixing all expense types, or comparing line items which provides greater granularity and control and also may require additional input in the Request (especially if you don't want your employees to create segment entries).

When it comes to selecting which fields are visible to your employees, the number of fields really depends on your needs. Some clients requires numerous fields to be filled in (to capture: complex allocation, custom information for specific processes, details for the tmc to understand the expected trip...). You cannot make the "request total aomunt" editable. However, you can definitely set up very basic forms. Lastly, while an extremely straightforward request form can help, make sure it affects neither the user experience (the forms shall be self-explanatory so users understand where to input transportation cost, lodging cost...) nor any subsequent task that shall be undertaken (if this is sent to the tmc do they have enough details, if it's integrated with Travel you must enable segment types...).

Hope it helps,

Regards,

Sylvain

[patilr1982]

Hi Amber,

In my experience, I have seen two such uses. Technically, these are still related to travel. However, these are not common uses for Request.

1. A client team in Russia wanted a way to generate a form that the employees need to carry when travelling. This needs to contain all data related to travel. So we setup request and developed a report in intelligence to send a burst report to employees. The form had a specific structure requirement and we could not achieve that in Printed Reports.

2. My current client had employees travelling across borders frequently. Income tax, visa and social security concerns have become important to evaluate.  Since Concur travel is live in only 10% of the countries that the client operates in, we are planning to make use of Request to trigger an external tool and do the evaluation.