Automating Receipt Submission to SAP Concur via WhatsApp

[stefanicruz]

Hello everyone!

Currently, my company uses SAP Concur for corporate travel management, along with SAP ECC for other business processes.

I’m planning to develop an automation to simplify how users submit their travel expense receipts. The idea is to allow employees to send receipt images directly to a corporate WhatsApp number, and have an automation process integrate these receipts into SAP Concur.

Initially, I’m considering two possible scenarios:

1. Basic automation: Receive receipts via WhatsApp and attach them directly to an existing expense report in Concur.

2. More advanced automation: Create a new expense report automatically through the API, asking users to provide the required fields (such as travel reason, cost center, and amounts) and attach the receipts during the process.

I found the SAP Concur API documentation related to receipts and expenses: Receipts API Documentation

However, I have a few doubts:

• Does the API allow creating new expense reports, or is it limited to sending receipts to already existing reports?

• Is it possible to automatically attach documents directly to a new report via API, or must the report already exist beforehand?

• Are there best practices or recommended workflows for building this type of integration using the API?

• Are there any limitations or points of attention when working with the Receipts API for such an automation?

• Regarding authentication: currently, our employees access SAP Concur via Microsoft Single Sign-On (SSO). I would like to understand how authentication would work for this integration: would it require users to authenticate individually? Is there a way to generate an authorization link or use service account authentication? What is the recommended authentication flow in this case?

Additionally, I’m considering using a low-code automation platform like n8n or developing the integration directly in code.

If anyone has faced a similar situation or could share insights on how this integration could be structured, I would truly appreciate it!

Thank you very much! 

[KevinD]

@stefanicruz I'm asking internally to help answer your questions since APIs aren't my area of expertise. 

Also, I wasn't aware of a way to send in receipts via messaging apps or by using a phone number. I'd be curious to see if this can be done or not. 

[stefanicruz]

Hi Kevin, thank you for your reply!

I'll be waiting for further information.
Today, we already implement this kind of automation across different areas, using tools like Twilio or even the WhatsApp API itself to receive information.
From there, we process the data in orchestrators like n8n, which help us perform HTTP requests and integrate with various solutions seamlessly.

[KevinD]

@stefanicruz I passed on your questions and received a response stating that it would probably be best for you to submit a Support Help ticket to our Client Web Services team to ensure you have access to our Client Web Services, which is needed to access our APIs. Since your integration is a custom integration, our Web Services team is more equipped to answer your questions.