External Business Meal Red Error for IBM attendees

[veronicamalone]

I am getting a Red Alert saving an External Business Party Meal because it says I must "search" for IBM employees.  I did that and still got the message.  I removed the employee and still got the message.  There are NO IBM EMPLOYEES on the attendee list at this point and I am still getting the message.  This expense report is now 30 days overdue because I cannot reconcile this problem.  

[KevinD]

@veronicamalone try removing yourself as an attendee and see if that clears up the exception/error. Looks like the company set up a rule that looks for email addresses of attendees and if any of them have your company's domain (initials) in the email, then you receive the hard stop error. 

Delete yourself and let me know if the error goes away or not. 

[veronicamalone]

Hi KevinD - Before I even contacted the SAP Concur Community, I had both removed myself completely and removed myself and then searched for my name to add.  In both cases, I still got the red alert.  I am stumped and my expense report is overdue.  Any other suggestions?

[KevinD]

@veronicamalone I found the issue. You have colleagues listed on your report as Business Guests, not Employees. The error is telling you that employees of your company cannot be added as business guests, but must be added using the Search option. I see three additional attendees that have your company's email domain as their email address. You need to delete these three attendees, then use the search (like you did for yourself) to find those employees and add them from the search results. 

That should clear up the issue. The error message could have been a little more clear if it was written to say that colleagues/fellow employees cannot be added with Business Guest as the attendee type.

[veronicamalone]

Hi Kevin, which 3 people are you referring to?  I ask because I looked at the list and Jim and Bob are former employees who now work at Four Inc, and IBM Business Partner.  I can take them off completely and reenter them manually to ensure the system is picking up their business address.  The same for Bryan - he now works at Forescout. If this doesn't work, I can use 3 other names from the list.  I'll let you know if this works or does not.  

[veronicamalone]

Hi KevinD, I just removed all the IBMers from both expense line items and I am still getting the error.  I'm getting really frustrated.  Any other suggestions?  Thank you.  

[veronicamalone]

Hi Kevin - did you see my note above?  I followed the steps - removing the IBMers - who were actually former IBM'ers but back with another company.  I removed them and replace them with other attendee names (and not former IBMers this time) and I'm still getting the same error.  Please help....getting desparate.  

[KevinD]

@veronicamalone First, to make sure...you tried submitting the report after making those changes, correct? Also, for future reference, I didn't mention their names specifically for privacy reasons. 

[UPDATE] I went in and tried submitting the report. I was able to get to a screen that asked for the approver. I canceled out of this, but if now look at the errors, they have changed from Red to Orange, which means you should now be able to submit. 

I thought I had mentioned that the rule that is being triggered fires when you try to submit. So, if you simply make the changes and save, the error remains until you resubmit. The submitting of the report is what causes the system to evaluate the rule to see if it is being violated or not.

Try submitting and I think you'll find it will go through.

[veronicamalone · Accepted solution]

Hi Kevin, thank you for working so hard with me on this.  I just read your note and I did not know that about the red triangle not going away until you submit the report.  At least for future, I will know now.  I just submitted it, so fingers crossed this gets approved.  I've been here for 30 years and never had a problem like this one.  Thank you again, for your support.  

[KevinD]

@veronicamalone happy to help. I always say, "it never hurts to have a second set of eyes".