recurring expenses not remembering settings

[shalas]

I'm a bit blown away that this is so difficult to figure out but how does one get Concur to remember settings entered for expenses?

Example, my company routinely spends money with Shopify. On average, I get 10 - 12 expenses related to Shopify per month.

I have to manually enter the "Expense Type", "Business Purpose" and "Department" every single time. 

I can't understand how to setup a way for Concur to recognize if an expense comes in from a recurring source, pull the info from the previous one and auto fill it. 

That seems pretty fundamental to me for an expense software but to be fair, I've only recently had to take over managing a "shared" business credit card.

I've seen mention of "copying reports" but the reports aren't exactly the same each time. Some vendors bill us every two months, some are yearly, some are monthly but don't have the same cost.

Is there no template system or anything similar that will remember settings for specific expenses?

[MelanieT]

@shalas  Hello!  I can understand your frustration.  If you are an Expense Company Card Administrator, you can map these types of CC transactions to populate with an expense type.  Here are steps on how to do this.  

To map Expense Types to Merchant Category Codes (MCC): 

• Professional Expense users need the Expense Company Card Administrator role
• Standard Expense users need the Can Administer or Travel & Expense Administrator role

To map an expense type to a Merchant Code:

1. Go to Administration > Company > Tools 
2. Click on the Company Card menu
3. Access the Merchant Code Mapping tab
4. Select the Name of the Expense in the Expense Type column that you would like to map the merchant code to
5. Click Search or click on the expense type to select it
6. Click Modify
7. Click Map New
8. Select (or search for and select) the Merchant Code you wish to use
9. Click Map

To Delete or Unmap a merchant code:

1. Go to Administration > Company > Tools 
2. Click on the Company Card menu
3. Access the Merchant Code Mapping tab
4. Select the Name of the Expense in the Expense Type column that you would like to edit the merchant code mapping for
5. Click Modify
6. Click on code
7. Click Unmap

• A merchant code can only be assigned to one expense type. For example; the merchant code for Acme Car is typically assigned to the Car Rental expense type. However, an expense type may have multiple merchant codes assigned to it. For example; the Car Rental expense type has merchant codes for Acme, Alamo, and National.  
• If a company card transaction enters the system with a merchant code that is not assigned in the table, the expense type will be labeled as 'Undefined'. The undefined expense type is a system expense type that appears on the Add Expense page of an expense report. The employee must assign the transaction to a valid expense type in the policy before the expense report can be submitted.
• If you do not know the correct Merchant Code, contact your Bank.
• Standard Expense users can find more details in the Concur Expense: Company Card Administration User Guide for Standard Edition
• Professional Expense users can find more details in the Technical Documentation - Expense: Company Card Administration 
• More information on how MCC's are created: How are Merchant Codes created?

Remember to tag me if you respond or feel free to mark this post as Solved if you don't have further questions or comments. To tag me on your response, you click the Reply button, first thing to type is @. This should bring up the username of the person you are replying to.

[shalas]

Unfortunately I'm not an admin and I don't think the admin we have will want to spend the time on it. I'll ask though. Thank you!

[ChristophB]

This is very helpful to me! @MelanieT , may I add a question to this.

We are operating multiple policies and having numerous credit cards connected to our system. Is there a way to differentiate the default expense type for a merchant code per policy/CC?

Situation is as follows: we are using a standard expense type for "Hotel". However, for one country we need to use a copy of this expense type which we called "Hotels". For most country, merchant code 220 goes to that expense type "Hotel". For the one country "Hotel" is even disabled, instead we are using "Hotels". How can I achieve that 220 goes to "Hotels" in that country and remains not "undefined"?

[KevinD]

@shalas are these 10-12 expenses the same type of expense each time? Meaning, are all the transactions the same expense type? Usually the first expense from a vendor comes in with an Undefined expense type. When you pick the expense type for this transaction, the system usually "remembers" this expense type the next time you have a transaction from that vendor. Did that not happen? 

As for the business purpose that cannot be mapped to an expense type. 

For Department, is it the same department each time? The system can copy down your assigned department into expense entries. However, if the department can vary for these transactions from Shopify, there isn't a way to map the vendor to a department. 

Lastly, have you tried using the mass edit option to populate the Department and business purpose fields? You can select all the entries that will use the same department and business purpose then click Edit. This will bring up a window showing all the fields that can be mass edited. You should see both Department and Business Purpose available. Maybe give that a try. 🙂

[shalas]

Bummer about business purpose but yes, same department each time for shopify expenses (pretty much all expenses are the same dept.). 

How do you "copy down"?

I'll try the mass edit for them going forward, that will definitely help. 

[bchoate]

Kevin, 

On our expense reports, the 'business purpose' is always just Business Travel.  Why can't we default that in from the report header and not have to click every transaction and add that manually???