How do I turn off ExpenseIt for e-receipts or pdfs I forward from an email address?

[karakitt]

ExpenseIt is more of a hassle than a help - I need to turn this feature OFF completely and I can't figure out how.  It seems to have turned itself on automatically for receipts I forward in from my emails.  In the past, these receipts would just go into my Available Receipts.  Now, they are being processed automatically by ExpenseIt however this is NOT helpful. 

Today it took the Courtyard logo image from a hotel folio email and turned into its own Meal receipt with an amount of $100!  It set the location of a rental car receipt as somewhere in New Jersey because that's the location of Budget headquarters.  I don't want to double-check computer-generated expenses.  I want to go back to the way things were, where I can manually enter my expenses and just make sure they're done correctly the first time.  This is now making my expense processing take twice as long trying to catch all these stupid mistakes. 

How can I disable this feature for receipts I forward in from my email??

EDIT: This has been solved as described by @claireswiss  and @dawkinsc !!!  On the web, navigate to Profile Settings > Expense Preferences and Un-tick the box for using ExpenseIt on forwarded receipts.  I just tested this with a forwarded flight receipt email and it worked!  The receipt is showing up in my Available Receipts, not as an autogenerated expense!!

[dawkinsc]

I think we are all singing to the choir regarding this issue.  Hopefully they will fix or change it sooner than later. 

I will add, you can drag and drop receipts which helps, but that isn't a solution for users not in front of a computer.  

[jguipre]

This is a massive problem for us. It is hard enough just getting users to submit expense reports. Now I have to tell them that all their good work in uploading their receipts is for naught because every receipt created a fake "cash" expense and they can't remove the receipt from that fake expense and add it to the actual credit card expense. 

I hate to sound harsh, but the UI from about one year ago or so was terrific. Every change since then has been a downgrade.

[KevinD]

@jguipre ExpenseIt created items can be and should be matched to their corresponding card transactions. It has been that way ever since ExpenseIt was introduced. That hasn't changed. Maybe I'm not understanding what you are explaining. Also, ExpenseIt created items should be coming in as Pending Card Transaction if the user has an assigned company card and used that card to make the transaction. Also, you cannot separate a receipt image from an ExpenseIt item as the receipt is what was used to create the item. It has always been this way.

[dawkinsc]

@KevinD Yes, in a perfect world that would be great, however the ExpenseIt created items are NOT coming in as Pending Card Transactions as they should be, the amounts do not match and the Expense Type is usually something not correct either.  It is causing LOTS of confusion for our users.  And the part about not being able to remove the receipt is horrible too, because sometimes they are not adding the correct one.  

I have 100's of users.  I am slowly encouraging all of them to turn ExpenseIt OFF to eliminate all the problems we are having.  Also I have told them to find a computer to drag and drop receipts when possible, so the expense item is not created and the Available receipt can be waiting for them.  I am fielding issues on a daily because of the changes.  The one major thing about Concur is you roll out changes with zero warning or explanation.  We just wake up one day and guess what, something changed - up to us to figure it out!  

[KevinD]

@dawkinsc so I'm clear, before the new rollout, were your ExpenseIt items coming in as Pending Card Transaction and now they are not and were the amounts and expense types more accurate? I'm asking because if that is the case, you should definitely submit this to Concur Support so it can be tracked and the team can be made aware. They have ways of tracking the accuracy of ExpenseIt and need to know if the accuracy has waned since the rollout. 

The not being able to remove the receipt has always been that way with ExpenseIt since it was first introduced. I guess I should say that you cannot separate the receipt from the ExpenseIt entry. Is that what you are referring to? I am not understanding how a user would be adding an incorrect receipt when using ExpenseIt. Since ExpenseIt uses the receipt image to create the entry, it really cannot be the incorrect receipt. If you could clarify for me, that would be great. 

We do have release notes that are posted each month, but most people either don't read them or don't know where to find them. The release notes cover these types of changes. We don't make any internal notifications so I didn't know about this change until someone posted it here on Community, so I can totally empathize with you. 🙂

[dawkinsc]

To your first point, no.  We were perhaps never using ExpenseIt or it was not turned on automatically as it has been done now.  I think most everyone in this thread is in the same boat.  We are used to forwarding receipts and just having them in Available Receipts to create our own expense entries.  Ever since the rollout and forced ExpenseIt routine, nothing works the same.  I don't have the app on my phone and I am unable to turn it off because I am a computer user only!  

About removing the receipts, the solution is to delete the ExpenseIt entry, but then the receipt does not fall down to Available Receipts.  Some of these users take the picture of the receipt one time.  If you delete the entry, it's gone.  Once the transaction comes over from the bank, we can use that as the entry and attach the receipt which normally would be in Available Receipts.  

[Jszechi]

This is happening with all our users as well - exactly as Dawkinsc is describing. 

Kevin - either you or one of your colleagues mentioned before that the scanning by ExpenseIt was a new feature that was rolled out a few weeks ago, a little confused as to why you are now acting like this is all news to you? 

[KevinD]

There wasn't any company-wide announcement about the change. It was implemented in one of our monthly updates, but these types of changes aren't sent out internally, they are only added to Release Notes. 

[DeanR]

@dawkinsc 

I would recommend to your users to select the 'Save Receipts to Phone/Gallery' option through the Concur app settings so they'll have a copy of any captured receipts.

[DeanR]

@KevinD 

I assume that they were/are emailing receipts to receipts@concur.com so implicitly weren't using ExpenseIt prior to the change implemented by Concur.

At least ExpenseIt via the mobile app allows the user to confirm date and $ amount before saving so can correct any scanning errors at that point.  With the scanning from email there is no chance to do that until the Expense has already been created.

[dawkinsc]

@DeanR  You're right.  The little paper receipts like car gas, grocery slips and stuff like that are creating the ExpenseIt items they can edit some details, but we are dealing with alot of rental cars, hotels, Uber and things they are uploading directly into Concur either by forwarding from email or direct upload.  Those are the ones with bigger issues.  

[CoreyM]

How can we turn off that darn auto capture (for the mobile device camera) feature in the SAP Concur mobile app?? You have to manually turn the darn thing off with every photo capture. There is nothing in settings on the app nor the phone to help with this!!

Maybe SAP Concur needs to start paying attention and listen to their customers instead of always pushing out updates and trying to be overly cute with the changes. It is getting to be extremely annoying and frustrating and no one (with SAP Concur) can give a straight answer for anything. Not directing this towards you, just venting because this mess that SAP has created is just that, a huge pile of mess!

[dawkinsc]

Since I don't use the mobile app at all, I can't help.  But what I have worked out with some users are the steps:  First click Add Receipt, then Take Photo, in that order.  It keeps them from having to fill out details at the moment.  They just want to snap the pic and move on about their day, then go back and fill expense details later.  

[Jmarah]

Hi Kevin

I am just reading through all these messages as this is causing me so many issues.  I can confirm that the transactions are definately not coming through as pending card transactions, they create a separate new Cash Expense line.  Furthermore we used to be able to delete that cash expense line and the receipt would drop into Available Receipts.  That option has now gone as well.
The camera on the Expense it app, seems to read all sorts of random figures so receipts are coming in wrong so even if they were Pending Card transactions they wouldnt match the card line anyway.  

[DeanR]

I'm really struggling to understand the reasoning behind this change.  The previous set-up of having the two email addresses receipts@concur.com and receipts@expenseit.com worked as customers/users could choose their preference depending on the circumstances.  This has actually reduced the functionality for ExpenseIt customers.

[KevinD]

@DeanR I cannot comment on why the change was made, but I know there is an ExpenseIt for the web update that should be launching next month. My guess is this will allow receipts to be analyzed with OCR through the product on the web without the need for emailing them. I haven't see a demo, but that seems logical to me. 

[aprosnik]

Same issue.  This is horrible.  In my case moron ExpenseIT allowed me to attach receipts but also generated expenses that I didn't want.  I deleted the expenses and it wiped out the already-attached receipts on items I manually created.  Not only that, they were broken and I had no option to detatch or attach new receipts.  I had to completely delete them and recreate them.  

I had to download the stupid mobile app because the developers or product development leads were not smart enough to realize that feature parity between mobile settings and desktop settings might actually be important, especially when you decide to roll out changes to global system defaults for a region that affect thousands of customers.  

Moron ExpenseIt took all the stuff I emailed to receipts@concur.com and decided to turn them into "expenses" (wtf I just want receipts I can attach) with incorrect payment info, incorrect classification (really, you can pick out Southwest Airlines but you think this is "Automotive - Gas"?), and wrong dates.  I had to move expenses to an open report so I could access the receipts and then merge the line items since I couldn't unattach the stupid receipt from the auto-generated ExpenseIt expenses.  Even better, when merging it preferred the ExpenseIt junk so I had to re-correct the merged entries.  

No choice or option to select what fields to keep from which record, why would that be useful, amirite?!?

My mistake was deleting what I thought were unused expenses not realizing somehow ExpenseIt allowed me to use the receipt images but somehow linked them to the expenses so when I deleted the expenses, it jacked all the entries I manually made and manually attached receipts to.

Also, love when it wipes out my vendor name when I switch the expense type from airline to something else, because that's totes useful having to re-enter the vendor as it obviously needs to change if you change the expense type.  p.s. that's sarcasm.

I'm complaining here because the customer improvement program is a morass of pain.  Searching through the 65k items is useless, there's no good way to filter in actual useful fields or sort the results, and then I have to join some sub-group to submit something to the Concur group.  

I have to wait for managers to approve my join request to determine if I'm worthy of giving feedback on this craptastic product, that's just really gonna calm an irate customer down, isn't it.

So this isn't anything against @KevinD or any of the community support crew, I know you're thrown to the wolves and can't really do anything about this issue.  And I know anyone who makes decisions in SAP doesn't read this stuff or care about it as long as they can keep their outsourced programming expenses low and keep the shareholders happy quarter over quarter, who cares what your actual products are doing as long as you check the boxes off all the latest buzzwords for features, yeah?

Hopefully at some point I am allowed to submit an "improvement" to the Concur group, though I doubt anyone will be able to find it or get access to it (jumping through hoops for the privilege) to vote on it, if it doesn't get immediately closed as "intentional change, won't fix."

[KevinD]

@aprosnik just so you know, I did read your entire post. I can't confirm or deny that I agree with some of what you said. 🙂

I will say this. There will be a release of ExpenseIt for the Web happening in November, or at least that is what I was told. I haven't seen a demo of how it will work yet. Hopefully it will improve the ExpenseIt experience. My guess is it will alleviate the need for emailing receipts to receipts@concur.com and receipts@expenseit.com. That is purely a guess though. I'm trying to get a sneak peak of how it will work. 

[DeanR]

Hi @KevinD ,

That may be a useful feature but I hope it wouldn't necessitate removing existing features.  There will still be circumstances where emailing will be preferred to an ExpenseIt drag-and-drop (which is what I assume is coming).

[dawkinsc]

@DeanR I totally agree!  

[KevinD]

@DeanR I'm asking my contact if the email option will still be available after the update.