How to add unused itineraries to a Concur Report

[rlipsey64]

Over 50% of our travelers do not use a corporate card.  Therefore, they are purchasing travel using personal cards.  We require that they use the itineraries for the expense reports.  I do not see a way to add unused itineraries to a Concur report.  Any suggestions on how to see the unused itineraries without looking at every profile individually?  

[KevinD]

@rlipsey64 Hello there. I'm a little confused as to what you are asking. Are the employees paying for travel on their personal cards booking this travel using SAP Concur? If so, the itinerary items should be available in the Available Expenses area of the employees' profile that they can add to their expense reports.

What I'm a little confused on is what you mean by "Unused itineraries". Why is the itinerary unused? 

If you could clarify this for me, I can then better assist you. 🙂

[rlipsey64]

Sorry KevinD I should have been more clear.  They can see the itineraries and add to expense reports.

The issue is that I need to be able to identify unused itineraries in Cognos Reporting.  I do not see a way to do that today. Without a way to see the unused itineraries and sending them notices, we have employees submitting expense items late.

[KevinD]

@rlipsey64 thank you for clarifying. I did some snooping around and I couldn't find anything in Cognos that would show itinerary items that are not assigned to an expense report. 

I'm trying to think of a solution, but nothing is coming to mind. 

How late are these expense items they are submitting? Do you have an audit rule in place that flags transactions with dates older than a specified number of days? 

I've had some customers I've come across that have a policy that states that they will not allow expenses older than, I think it was, 90 days. The system would flag the expenses with a red exception. 

Now, you have some good leverage here because these expenses are paid for out of their own pocket, so if they know that if they wait too long to submit, they will be eating that cost and not reimbursed. I've see that one of the best motivators to get employees to do what you want them to do is to hit their pocket book. 🙂 

Anyway, that is the best solution I have for now. 

[mab]

Hi, 

I have been digging around to, it's a real challenge when they don't match becuase it impacts different reports.  I don't know how many employees you're dealing with, I have few enough to monitor. Although unwrapping all the Covid19 cancellations is a challenge. 

I have found one place to find is on the Airfare booked but not submitted. It's a litte flawed, as most credits won't have an itinernary and will be on the report. You also can get booking that have been cancelled with flight credits in travel.  But it's a good starting point.

Another way is to put the ticket #, and the  Record Locator on a spend report, limit to airfare and try a vlookup against the booked by not submitted.  May work or not, some of the tickets are truncated so the match won't work and many employees don't populate the ticket number, and the record locator wouldn't be there. A match will tell you they missed the itinerary. Most won't match, but if the name and $ do, you can check the report to see if it's missing an itinerary.

Still another is to run the expense and have the field that determines if there is an itinerary match--there's 2 or 3 values-, you're looking for the one that's not "exact". You have to watch the payment types, I have my users push through an itineary on an expense report as company paid (we don't send that type to GL)  I think I found that match field in the carbon reporting, in one of the background queries, I dont' recall.

The other thing that can be done, is if booking in Concur is required, have the processor or approvers enforce the requirement for a match, and make sure the person training the employees is emphasizing the match as part of the onboarding.  Sending reports back is a pain point for users and one of the most effective ways to change behavior.