New Concur UI: Business Purpose pre-populating

[EdwinaM]

Hi there, we have had a few reports by users that have had the Business Purpose field pre-populated by entries they made to other expenses, or with text that they didn't know where it came from.  

Could you advise, is there some sort of logic in Concur that tries to automatically apply entries to business purpose fields across similar expense lines?  Or is this just a bug?

[KevinD]

@EdwinaM this has been a feature of Concur Expense for many years now. The system assumes that the entries on the report are related to the same business purpose, so when a user creates an out of pocket expense, it will auto-fill the Business Purpose field using the business purpose entered on the previous expense created by the user. Also, many companies use the Business Purpose field on the Report Header and have it copy down to all entries added to or created on the expense report. 

As for the text that they didn't know where it came from, I would have to see an example as I've never come across this before.

[larasmith]

This is happening on credit card charges as well.  Have had several users express frustration with this auto-fill feature.  Is there a way to turn it off?  Users can copy paste if need be.

[ap_petrochoice]

This has been happening ever since the update.  I've even changed the information on a particular credit card charge, only to have what I input changed by the system.  I have to go back and re-check every entry before submitting my reports.  Since my reports are only submitted monthly, that means spending a lot of time re-checking items previously checked.    It is handy feature to have the Business Purpose in the header auto-feed to each expense.  However, if that field is left blank in the header, no Business Purpose should be auto-feeding to the expenses.  Nor should what was entered for a particular line item be changed by the system, which is happening every month.  This is causing a LOT of extra work.  

[KevinD]

@ap_petrochoice I agree. I went into your account and did a test report. I left the Business Purpose field blank on the header. I created two expense entries, neither had a pre-populated Business Purpose field. I saved each and the business purpose I entered didn't change. 

Now, I did do the entries as out of pocket/Cash. I'm not sure if that would matter. I didn't want to try your corporate card charges without your permission, but if you don't mind, I could try and see if I get the same issue you did. 

[ap_petrochoice]

You wanted an example: The business purpose for this was entered as 274618.  It was changed, by the system, to 264093.  

[DeanR]

This definitely seems to be more prevalent with the new UI than it was before and is also happening for imported credit card transactions.

I can't say I agree with the logic that the Business Purpose for one expense should be the same as another when the Report is period-based.  Also Business Purpose is usually a mandatory field so pre-populating it with incorrect information is likely to be missed as no error will be flagged.  Our typical cardholder's monthly report  will be card transactions for a whole host of business purposes.

[larasmith]

Agreed.  We have once a month report submissions and business purpose will be different throughout the report.  Having it auto-populate for this required field did exactly what you described where users don't notice it populating incorrectly.  I ended up having Concur shut the autopopulate off.  

The downside to not having it is on itemizations where users have to enter the same business purpose multiple times under one hotel charge for example.  But that is what cut and paste is for.

[angelamcdonald]

How did you get the business purpose to not auto-populate? I was told this could not be done.....

[ajoshi16]

We are on Standard Edition and I was also told that Business purpose auto-population cannot be turned off. Our users are very frustrated 

[latschuler]

We have been fielding complaints from users about the Business Purpose field being auto-filled with the business purpose entered on the previous expense. I wasn't experiencing that myself, so I turned on Expense Assistant (which some of our employees use). Since I turned on Expense Assistant, the Business Purpose field for each new expense is auto-filled.

[ablakeslee]

Does this mean that we have to turn off Expense Assistant to not have this auto-populate?  I have the same problem as described by @ap_petrochoice above. In addition, sometimes I will work across both my laptop and my phone. If I'm adding some receipts some of them it's easier to do by phone. Any time that I upload a receipt to the phone app it pre-populates the business description. It's really annoying because I could have been looking at the expense only a few minutes before on the laptop with a different description and then it changes and i have to re-enter it. Or in other cases it's already pre-populated with something (note: often times it's pre-populated with a description of an expense from a prior report, not even from the current report I'm in which doesn't make any sense).

[dnr733]

I realize this is an older thread but I have had this issue for a long time.  

And yes, many returned reports due to myself not changing the business field since it was pre-populated.  

Does more harm than good.