Personal Car Mileage - Electric cars

[howardwilliams]

All of our employees use their own vehicles for business mileage and are set up in Concur. We have employees who are looking at buying electric cars but the Concur mileage rates are only set up for Petrol or Diesel. 

Does anyone have experience of setting up electric cars in Concur to reclaim mileage allowances?

If we were to use the petrol or diesel vehicle type in mileage rates Concur would claim VAT on the mileage. Although as we wouldn't have any "fuel" receipts maybe it wouldn't.

All help / input would be appreciated.

[KevinD]

@howardwilliams First thing I would need to know to help answer your question is, what type of Configuration of SAP Concur are you on? Are you on our Standard Configuration or are you on our Professional Configuration? If you are not sure, there is an easy way to tell. 

Log into Concur. From the home screen, go to the upper right-hand corner where it says Administration. Mouse over this. You should see a little drop down menu appear. If you see Expense Settings as an option, then you are on a Standard Configuration.

So, if you could let me know your configuration type, I can provide some guidance. 

[howardwilliams]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the quick response. We are on Standard Configuration

Howard

[KevinD]

@howardwilliams Unfortunately in our Standard configuration you are locked into the car types of Petro and Diesel. Also, the mileage expense type is tied to the Category of Personal Car Mileage Reimbursement which allows for using the Mileage calculator. To be able to use a mileage expense type that has the mileage calculator, you must register a car on your profile, but it can only be one of the pre-set car types of either Petrol or Diesel. 

The only workaround I can think of is to create a new expense type named Electric Car. Maybe categorize it as Ground Transportation. The users would have to calculate their own mileage and multiply it by your company's reimbursement rate and enter that amount in the Amount field of the expense. It is not ideal, but it could work. You could also add a couple of custom fields that would appear for all expense types labeled To and From where they can enter their starting location and ending location like you would see on a Personal Car mileage expense. This could be confusing to some, but it is a workaround if knowing the starting and ending locations are important. 

I posted your issue internally. I'll let you know if I get any response different from what I posted here. Again, mine is a suggestion only, I haven't really come across this issue before, but yours is very valid with the uptick in Electric vehicles. 

[howardwilliams]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the suggested workaround but it does seem rather long winded.

As you say, with the "uptick" in Electric vehicles and that only increasing in the future it feels like a development that Concur should be looking into as a matter of priority.

[KevinD]

I won't disagree with that. 🙂

You can submit a solution suggestion to have Electric Car added as a car type for our Standard Product. I know there are companies in the UK reimbursing for riding their bikes to work, but I'm not sure how they are doing that. 

[howardwilliams]

Thanks Kevin.

Suggestion put in.

Regards

Howard

[NCheesman]

Is it now possible to create Electric Car as a Car Type or Fuel Type

Many Thanks

Nicola

[KevinD]

@NCheesman If you are on our Professional configuration, you can create Electric Car as a car type and give this car type its own reimbursement rate. 

[ljackson]

This topic has came up more frequently for our company as well.  We have Professional.  Is Eletric Car an option for us to use?

[KevinD]

@ljackson I believe in Professional you can create your own car configuration. Our Standard configuration doesn't allow for customizing a car type. If you have Admin rights, go to Administration>Expense>Car Configuration. Here you can create your own car set up. 

[GKTammy]

@KevinD the last update to this post was some time ago I am now looking at completing this for my company are there any guides/standard ways of setting up the system to handle recording mileage for Personal & Company cars?

[KevinD]

@GKTammy Here is a link to the Car Configuration Setup Guide. This should give you some good guidance. 

Car Configuration Setup Guide

[marithompson1]

Hi Kevin

Since the original question was raised two years ago, has SAP improved the standard config. so that we can select EV for personal car rates? Many thanks.

[KevinD]

@marithompson1 From what I can see, no. I only see Petrol and Diesel as car type options. I've posted this internally to see if I can get some sort of answer on a good workaround. 

[SharronL]

We have the same issue. Employees are now starting to use their personal Electric cars for business use and having logged it as a Query this morning, I've been told its not available to standard users. Its disappointing to say the least going into 2023.

[KevinD]

@SharronL the Electric option is available for Company Car in Standard. Another workaround is to set up a Policy Group for Electric Car Users and assign the reimbursement rate to that Policy Group.

[SharronL]

Thank you Kevin, appreciate the reply.

As the reimbursement rate in the UK is currently the same for diesel, petrol and electric (.45p pm) for business use in a persons own private car, I've simply just added a new vehicle and put the ID as "Electric Car" and put fuel type as diesel, at least that way when an end user goes to to his mileage claim, it will show in their drop down menu as "Electric Car". I will look into setting up a new policy group in the future, if Electric Personal Car does not become available in the Standard Edition soon.

[SharronL]

Hi Kevin

I've noticed that Electric is an option for Company Car under our UK package but is not available in our other country packages, Ireland, Germany and The Netherlands,   We are on the Standard Expense pack - is there another step that needs done, to show Electric in the Company Card drop down menu for these other country packages?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[KevinD]

@SharronL from what I'm seeing internally, it is only an option for the U.K. You'll need to use the workaround I mentioned earlier in this thread for those other countries.

[SharronL]

Why the inconsistency, is there a reason why its only available in country pack UK?   Seems a very disjointed set up, will mean a different internal car policy depending on where our guys are based, again not ideal.   Is that the same for Expense Intelligence and Expense Professional, Kevin?