SAP Concur is such a PITA...

[StatManAreGO]

My employer has started using Concur for expense reporting, and I'm not a fan of it.

I came back from a recent trip, scanned my receipts and submitted an expense report, not realizing Concur hadn't processed the transactions yet.  I found out it can take 2-3 weeks for them to even show up (this is 2019, correct?) and when they did finally come across, Concur started pestering me and my supervisor with emails about unreported expenses.  Of course I couldn't report them since I already had, and had been reimbursed for them.

What a PITA...  Why not just disallow submission of any expense that hasn't been picked up by Concur?  If I'd known I had to wait the 2-3 weeks I would have waited.  Instead my attempt to get my expense report submitted quickly has turned into a headache for myself and the support people at my company.

I dislike this system and I also find it non-intuitive to navigate.  I doubt this will change anything but I just felt the need to say it.

[KevinD]

Sorry to hear your experience wasn't good. It should not take 2-3 weeks for corporate card transactions to appear in your SAP Concur profile. It should only be about 3 business days. 

As far as the emails (which we call email reminders) that are sent in regards to unused transactions, that is a built in feature to help prevent a couple of things: 1. People not getting their corporate card charges submitted and 2. Late fees for unpaid credit card statements. 

The email reminders can be changed by your site administrator so that they only send after the charges are "unused" after a determined amount of days and the frequency of the emails can be changes as well so they do not send as much to alleviate the "pestering". 

As for disallowing expenses that are not picked up by SAP Concur, what will happen when one of your employees that doesn't have a Corporate Card or had to pay for a business expense out of their own pocket? How would they be allowed to submit that business expense to receive the reimbursement? If they didn't submit through SAP Concur, then there would be no digital record of it to be able to be reported on in the SAP Concur system. 

The site can be configured and modified to help employees with the reimbursement process to make it more seamless, but SAP Concur doesn't know what these configurations should be unless our customers tell us during the implementation process. Also, your site administrator can change some settings, like the email reminders. 

So, I will ask you two questions:

1. Have you addressed these concerns with your site administrator to see if they can make some site changes to avoid the issues you had?

2. Has your company done any internal training on using the SAP Concur system to teach their employees about what to expect and the nuances of the site based on how your company has it configured? 

I'd just ask to give the system a second chance and reach out to your site admin with your feedback. I'm sure others in your company are probably having the same issues, so letting your site admin know can help them make some site changes to make the system work better for you. 

If you have any specific questions or want any tips or tricks, feel free to send me a private message. I'd be happy to help where I can.

Kevin

[DeanR]

I agree with @KevinD  that a lot of the issues you experienced are fixable through configuration and training, and are best directed in the first instance to your site administrator.

Re: disallowing expenses that haven't yet been picked up by Concur through the corporate card feed, your site administrator can (either by themselves or through Concur Support) set Pending Card Transaction as the default Payment Type for corporate cardholders.  This will prevent these expenses being submitted until they've been matched to the card transaction, while allowing the user to change the Payment Type to Cash for out-of-pocket expenses.

Re: delay in card transactions appearing through Concur, on the occasions this has happened for us it has been an issue with either the merchant or our card-issuing bank that has caused the delay i.e. beyond Concur's control. 

[MSTEEN]

I understand that change is a growing pain.  Concur program is not 100% "Plug & Play" software.  The program is customized to align with your company travel and expense policies.  

The credit card transactions take 1 to 3 days to show in Concur.  Some transactions show the same day.  The only time I see transactions taking more are small and international vendors.  If the transactions are not showing in the allocated time, it is a good idea to check with your travel manager or a quick call to the vendor.   The credit card transaction will match with the receipt (e-receipts must be enabled in your profile) when you take an image using the ExpenseIt tool in the Concur mobile app you downloaded to your phone and connected to your profile. 

There are ways the company could minimize the error of reimbursing the employee for credit card transactions.  One is placing an expense audit rule to ask if the transaction is a true out of pocket. If your company has a Concur audit service, the company should have a directive to challenge out of pocket expenses and avoid this situation when credit card transactions are shown as reimbursable the employee.  Finally, wait for the credit card charge to match with the receipt before moving into the expense report.

The way I see it is to spend less time working with the expense report and spend more time doing what you do best. 

If you cannot find help with your company's travel manager, Concur Help Desk,  Concur training materials and on-demand videos (check out the digital university of YouTube), let me know.  I would be glad to help.