Travel Allowance Upgrade AMA 2025

Please, at least it is necessary to have all the material in the client's language and also some brief practical presentation of the changes that are taking place.

The scope of an Assisted Upgrade will now be included for customers who subscribe to Managed Rate Administration (MRA). So if you do not wish to self-service the upgrades, you do not need to purchase separate additional Assisted Upgrade projects - your MRA team will be able to manage any upgrades that fall within the scope of an Assisted Upgrade - this does not however extend to Custom Upgrades, as these still need to purchased separately. You can speak with your MRA representative for details of what is in scope of an assisted upgrade.

@dmurphy3 There are no differences in the data provided as part of our standard accounting extract when upgrading to the TA Service.

So the AP/GL Extract will be in the exact same format it currently is, and provide the same information, correct?  I just want to be sure because I understood that the data in the upgraded Travel Allowance Service is maintained in tables separate from the current Travel Allowance configuration.  

Correct - the Extract format remains the same, and the travel allowance data is represented in the same way to provide parity with legacy to ensure customers who upgrade are not required to make changes to their existing integration. There are additional integration options available with the TA Service which are not available with Legacy TA, while the data from a "reporting" perspective is held in different tables - so that may be where you heard this from. 

Super, thank you so much.

Custom rates can be uploaded and maintained in the new Travel Allowance Service, in addition to the automatic maintenance of the standard U.S. rates.

On a technical level, this works by utilizing both a statutory rate bundle for the U.S. CONUS and OCONUS rates (which we pick up directly from the DTMO and update monthly or ad hoc, if necessary), and then a custom rate bundle for your custom rates. The custom rate bundle overrides the statutory bundle when rates are different.

As for responsibility, it remains the same as it was in legacy travel allowance. It can be maintained by the customer, by a partner, or through a Managed Rates Administration contract with Concur Services.

Instead of manually checking and updating the rates every month, there might be a simpler way to accomplish what you're describing. Are you saying that your company uses only the Lodging and Meals rates for foreign locations, but does not reimburse incidentals at all?

Hello MatthewZ,

Our state reimburses lodging based on the standard DOS rates, however, we can only reimburse certain incidentals so we use a separate expense type in those situations. This is what requires us to take the standard meals and incidentals rate that DOS posts in excel form and modify it so that it does not include incidentals. We then take this modified excel data and format it so that it can be uploaded to our custom meal rate configuration.

Based on what we've discussed so far do you think we would be able to perform a self service upgrade or a custom upgrade to transition us to the new travel allowance configuration?

I appreciate the insight into the responsibility of managing the rates moving forward, as we explore our best options I will be sure to share this with our stakeholders.

That is a custom upgrade but I'm also intrigued by your scenario. I'll reach out to you directly to discuss further.

@gperdew69 Yes, the Travel Allowance Service offers parity with Legacy TA, and also some improvements on Exchange Rate options for Travel Allowance. By default the option exists to use the following
Expense DayExchange rate on the last day of the itinerary
Exchange rate on the first day of the itinerary
But also we now offer the ability to set the Exchange rate based on the end date or start date on the expense report header