Fact of Fiction -- November 2023

[KevinD]

Hello again. It is time for our 11th installment of Fact or Fiction. Take a look at the statement below and let me know, is it Fact or is it Fiction.

Fact or Fiction: SAP Concur is not allowing me to submit my expense report.

Leave your thoughts below and lets see what kind of responses we get.

[DeanR]

Fiction - either SAP Concur is applying Audit Rules configured by your company's administrators, or your report is wrong e.g. you're trying to submit a Pending Card Transaction item.

[mcnerney]

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@KevinD wrote:

Hello again. It is time for our 11th installment of Fact or Fiction. Take a look at the statement below and let me know, is it Fact or is it Fiction.

Fact or Fiction: SAP Concur is not allowing me to submit my expense report.

Leave your thoughts below and lets see what kind of responses we get.

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Fact

• You might not have an approver set up in your hierarchy.
• You might have exceptions (that you should be able to see, to correct & then submit the ER)

[leela2516]

Fiction - It is not SAP Concur specifically, but the rules and configurations for a company's site that will prevent the report from being submitted. With that said, technically, if the system has an issue in the middle of someone trying to submit, it could stop the report from being submitted, but that would be an exception and out of the norm.

[MSteele]

Fact.  I'd look at what the alerts are.  If you have Expense Pay by Concur, make sure there is a bank account set up in your profile.

[cpolifka1]

As this is an open-ended question, I will base it off on

Fiction

Concur does not cause it not to be submitted, this is hireachry set up based on the individual company. The administrator will create rules for exceptions

- There are hard coded stops that prevent submitted reports

- Limits in amount of expense type exceptions

- Rules set up based company policy/Travel

- Duplicate expense already submitted

[KevinD]

Hello everyone...thank you for the responses. Some might say this is a trick question, which I cannot confirm or deny. 🙂

Technically "SAP Concur is not allowing me to submit my report" is Fiction. As some have mentioned, your company's audit rules, policies and configuration are the actual reasons why you cannot submit. How I explain it is, "SAP Concur is just the messenger". It tells you why you cannot submit and how to correct the issue based on what you have configured.

Check in next month for our final installment.

[DeanR]

In some cases SAP Concur is more than the messenger e.g. expense items with 'Pending Card Transaction' payment type cannot be submitted and that is a Concur rule, not customer configurable.

[BStrait]

This is all fine and dandy, but to the end user, there is not really a difference. End users do not make the same distinctions as we make when we look at Concur as administrative experts. If something is not working, it is concur's fault in their mind. While it is good to point out that this is not really the case it is actually more important to be sensitive to the frustrations that the end user may be having. "SAP Concur is not allowing me to submit my report" is an emotional response from an end user. If you don't acknowledge that, you are invalidating that end user's experience/feelings and you may never get them to see the tool in any other way than as a bureaucratic roadblock.

[KevinD]

@BStrait you make some good points. Often company rules and policies are not clearly defined by site admins to their end users, so yes, they do think it is SAP Concur that is not allowing them.

Site admins should definitely acknowledge emotional responses and be sensitive to their users' frustrations. However, there are many companies that do not provide clear definitions, instructions or policies which one could argue is one of the main catalysts for their users being frustrated. At least that is my experience. 🙂