Admin Tips & Tricks: Spend Management - Invoices

Erica Brown · Dec 7, 2025

Take Control of Spend

We’ve gathered proven tips and expert insights to help you tighten compliance, reduce manual work, and improve the accuracy and speed of your spend processes. Many of these best practices come straight from SAP Concur administrators who’ve been where you are—working to avoid common pitfalls, shift from reactive to proactive, and focus on what drives real value.

In this section, you will find peer and expert-sourced guidance on the following topics:

Invoices

Set up invoice workflows to match your culture

We support both centralized and decentralized accounts payable processes as well as dynamic workflows. When setting up, be sure to use the approach that works for your organization.

Pay vendors with single-use virtual cards

With Invoice Payment Manager, you can issue secure, single-use virtual cards to vendors—helping protect against fraud and streamlining reconciliation. This payment method is supported in USD and CAD. Card Payment Vouchers are also available, allowing vendors to charge a corporate/purchasing card on file, though this method sees limited adoption today.

Use purchase orders to authorize spend

Authorize suppliers to provide goods or services at specified prices and quantities in return for payment. With Concur Invoice, PO Matching and Invoice Pay, this provides an end-to-end spend authorization to pay lifecycle.

3-way invoice matching

Automatically link invoices, purchase orders, and corresponding receipts to provide visibility into goods and services received—ensuring you only pay for what you received.

Establish PO match rules for invoice variances

When invoices are matched to POs, PO Match Rules offer flexibility in allowing variances against quantity, unit price and more. Admins can determine based on tolerance if the invoice should be submitted or not.

Send email notifications to vendors

Vendors can receive an email notification when they are paid via ACH or check through the Invoice Pay service (available with Invoice Payment Manager). These emails include helpful details such as invoice date, invoice amount, invoice number, payment date, payment method, check number, and any notes added to the payment submission.

Request Accrual Report

This report shows all assigned invoices that have not yet been extracted. It can be very helpful in coordinating month-end close by providing visibility into outstanding liabilities for easy accrual posting. You can find it in the Standard Reports folder > Invoice. For further value, customize the report in Intelligence to incorporate any coding associated with the invoice so AP can book the accrual properly in the General Ledger.

Manage ACH and check payments

With Invoice Payment Manager, you can pay vendors by ACH or check. ACH payments are supported in USD, CAD, GBP, and EUR, while checks are supported in USD and CAD. The service also includes Payment Release Manager, which lets you schedule and release payment batches for greater control. With Invoice Check Pay, you can leverage existing banking relationships and use a custom template with your logo, address, and signatures to eliminate the manual effort of printing and mailing checks.

Extract for payment confirmation details

Customers can receive a Payment Confirmation Extract that provides remittance detail for any Concur-managed payments, including ACH, Check, Voucher, and single-use Virtual Cards. In addition, for customers using the Check Pay service, a Positive Pay file is provided as an extract to help prevent check fraud.

Purchase order and associated invoices report

Customers can easily view open purchase orders and any associated invoices or remaining balances. This can be beneficial to track spend and accrual data. This report can be found in the Standard Reports folder > Invoice folder.

Schedule recurring invoices

Set up recurring invoices to be generated on a schedule for expenses such as rent or subscriptions. Easily configure the frequency and start and end date to the recurring invoices.

Set up invoice routing based on a field

Invoices can be routed to an Invoice Owner based on a specific field. By establishing a hierarchy, customers can determine which field (such as Department or Cost Center) can be used to route an invoice to an assignee, depending on which value is selected.

Import QuickBooks data for Standard Edition

Concur Invoice Standard Edition lets you import your QuickBooks accounting data directly into Concur Invoice. When you send information back to QuickBooks, Concur Invoice transfers it as invoice details, keeping your systems aligned and up to date.

Create a custom query to simplify your search results

The query tool allows you to filter specific invoices by search criteria, such as individual users, groups, approval status, and more. For example, if you frequently need to search for invoices for a particular vendor that has not yet been paid, you can create and save a custom query for that search. This saves time in your search later by allowing you to easily choose your query to find the invoices you need.