Admin Tips & Tricks: Travel Management - Policy Optimization

Erica Brown · Dec 7, 2025

Mastering Travel Management

Modern travel management goes far beyond booking flights and filing expense reports. It’s about creating connected, efficient experiences for your travelers while maintaining control, visibility, and compliance every step of the way. Whether you're streamlining approvals, simplifying policy enforcement, or navigating global complexities, these best practices are designed to help you run your travel program better.

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

Policy Optimization

Review Concur Travel usage by employee

Travel managers can review the “User Concur Travel History” report that provides a snapshot of employee Concur Travel usage. Look out for unfinished reservations (e.g. waiting for approval or abandoned), itinerary details, policy violations and more. If you find trips that haven’t been approved, reach out to those managers.

Find spend happening outside your approved channels

Use SAP Concur reporting tools to surface spend that office outside approved booking channels. The Invisible Spend Trend Analysis dashboard breaks down spend by source (Concur Travel, TMC, TripLink) and type (air, car, etc.), helping you assess program leakage. For a closer look, the Invisible Spend Details report identifies employees and expenses that fall outside of policy – allowing you to recategorize them and refine your travel guidelines for better control.

Reduce last-minute airfare bookings to cut costs

Flights booked just 1-2 days before departure can cost 10% - 30% more than flights booked 7-14 days in advance. Use targeted communications to encourage earlier booking behavior. To identify last-minute buyers, check the Days in Advance column in the Airfare Details report (found in the Vendor folder under Analysis & Intelligence).

Manage unused airline tickets with a clear policy and proactive tracking

Establish a policy for handling unused airline tickets, especially in cases where employees leave the organization. For lower-value tickets, it may not be worth recovering funds. For higher amounts, particularly under Company Bill, Company Pay (CBCP) models, your policy may require reimbursement from the employee.

Add a dynamic message in Concur Travel directing travelers to contact your TMC if they have an unused ticket. Regularly run the Unused Tickets report and coordinate with your TMC and airline partners to request name change waivers or explore rebate options to avoid loss of value.

Hotel or car vendor rate enforcement

Review the Past Reservations with Rates in Excess of Negotiated Rate report within Intelligence from SAP Concur to determine potential refunds you can request from the vendor. Then do the same for upcoming hotel stays or car reservations by reviewing the Upcoming Hotel Reservations with Rates in Excess of Negotiated Rate report.

Keep “squatters” out of your hotel program

Remove your company rate access code from the “consortia” field in “Manage Company Discounts” in Concur Travel to avoid hotels from outside of your program appearing with company negotiated rates. For more information, refer to Hotel Discounts in the admin guide.

Improve airfare negotiations with Top City Pairs report

The Top City Pairs report within Intelligence from SAP Concur provides visibility into booking value, number of trips, and average fares. Determine if your fares are in line with your expectations and negotiations with vendors and where improvements can be made in managing airfare spend. You may need to adjust policies or configurations or negotiate with vendors.

Reduce the role of cash

Cut down on the number of touchpoints by reducing the usage of cash when it comes to reimbursing employees for travel expenses. Determine what percentage of your program is cash by using the Payment Type Analysis report in the Expense Processing folder. This can help you determine which factors are contributing to low card adoption – such as geography, office culture, features, and training – so you can take action.

Know the difference: e-receipts vs. digital receipt images

Travel e-receipts (like hotel or car rental receipts) are sent directly from travel vendors to SAP Concur and appear in Available Expenses as either “cash” or “pending card transactions.” To prevent reimbursement errors, ensure your system has rules in place to match e-receipts with the appropriate payment method – and confirm your travel configuration allows users to opt-in.

Digital receipt images, on the other hand, are photos of receipts captured through the SAP Concur mobile app using ExpenseIt. These images are processed with OCR and AI to automatically generate expense line items.