Year-end is approaching fast. Follow these five practical steps to help reduce claim delays, improve compliance, and ensure a smoother year-end close. While several examples are UK-specific, the guidance is relevant for SAP Concur administrators everywhere.
Year-end is closer than it looks. For finance teams and employees alike, the final quarter is when small expense habits can become big problems--delayed reimbursements, rejected claims, and audit headaches that could have been avoided with a little preparation.
We've put together your Q4 action checklist to help your team close the year cleanly, stay compliant, and avoid unnecessary escalations.
- Reshare Your Company Expense Policy
Now is the perfect time to re-circulate your expense policy to all employees, not just new starters. A quick reminder at the start of Q4 reduces out-of-policy submissions significantly before the year-end rush hits.
Policy and Program Management Guide
- Add or Update Your Internal Entertainment Policy
With festive events and year-end team gatherings on the horizon, now is the time to clarify your rules around internal entertainment, before employees start submitting claims.
A few UK-specific reminders to build into your policy:
- HMRC staff party exemption: The annual event exemption allows <strong (including VAT) for qualifying events. Go over that limit and the full amount becomes a taxable benefit, not just the excess.
- P11D implications: Any entertainment spend that doesn't qualify for exemption must be reported on P11D forms. Make sure your expense types in Concur reflect this correctly.
- Business vs. personal entertainment: Be explicit about what counts as a reimbursable business meal versus a social expense; ambiguity at year-end causes the most rejections.
- Review Your Receipt Requirements
Mismatched or missing receipts are the number one cause of claim rejections and audit flags. Before Q4 gets busy:
- Confirm your receipt thresholds (e.g., required for all claims over a set amount).
- Remind employees that HMRC accepts digital receipts. Photos taken via the SAP Concur mobile app are valid, so there's no excuse for lost paper receipts.
- Check that your receipt requirements in Concur Expense match your current policy; misalignment between the system and the policy creates confusion.
Remind employees to itemise hotel folios and not submit the credit card slip alone.
Tips & Tricks: Spend Management - Receipts
- Set a Clear December Submission Cut-Off Date
One of the most effective things you can do right now is publish a hard submission deadline for December expenses. Without one, employees assume there is always time, and finance teams end up processing claims deep into January.
Our recommendation: Set a cut-off of Friday, 12th December 2026, for all expenses to be submitted and approved in order to guarantee payment before year-end.
Communicate this clearly--in your system, by email, and ideally as a banner or alert in Concur itself.
Admin tip: For most businesses closing from Wednesday 24 December, we suggest working backwards from your final December payment run:
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Milestone
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Suggested Date
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All expenses submitted by employees
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Friday 5 December
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All expenses approved by managers
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Friday 12 December
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Finance processing complete
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Friday 19 December
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- Admin: Use Your Control Center Before Year-End
Your Admin Control Center is one of the most underused tools in Concur. It gives you real-time visibility into:
- Audit Rule Health — are your rules catching what they should?
- Expense Type Configuration — are any expense types misconfigured or missing?
- Send Back Insights — where are claims getting rejected and why?
- Feature Enablement Opportunities — are there features turned off that could reduce your Q4 workload?
Set aside an hour before the end of October to run through it.
If you have Intelligent Audit or Concur Verify, Q4 is a good time to:
- Check your audit rule configuration: are the right rules firing for entertainment and high-value claims?
- Review Send Back Insights in your Admin Control Center: if the same error is causing multiple rejections, fix the root cause before December volume hits
- Ensure your year-end audit trail is clean for any external audit or HMRC compliance review
