SAP Concur Unveils New AI Innovations at GBTA 2026

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What are the new AI features that SAP Concur announced at GBTA 2026? 

At the GBTA Convention 2026, SAP Concur announced a new wave of AI-powered innovations designed to help travel managers, finance teams, delegates, and travelers work more efficiently while improving visibility, compliance, and decision-making across travel and expense. With these new enhancements, travel disruptions are handled with minimal effort, and expense reports are created automatically for business travelers. Travelers and expense program leaders will have the tools they need to manage spend easily using virtual cards, and administrators will receive benchmark insights to make strategic, data-driven decisions that support their organization’s success. Delegates will have an intelligent dashboard to manage requests, travel, and expenses seamlessly across multiple employees, so they can spend less time on administrative coordination and more time proactively supporting travelers and executives. And finance teams won’t need to sift through countless expense reports; only the high-risk reports that need human oversight will be brought to their attention. 

Let’s explore the new capabilities.

What enhancements are coming to the Control Center for administrators?

The Control Center was first released in June, and now we are introducing new enhancements that will enable Expense administrators to benchmark program performance, identify optimization opportunities, and compare policy documents against system configurations to help strengthen compliance. 

As a Concur Administrator, you know firsthand what it is like to manage expense programs and how important it is to learn from your peers. One of the enhancements will be peer benchmarking that will match you with the right peer cohort and provide you with context-rich benchmarking data and insights. With this knowledge, you’ll be able to pinpoint where your program is excelling and where there is room for improvement. It will even help you implement recommended changes.

Administrators will also be able to upload their travel and expense policy into Control Center as a centralized source for policy documentation. AI then analyzes the policy against existing expense types and audit rules, identifying gaps, misalignments, or outdated configurations. Each recommendation includes policy citations, helping organizations streamline policy reviews and maintain compliance with greater accuracy and efficiency.  These enhancements are currently in an early adopter program, and general availability is planned for Q1 (Jan – Mar) 2027.

What is the AI-assisted delegates dashboard?

For anyone who books travel or manages expenses on someone else’s behalf, the AI-assisted delegates dashboard is about to become their best friend. This dashboard will bring travel bookings, requests, and expense tasks into a single intelligent workspace where delegates can manage multiple travelers while AI surfaces priorities, recommends next steps, and helps keep workflows moving. 

Imagine you’re an Executive Assistant, supporting multiple leaders at your organization. Before even finishing your coffee, you’re already juggling emails about a delayed flight, a returned expense report, and a trip that still needs approval. So, you open Concur, your email, your team chat, switching profiles, chasing updates, and spending most of your time just figuring out what needs to be done.

With the delegates dashboard, you simply log in and everything is right there, in one place. All your executives, their requests, trips, and expenses—plus a clear and prioritized view of what needs your attention today. The dashboard doesn’t just show information; it actively guides you. 

The delegates dashboard is currently in an early adopter program, and general availability is planned for this September.  

What is the AI-assisted approval manager?

The AI-assisted approval manager will help approvers review expense reports faster by highlighting higher-risk submissions, surfacing AI-generated insights, and providing the context they need to make informed decisions. This will transform how approvers review expense reports by replacing tedious manual effort with focused, insight-driven decision support.

In high-volume environments, approvers are often overwhelmed by routine items and noise, making it difficult to identify the few expenses that truly require attention. This feature addresses that challenge by using AI to prioritize what matters most: highlighting unusual patterns, missing context, and high-risk spend. Each insight is accompanied by clear explanations, helping approvers understand why it was flagged for review. Approvers remain fully in control, with AI acting as a trusted decision-support layer rather than an automated replacement, so they can make more confident decisions.

This is currently in an early adopter program. It is planned to be available for US English-speaking customers with both Joule Premium and Concur Expense starting in Q4 (Oct – Dec) 2026.

What is AI-assisted corporate card management?

AI-assisted corporate card management will simplify virtual card administration by using AI to generate card programs from your policy documents, create auto-approval rules using natural language, and streamline employee virtual card requests. 

In the past, setting up a card program for your organization meant digging through lengthy policy documents, looking for spend limits, and manually configuring complex rules. Soon you will be able to simply upload your company’s travel and expense policy, and corporate card management will generate a virtual card program aligned to your policy. Spending limits are defined, merchant category codes are mapped, and a policy template is created for you. All you have to do is review. You’ll also be able to set up auto-approval rules so employees can get funds fast and you can reduce the workload for approvers. Your travelers will be able to send a text message to Concur to request a virtual card or request a virtual card top up.

With AI-assisted corporate card management, compliance is no longer reactive—it’s built into every transaction from the start. Employees move faster, and administrators spend less time enforcing policy and correcting errors. This is planned to become generally available to customers with Concur Expense and eligible virtual card programs in Q4 (Oct–Dec) 2026.

What are the new enhancements coming to the Meeting Planning Agent?

The Meeting Planning Agent (formerly called the Meeting Location Planner Agent) is a Premium Joule Agent available today that helps people plan optimal group travel, and it is about to do much more! Soon the Meeting Planning Agent will be able to help organizers avoid scheduling conflicts, provide better cost insights for budget planning, flag major events happening in the selected city to prevent issues, and bring Groupize hotel room block proposals directly into SAP Concur for a more connected planning experience. So next time someone gets “voluntold” to plan a team offsite, they don’t need to spend hours researching costs and locations.

These new enhancements are planned to be available to Concur Travel customers with Joule Premium in Q4 (Oct–Dec) 2026.

Where can I learn more about these announcements?

Read the full announcement for additional details and a closer look at how these innovations are helping organizations move toward more intelligent, connected, and autonomous travel and expense management. Reach out to your SAP Concur Account Team if you have questions. All availability dates mentioned in this article are planned dates and subject to change. Always check the SAP Roadmap Explorer for the latest information.