Moving from Expenses v1 to v4 API

[Mass]

Hi All

We are moving our API to version 4 but are having difficulty extracting Tax data at the right level.

We currently use expense allocations and in v1 we are able to extract and map the amount of Tax per allocation line.

Concur have advised that for Expenses v4 API, the tax information is available under <expenseTaxSummary> and can be retrieved using the expenses tax API endpoint. But it is not available at allocation level.

For example:

A single row expense would be:

£60 net £12 tax

If we split this into 3 allocations, v1 provides the data of the 3 lines correctly as:

£20 net £4 tax

£20 net £4 tax

£20 net £4 tax

v4 shows:

£20 net £12 tax

£20 net £12 tax

£20 net £12 tax

Our developer is reluctant to build too many financial calculations into the data transformation and I'm looking for some advice on how others may be achieving this.

The calculations should occur in the source system (Concur) but as they don't, where are other clients doing this? Integration or ERP system?

Many thanks

[TChapman]

Just to clarify your accounting. £60 net £12 VAT tax, split 3 ways (accounts A, b and c).  Assume Cash expense, I would expect the accounting to be:
Debit A 16 credit cash
Debit B 16 credit cash
Debit C 16 credit cash
Debit Vat receivable 12 credit cash

Is that what you expect?

[Mass]

Hi,

The below is just test data using Expense v1 API.

It is a single receipt for 34.99 (29.17 + 5.82 tax) and has a split allocation 50/50.

The data from Concur is pushed into the below staging table within our ERP, creating 2 separate rows at allocation level.

Expense v1 API gives us the tax amount by allocation percentage eg 2.91.

The final row is the offset to the supplier. This is manufactured by our integration.

This is how it will look using Expense v4 API as Concur are no longer supplying tax at allocation level.

Notice the debit amount is correct at allocation level but the tax isn't. So the tax amount provided by Concur is 5.82 on each line.

As our tax data is present on each row it is easily traceable back to the cost.

If we created a separate tax row it would not be.

We use D365 F&O and capture this data in the GL. It is then pushed out into various other modules so this format works best for us.

[TChapman · Accepted solution]

Thank you for the clarification.  I reviewed the schema and understand what is happening.  At the expense entry, it has an amount and tax information.  It can then have multiple allocation rows (gotten via the Allocation v4 API).  You are correct, the allocation only breaks out the expense amount and does not break out the 9 tax amount fields.  

Expense v1 doesn't have an allocation API so it returns a flattened expense row.  While v4 might return 1 expense with 3 allocation rows, v1 would return 3 expense rows.  

I am curious to see what other clients are doing? 

One other thing to note, based on your conversation, are you trying to use expense APIs to post to your ERP?  If so, you should really be using the FIS APIs instead.  Those allow a bi-directional transfer of accounting information and would have the actual accounting you should be doing.  Please read the blog: https://community.sap.com/t5/enterprise-resource-planning-blogs-by-sap/sap-concur-s-financial-integr... for more infomration on its capabilities.  

[Mass]

Thank you.

We push the data into a D365 staging table where periodic a batch job runs to map the data into a Journal and attempts to Validate and Post the journal. Any failed validations remain in the staging table for repair and resubmission.

I'm not a developer so not sure of the API details, but I don't think we use FSI API. I've passed this onto them to explore.

I appreciate your assistance.

[Mass]

Hi, we are exploring the FSI API as you have suggested and preliminary investigations looks very promising.

Not sure why no one has mentioned this in the last 4 years!

Many thanks

Mass