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Concur is the best tool so far
March 15, 2018

Concur is the best tool so far

John Pavarini | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Expense

Overall Satisfaction with Concur Expense

Concur is utilized within my organization for business expense as well as mileage reimbursement for employees. As a healthcare system operating over a dozen locations across a 60+ mile radius we have regular “on the clock” travel time by both administrative and clinical personnel. Prior to Concur, individuals were having to submit a template spreadsheet with their mileage and physical signatures – requiring manual math, data entry, and accurate reimbursement rates. This required manual entry by payroll teams to both check individual spreadsheets for accuracy and then enter these reimbursements into bi-weekly payroll systems. Now, Concur will manually calculate location and reimbursable mileage with the appropriate rates just by entering start and end addresses. This manually gets sent through the approval process (done in a single click by leaders), and will ultimately feed into the employee’s payroll for the approved period. This is a similar adjustment from how we used to reimbursement regular business expenses, and this is now all automated by Concur. Offering a huge time saver for all users eliminates the need to audit reimbursements, and ultimately efficiently process all requests for a 5000+ employee organization.
  • The automated factor of tracking history, active requests, and ultimately the update features for all end users is exceptional. In large organization’s it’s not uncommon to submit a reimbursement and not see or hear of it for 30+ days. With Concur you receive updates along the way at each approval and verified estimated payout.
  • Team members seem to enjoy the system and have little to no trouble navigating it to efficiently and effectively enter their own reimbursement needs. Additionally, this holds true for managers of users and their ability to quickly and easily review and approve expense reimbursements.
  • The system is typically not an out of the box tool for users. There is a required training and overview that employees at my organization must participate in before officially getting their account access. This helps cut down on streams of questions by new users, and this suggests a little more complicated than point and click functionality.
  • There are outside Concur employed or other 3rd party vendors that one of the approval steps must go through. This is a little frustrating as the organization’s approval is placed externally so questions can get hung up, but recognizing this is the auditing to ensure we entered the expense correctly offsets this.
  • Administrator accounts have been a challenge. We have admin assistants that support medical providers, and allowing them access to submit reimbursements on behalf of the providers has been tricky for new team members. Functionality still exists but is not as simple as we’d like.
  • The largest return has been the added productive time that has been given back to payroll and financial professionals within the organization. They can now go back to more important work for the organization rather than spending hours every week performing administrative data entry tasks.
  • Team members feel more empowered by having access to updates and statuses of their reimbursement requests. Again, this has given more time back to the team members (no longer having to follow-up with payroll), and this awards more time back where teams aren’t fielding dozens of questions.
  • Managers have more comprehensive access to review reimbursement requests, and to evaluate accuracy and justification at the click of a button. More time for leaders equals more proactive work and productive time for them.
Concur is definitely in the lead for what we’re utilizing it for (business and mileage reimbursement). The other software I use has functioned and been utilized for various payroll, procurement, and reimbursement needs, but none are in line with needs that Concur has met. The PeopleSoft tools are still valuable for other functions, but there is less automation and the user interface is a little dated compared to the sleeker, streamlined system that Concur has. Concur was much easier to set up to speak with other business systems we utilize (far more than Oracle or Kronos systems), and Concur was also able to better communicate with our affiliate organization health systems in which we have moonlighting and contract workers through.
If your payroll and accounts payable teams are totally reliant on paper reimbursement forms and hand signed approvals, then Concur may be something to look into. This is even truer if a company is spending countless hours correcting or rectifying reimbursement requests from team members. At a large multi-faceted organization a system like Concur will cut down on tedious mind-numbing scanning and data entry of paper reimbursement requests. This not only saves the end users, but it also saves management the time of having to sign and return forms accordingly. When dealing with individual’s money there is little to no room for hold up or error, and Concur can help prevent all that. In cases of small companies, of only a few dozens, then Concur may be a little too large of a tool.

Evaluating Concur Expense and Competitors

Yes - We were utilizing PeopleSoft Finance and eProcurement prior to Concur Expense. These previous systems required forms and paper/email submission, and automation in the system itself was not available. There was an influx of lost forms, errors that were caught 10 days after submission, and overall a very slow reimbursement process. With Concur the timeliness has increased, and most team member can expect reimbursement regularly within 2 weeks.
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Analyst Reports
The features and product usability is by far the most important factor. This ability to log in, enter reimbursement, and submit is seamless. It also easy help support and FAQs within the system. Above all else, the ability to log in and check on reimbursement as well as opt-in for communication is a great service to team members.
I personally was not involved in the evaluation and selection process. To my knowledge, one of our affiliate organizations was utilizing Concur Expense, and through their high reviews, we selected Concur ourselves. As this affiliate supplies many of our providers, it made the most sense to get our reimbursement systems in line with our shared provider staff, but also familiarize our own employees with it too.