Overall very happy; lots of room for improvement
Updated January 28, 2020
Overall very happy; lots of room for improvement
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Expense
Overall Satisfaction with Concur Travel and Expense
We use the Concur Request, Travel, and Expense modules. We use it to request, book, and expense travel, as well as for employee reimbursements and corporate card reconciliation. It is used organization-wide by self-bookers and travel arrangers alike. Approximately half our travel is supported travel for visitors to our organization, so that is a large part of what we do. We also use Concur Detect by AppZen for report auditing.
- Requesting, booking, and expensing is all handled in the same tool
- Extensive audit rule functionality means we can guide our users through the process with messaging that appears only when needed
- The application is user-friendly, even for brand new or infrequent users
- The application is very disjointed. The Request and Expense modules don't always play well together. Administratively, the configuration for each module is not at all cohesive.
- The new UI has proven to be quite buggy, with various minor to moderate issues arising every one to two weeks.
- The APIs available for connection with other systems are very limited.
- The application does not support visitors (travelers who aren't employees) very well at all. Managing travel for people who will not be Concur users (since they are not employees) is very cumbersome.
- The import/export process is cumbersome. For manual imports, you must wait for the nightly import or contact Concur Support directly to run the import.
- Visibility and reporting capabilities have been enhanced by introducing Concur
- We are in a much better position to catch fraudulent and duplicate transactions
- Management has better access to travel spend information
SAP Concur Travel & Expense Benefits
- Mileage Calculator. Concur has a built-in Google Maps mileage calculator that makes it very easy to calculate mileage expenses according to the exact route taken by the user.
- Mobile Application. The integration of ExpenseIt, which scans and reads receipts to assist in automated expense entry, saves our users time they would otherwise spend manually entering expense details and is also available anytime, anywhere, which reduces lost receipts.
- Intelligence Reporting
- ExpenseIt
1. The intelligence reporting is based on a somewhat older version of Cognos BI and is only available to users via dedicated licenses. Still, a small subset of our users finds the reporting tool extremely valuable. Provided you have Cognos BI report writers in your organization, the tool is highly flexible, so you are able to create a wide array of reports, as well as notifications (sending reports via email).
2. As I previously mentioned, the ExpenseIt add-on is very useful in reducing the amount of manual entry required of our users. This service allows users to scan receipts with their mobile device and the app will read the information on the receipt and use it to automatically fill in the expense entry fields, such as the dollar amount and date.
3. We have utilized the Detect audit tool for a little over a year at this point. The tool uses AI to evaluate expenses and receipts to combat fraud, duplicate transactions, unallowable expenses, etc. At this point, we do not recommend this tool. We have found that the tool misidentifies a significant number of expense line items. It frequently flags items incorrectly, marking them as high risk when they are valid, allowable expenses. Some examples are that many suppliers are incorrectly listed as bars and many purchases are incorrectly listed as software or alcohol. There were comparatively very few transactions that were correctly identified as high risk. We attempted to work with our Detect representative for several months to resolve these issues but they were ultimately unable to. We found that the Detect tool caused a measurable increase in the labor required by our report processing team and the tool also is a significant expense on its own. Therefore, it's a losing proposition for us. For very large organizations that process a great number of transactions and who are not reviewing the majority of expense reports anyway, I could see how Detect could maybe provide value since it can catch duplicate transactions across reports and users.
2. As I previously mentioned, the ExpenseIt add-on is very useful in reducing the amount of manual entry required of our users. This service allows users to scan receipts with their mobile device and the app will read the information on the receipt and use it to automatically fill in the expense entry fields, such as the dollar amount and date.
3. We have utilized the Detect audit tool for a little over a year at this point. The tool uses AI to evaluate expenses and receipts to combat fraud, duplicate transactions, unallowable expenses, etc. At this point, we do not recommend this tool. We have found that the tool misidentifies a significant number of expense line items. It frequently flags items incorrectly, marking them as high risk when they are valid, allowable expenses. Some examples are that many suppliers are incorrectly listed as bars and many purchases are incorrectly listed as software or alcohol. There were comparatively very few transactions that were correctly identified as high risk. We attempted to work with our Detect representative for several months to resolve these issues but they were ultimately unable to. We found that the Detect tool caused a measurable increase in the labor required by our report processing team and the tool also is a significant expense on its own. Therefore, it's a losing proposition for us. For very large organizations that process a great number of transactions and who are not reviewing the majority of expense reports anyway, I could see how Detect could maybe provide value since it can catch duplicate transactions across reports and users.
The following features save our users and administrators/processors time vs. our old system (which was largely manual):
- Automatic creation of trip itineraries and expense entries
- Processor queue
- Audit rules and exception messages - these are instrumental in helping guide our users to ensure all the required information is provided prior to submitting their expenses.
- Intelligence reporting
- ExpenseIt
- Google Maps mileage calculator
Concur is a leader in this space and has partnerships with a wide variety of providers, which helps us gain access to features that otherwise might not be available to us. That said, I don't personally have experience with other travel and expense management solutions, so I can't provide an accurate comparison to SAP Concur's competitors.
When implementing Concur, I highly recommend utilizing an experienced integration consultant. They will know the right questions to ask to get your instance configured in a way that works for your organization. Still, you administering Concur will be a constant drive toward improvement. Several years in, we are still making enhancements to our configuration every week in order to make things easier for our users, processors, and approvers. I also highly recommend sending your configuration administrators through Concur's advanced configuration training, which allows them to manage areas of the tool that are otherwise off-access to all but Concur Support (e.g., form and field configuration).