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Concur Travel and Expense: A Centralized Platform Usable by All.
May 27, 2021

Concur Travel and Expense: A Centralized Platform Usable by All.

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

Software Version

Professional

Modules Used

  • Expense
  • Travel

Overall Satisfaction with Concur Travel and Expense

Concur Travel and Expense is used across our entire organization. It functions as a centralized platform for employees to submit qualified expenses purchased using either a corporate credit card or personal credit card. These expenses include costs related to business travel as well as procurement of office supplies, professional organization membership dues, and business meals. Concur allows for itemized expenses to be reviewed and approved by management, as well as documented and stored for budgeting purposes.
  • Itemization of expenses is intuitive and straight-forward. Receipt attachments are easily uploaded to support documentation of expenses.
  • Categorization of expenses is also convenient through the effective use of drop-down menus.
  • Reliable electronic workflows. Submitted expenses are immediately forwarded to immediate supervisors for approval. Reimbursement is processed in a timely manner after expense approval.
  • Feedback loop between submitter and approver is not particularly robust. There does not seem to exist an interface in Concur where a supervisor can, for example, request the submitted to add another attachment or change the category of an expense.
  • There is no integration with mapping tools to provide calculation of miles driven. Numbers seem to have to be manually entered.
  • It is not always clear whether an expense was paid via corporate credit card or personal credit card. Ideally, there should be a quick drop-down menu to indicate this at the beginning of the documentation process.
  • Concur has saved time in gathering and storing travel expense data in a centralized location. This process would take about 40 man-hours per year if done manually, but only about 3-4 man-hours using the reports available in concur (~90% reduction).
  • Concur has expedited the employee reimbursement process for qualified expenses. The time from expense submission to supervisor approval is typically less than 2 hours, and reimbursement is usually processed within 3 days and applied to the next pay cycle. A manual process would be expected to take about 3 times longer.
  • Concur has been a great benefit in benchmarking travel costs for budgeting purposes. Having all travel expenses sortable by employee, department, and division is a tremendous help in estimating annual travel expense budgets. The accuracy of the expected budget is significantly higher than if estimated by other means.
Webexpenses charges per user, so it can get very expensive for large organizations. However, Webexpenses does have superior mobile usability, with a convenient app with receipt upload function that can easily be done immediately after the receipt is issued. Webexpenses also has very good customer service, while Concur is not as quick to respond to issues, most likely due to higher volume of users. Both options are fairly intuitive and effective for centralized expense reporting by users of varying technical proficiency.
My organization used SAP ERP for all core business areas, including procurement, finance, and HR. By integrating SAP with Concur, reimbursement for qualified expenses could be processed in sync with regular payroll cycles. Approved expenses paid with a personal credit card were included as a separate line item on an employee's next paycheck for simple, transparent reimbursement.
Concur Travel and Expense has allowed my organization to restructure yearly travel budgeting through careful analysis of expense summary reports by department and function. It has also allowed for policy changes with respect to business travel. For example, international travel for business meetings was significantly cut when it was apparent that this was an unnecessary cost that could be avoided using virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom or WebEx. Overall, Concur has saved time in expense reporting and processing, and thus allowing for more time to be spent on other critical business tasks.
The employee experience of travel expense reporting has improved since there is a centralized process with a prescribed template provided by the software. The level of detail and information required for each expense is prescribed by the software, and thus makes for a uniform and seamless process from employee to supervisor to payroll. Concur has especially saved time for supervisors that have to approve expenses, as each itemized cost is well organized and paired with appropriate receipt documentation and comments,
Concur is a great tool for large organizations of many users with varying technical abilities. The interface is intuitive with clear drop-down menus and expense categorization names such that any employee can reasonably understand how to submit expenses for approval with at most minimal training on the Concur tool.

It is less appropriate for organizations with experienced users that would benefit from an expedited expense reporting experience that integrates other tools such as GPS data or mapping tools. Much of the data is entered manually, which can be frustrating for frequent business travelers.